I was at gamescom in Cologne today and the highlight was Brink of course. After waiting about 1.5 hours I finally was let in with about 30 other people and Paul Wedgwood held the the presentation (most likely for the dozenth time that day but he did a great job nevertheless). There are already a lot of reviews on the net but I think not everything has been mentioned and I want to comment on it from a ET & ETQW players point of view. To sum it up:
Character customization
- [li]you customize your character separately for Resistance and Security
[/li][li]you unlock additional stuff when progressing with your character
[/li][li]you can customize most of the things you know from RPGs: ethnicity, face, bodytype, tattoos and scars, headgear, color and type of clothes
[/li][li]Resistance wields makeshift armor (for example made of numberplates or tyres) and offers a wide variety of styles (have a look at the screenshots to get a impression)
[/li][li]the Security was not explicitly shown but they do look like security guys with proper military gear.
[/li][li]you can create weapon loadouts for each class
[/li][li]the shown weapons were:
[/li]shotgun, pistol, small mp, assault rifle and a grenadelauncher (singleshot; carried by the heavy class)
Gameplay (the presentation was run on the xbox360 version and featured a mission on the Security side)
[ul]
[li]you select your class and loadout and fetch ammo at commandposts on the map
[/li][li]the shown mission was in Container City where a Defuse Robot (Screenshots showing it: #1 #2) had to be escorted to the supposed location of a dirty bomb
[/li][li] before the mission were about 20-30 seconds of ingame voiceacting were the Security guys talked about their objective and got attacked by Resistance fighters. The game then immediately jumped to the players point of view.
[/li]- at the end of the mission there was another ingame cutscene
[li] people with experience in ET / ETQW will be immediately comfortable with the mission objectives:
[/li]- main object is to escort the Defuse Robot
- on the way an engineer has to repair a crane which lifts the robot over terrain it can’t cross for itself
- a side object for the soldier class is to blow up a grate to open a shortcut
- the Resistance has to stop the Security from escorting the Robot
[li]one class can gather information by interrogating a special downed enemy with a nasty looking probe which looks like it tases the victim
[/li][li]you can lean and shoot from the hip or with iron sites
[/li][li]the movement seems to be about as fast as in ETQW but it feels faster as the maps are way smaller
[/li][li]the SMART movement allows some nice manoeuvres to flank the enemy and to quickly cross line of fires or get out of delicate situations
[/li][li]the 2 shown maps did not seem like to allow strafejumps but there were plenty of opportunities to utilise the smart movement for climbing
[/li][li]I did not see any real difference between the heavy class and the faster one in movement. The heavy class definitely can climb and jump and does not seem to be as slow as in TF2 compared to the other classes
[/li][li]the engineer can deploy a turret which burst fires and seems to be able to do quite a lot of damage if the enemy does not look out ; it did not seem like you had to construct it - it was selected and spawned immediately
[/li][li]you gain XP by killing enemies and fulfilling mission objectives (it seems like there are multiple missions available for each class all the time like escorting the engineer or guarding some place)
[/li][/ul]
Graphics
[ul]
[li]you see blood puffs when enemies are hit
[/li][li]I did not see any arrows over enemies or team indicators
[/li][li] there seems to be no gore but enemies do fly through the air when killed and gibbed by a grenade; it looks a bit awkward though when the grenade does not gib them
[/li][li]there are nice effects displayed when you are being hit and there is motion blur as well
[/li][/ul]
Sound
[ul]
[li]there is not much to say about it except it’s awesome
[/li][li]there is a lot of mayhem going on in some situations and the explosions and weapons sound great
[/li][li]the voiceacting seems ok but a bit quiet in some situations. You find the typical types of guys talking eg. someone with a russian accent and a bad ass squad commander
[/li][/ul]
Altogether I have to say that after that presentation I want to see even more of the game. There seem to be some smaller issues but it already looks great. The gameplay definitely looks promising! Not really sprint strafe firefights like in ET but still fast-paced with more vertical elements and similar hp / damage values. To me it seemed like a mix of Enemy Territory, Mirror’s Edge and Killzone 2 in the best sense (and it did not remind me at all of CoD or any other generic shooter).
Enough talking, I’m a happy panda that I had the chance to see the game in action and I have to say that you have every right to look forward to the game.
:stroggtapir:
