Ok so I decided to take the plunge and make my merry way to EGE so I could get my grubby hands on Brink, and anything else that took my fancy at the time. I’ve never been to a games convention before, and this sounded like the perfect excuse to get there. Apologies for the length of the post, I think I got carried away.
The Disclaimer: I left at 10pm on Friday evening, and was travelling solid until Saturday morning, to which I dumped my bag in the hotel and ran straight over to join the queue to get into the Expo. I apologise if any info that I was given is relayed incorrectly.
The Build-up
So making my way into the place, I decided to make a bee-line for the Brink booth. It seemed as though everyone had the same idea, because BOY was there a queue! At one point someone fainted and had to be carried to the side by his friends. The queue started at the side of the booth, and ran all the way along behind it. The guys from Jagex had a booth back there, and the conversation went as follows…
Guy1: What’s the massive queue for?
Guy2: Don’t know
Guy3: It’s for Brink
Guy1&2: Aahhhhhh
Guy3: Yeah, definitely the game of the show
So after about an hour I was reaching the front of the queue. As you got closer there were 2 TV’s set up that were looping a “Brink For Dummies” of sorts video to prepare you for the game. This was my first pleasant surprise of the day, as this video showed me that there are indeed Molotovs to be had (maybe it was clarified on the forums, but I missed it if it had). There were 16 machines set up with a 2 group split, all running on PC with a 360 controller. The games were 4v4 on Container City with bots filling in the blanks, and I had the chance to play through as both factions. As I got to the front of the queue, the Bethesda PR chap kindly informed me that, on Friday, the queue to play was 2hrs! I didn’t feel quite so bad about waiting 1hr 30mins then.
The Beginning
By this point my feet were screaming bloody murder at me, and I think they were the happiest bodypart at the time when I was shown to my gaming throne. As I sat down, I was politely told I was on the Resistance, and that I had 5mins to mess around with the player and weapons customisations, so I started off with the player. It’s the little subtle plants of humour that got me the most, as I cycled through the various hair styles, I chuckled at The Dolph, and The Bruce, and other various nods to well known hair styles. I settled on The Bruce and shifted to the facial style. There’s not much to say here beyond what was shown on the video, in style with my own looks I decided to go with the handsome style and that’s enough about that! There were plenty of facial tattoos to choose from, but for some reason I decided to keep the face untouched, and added no facial hair either (John McClane didn’t have a beard!).
For the clothes I went with the hoody, I always liked it from the screenshots so now was my chance to see it full on. I also went with matching cargo-pants. Once you’ve decided your look, you can spin the model around with the right stick to get a look at it. I would have liked to be able to move the model closer and further from view to fully admire my creation, but sadly all I had was a portrait from the chest up.
There were about 4 or 5 main guns and the same amount of secondary guns to mess with. Some we could customise with attachments (scopes and muzzle breaks) and some we couldn’t. Again not much to say about it beyond what’s already been seen on here and in videos. Once I was kitted out, it was time to begin!
The Game: Resistance
As the loading screen chugged away, there was a voice over from the story detailing out what was happening from the POV of the Resistance. There was a virus outbreak on the Ark, and the Resistance had managed to get hold of the vaccine. The Security were on their way to steal it back and they had to defend it. Once the loading screen was done, I was treated to bit of the story acted out by the players… with one of the parts played by my character. Again at this point strengthening the point that the Security were evil bastards intent on letting the Resistance die from the virus, or selling the vaccine to them for silly money.
As we got in game, we were hit with a command post in front of us. At this point I had to fight the urge to just look around, the detail is immense. No big slabs of samey texture, no repeating detail, and plenty of colour! I ran up to the command post to choose my class and load-out. It’s at this point it’s worth mentioning that nothing locks you in place. Choosing your class/gun requires you to hold down the key, if you let go then you’re back in action instantly… my worry was that I’d be caught short at a command post or on the mission wheel, and this fear was quickly laid to rest. I decided to go operative, and not going through the weapon load out section meant I was given the weapons that I customised at the beginning.
Heading off I immediately acquainted myself with the SMART button, sprinting into action. Like it says on the tin, I was vaulting over barriers and sliding when hitting crouch. It’s difficult to convey the use of SMART to someone that hasn’t used it. It is by no means, as we’ve been told many times, an auto-pilot. My impressions were that distance and run-up were a factor, there were times I would be close to a wall, and simply pressing forward+SMART at the wall did nothing… whereas running up and pressing SMART got me up there no problem. I found myself sliding around quite a lot, all sneaky and stealthy. I was in full control regardless of what I was doing, I could look around and see what was happening, and still shoot on the go (Albeit with reduced accuracy of course).
Soon enough, I was quickly snapped back to the reality that I was playing a game by being shot directly in the face a few times. Now being a PC player, I knew I was going to be crap with a controller, and I would also like to use the added excuse that I had 2 girls sat beside me on my team, but in all honesty they were better than me and I appeared to be the weakest link at this point! As I familiarised myself with the controller, I was treated to a smack to the face. I was little confused at this point for 2 reasons. 1) I completely forgot I could be smacked to the ground with a melee, and 2) I thought I had been shot, yet couldn’t see the red screen or the wait for medic/spawn options. As soon as everything started to flood back, I managed to take my foe out as it seems he also didn’t realise that I had only been knocked down. I can’t remember how long I was down for, but I was on my feet fairly quickly and ready to roll again.
From a controller-nubs POV, I feel my aiming went quite well. I could feel the gravity well aid my crosshair in the direction it needed to go, but not to a point where I could just snap on ironsight and let it do the rest for me. Having played CoD:MW2 on the 360, it’s safe to say that the aim assist is nowhere near as severe as it is on there. You can sit looking at an area on MW2, and if someone passes the crosshair, it gets dragged along with it… that never happened in Brink. But since it made sure I was at least in the area I needed to be, that was enough that I could be useful with my gun. It’s almost probably worth mentioning at this point, in case there are people that don’t know, headshots do the most damage, followed by the body with the least damage done to the legs.
There were several types of grenades depending on the class. Due to sleep deprivation and overall knackerdness, I can’t honestly remember who had what, but I do remember getting to use the standard frag grenade, the sticky grenade and the Molotov. I also remember being flash-banged a few times. The effect is as suggested, but the time you’re at a disadvantage is nowhere near the length of time you are in the likes of MW2.
The Game: Security
The opposing team were very good and managed to grab the objective and get it to the copter in a good time, so i’ll move to Security side. A massive thanks to Fluffy_Gimp who managed to sneak me in for a 2nd game without having to wait another 2hrs, much appreciated! Again we had a voice over during the load screen explaining that the Resistance had a dirty bomb, and they Resistance had to grab it and get it to the copter to be dealt with. Once loaded, the in-game cinematic again had my char playing a part.
Now being a sneaky bastard, and the fact I actually knew what had to be done, I ran straight to the command post and loaded soldier, then sprinted to the gate and slid into place and planted the bomb with no-one there to fight me off. I then slide to the side and kept a strategic position to take out anyone trying to defuse. A few grenade and molotovs later and we had the gate blown. I then switched to engineer to get the bot rolling. At this point the Resistance had learned and took up a good position to stop us advancing. Locki was on-hand at this point to remind me that an engineer can do more than just shoot and repair things, and showed me the simplicity that is deploying a turret. Select the turret and hold X… simple as that. There was obviously a deploy time which was signified by a circle timer when held, again I wasn’t locked to this and could switch to my weapon very quickly if someone happened to disturb my deployeness. The one thing that threw me here was that I wasn’t looking down enough, it was X to deploy, but also right stick to look down, and being a controller nub this didn’t go too well. Locki pointed out that I had to look down more, but I wasn’t aware of any visual indication that this was the problem, and informing me that I had to look at the ground. I’m sure common sense should’ve kicked in at this point, but hey I was tired!
Once us Engi’s got our act together with a couple of turrets down, we managed to break the deadlock and get the bot rolling. We reached the gate and the enemy had managed to damage the bot, I made a hastey run to the bot then slid into place (I must admit, I love the sliding) and began my repair. At this point I feel the controller system let me down, I had to hold down X to repair the bot, but my crouch button was B… so short of having to lift my hand off the controller, there was no way to crouch and repair at the same time, which left my head wide open for anyone to have a popshot at… and they did, quickly. Feeling like I wasn’t getting anywhere, again Locki stepped in and explained that I can look all around during the repair, and it won’t affect the task at hand. So during the repair I had a look around, saw some bad men coming at me and immediately leapt off to defend myself. By this time my team mates were there to help and we got the bot sorted and to its destination.
At this point the enemy converged on the freshly opened container and kept us at bay for a while. One more time Locki came to the rescue to remind me of SMART, and proceeded to show me not only a faster way to the action, but a route that came at them from the side instead of dead on. Once we dispelled of their defence, the bag was snatched and shuffled back to the copter quick-style… WE WON! \o/
After-Thoughts
The speed, it’s not ET/ETQW speed, but that didn’t put me off. There’s enough movement with SMART, and the added benefit of sliding brought a new style of movement to the table beyond hopping everywhere. This isn’t the game for it, and I never thought i’d say this, but bunnyhopping down a hill just doesn’t have a place in this game. That being said, I can only assume this was the medium body-type speed we were playing with, and if that’s the case, then I know i’ll be staying clear of the heavy. I’d say the speed was ‘enough’, any slower would definitely be too slow for me, and the fact I was playing medium gave me reassurance that light was going to be faster than this.
I mentioned this before, but I never felt locked into anything. Command post, objective wheel, deploying, reloading… if I wanted to stop any of those, then I stopped. During the reload process, up to a certain point I was able to interrupt and continue to fire off the bullets I had left in the gun at the point I started to reload. This alleviated A LOT of frustration. I’ve developed a bad habit over the years, mainly due to RtCW, of reloading after a kill… and being caught out when a 2nd enemy turns the corner. I was ecstatic when this happened in Brink and I could still shoot!
The ‘buff’ effect. When my weapon was buffed, as we all know it started to glow… this wasn’t a big deal for me. When looking at the glow effect as an spectator, it’s easy to see why the eye is draw/distracted by it… that’s the whole point. There was a HELLUVALOT going on in the game, and this obvious visual indicator let me know that my gun was beefed up without me having to take my eyes off the action.
The self-revive. I used it once when I accidently went medic by accidently trying to repair a command post thinking it was the bot (I told you I was tired, shush!). The cool down is very lengthy, to a point where it should be used strategically and not a whim. Don’t be thinking “ack i’ll use it now, it’ll be charged quick enough to be used again”, this won’t happen, which again alleviates the fear of the invincible one-man-army medics.
Damage. In no way was this “30 bullets or more”. If i got the head, they went down quick, the body it took more… as expected. I kinda felt on par with ET tbh, but it has been a while since ive played it so who knows.
The compass. The style of this is more akin to Halo than anything else. A general direction of relevance is happening on here with not much else, with different circles representing friendly and enemy. It felt like it was there more to give me the general direction where everything was happening with a quick glance, rather than an all-out tool that takes your eyes off the action to make use of its info.
Conclusion
The game played well, REALLY well. Most of the failings I saw were down to my nubiness with a controller. Again the only time I felt let down was with regards to crouching and performing an action at the same time. Since most actions are on the X key, crouching with B wasn’t a realistic option. I obviously don’t see this as a problem with a mouse and keyboard set up, but I think console players will be quick to judge in that respect, especially if the keys aren’t user mappable.
Again being on the controller, I didn’t get the chance to test the movement out manually, and relied mainly on the SMART button. My hands just weren’t equipped to work the thing, so didn’t have the coordination to test it properly. The only worry I got from what little I did was the jump height. Unless I was hitting the wrong button, it felt like I wasn’t getting very far off the ground at all. Vaulting over railings is great and all, but sometimes I want to stand on a railing, or on a waste high barricade, and that jump height just wouldn’t allow for it.
Ed (Bongoboy) was quick to point out that this was an old build, and nothing here is in its final form, but as a whole you honestly could have fooled me. It felt very slick, if there were any bugs then I was too caught up in the action (or too busy fighting sleep) to notice. The game played well, and best of all it was FUN! Those expecting or wanting another ET will be disappointed, this is its own game and plays its own way. It retains the familiar style of ET class-based style, but backed by a unique gameplay method that makes it stand on its own 2 feet. I for one cannot wait till next year to play the finished product if this is whats classed as a test build!
Quick greets to Digibob, RR2DO2, Fluffy_Gimp, Bongoboy, Randles and Locki who I got to meet, all charming fellows and it was a pleasure meeting you all. I swear Ed could sell snow to Eskimos, delightful fellow!
