The PS2 didn’t even come with a modem as standard, and yet back in 2004 I was already talking about Star Wars: Battlefront as “mark[ing] the point when online multiplayer could completely take central stage, with the single player modes essentially consisting of playing the multiplayer against AI”. Since then, two World of Warcraft expansion packs reached UK #1 without even the semblance of an offline mode. Brink’s total integration of multiplayer within a different kind of game feels even more modern, even if it didn’t prove to be the future itself.
The dramatic and stylised opening sequence and caricature-proportioned choice of characters is a refreshing aesthetic leap for about as long as it takes to realise that character and plot are going to have almost no significance. Instead, as the game bribes the player with experience points to watch a tutorial video (a new and slightly odd gambit), it’s a set of rules that come to the foreground. This is once again warfare as a tightly defined sport, and the story is a garnish at most.
You can jump into any mode including the story campaign with other players online or, if you’re me playing now, on your own with AI allies. You fight as rebels or security against an opposing team, by shooting them but also by hacking, healing and blowing stuff up. You can switch to different roles to protect or attack different objectives, in environments which develop around those actions. There is rather a lot of Star Wars: Battlefront still in there, alongside more direct ancestors like Team Fortress. It’s reactive action is added on to a first person shooter with small teams and an emphasis on rapid movement.
The result can be quickly overwhelming with the sheer number of things to keep track of, especially when the characters can freerun their way around with such ease. I worked through the training levels with a lot of trial and error and leaning on teammates, and then found things getting exponentially more too much. Based on reviews and watching other people’s gameplay, it’s fair to assume that a decent proportion of this is down to how much the absence of real teammates takes away from the possibility of real teamwork and places the onus on the player, in a way in which the game is not built for. The emphasis on multiplayer also likely explains a particularly lopsided 360/PS3 sales split, the common “but all my friends are playing on 360” effect magnified.
I think my confusion is likely also related to the fact that team-based shooters are a highly specialised genre built on top of an FPS genre which is already not one that comes most naturally to me. All of the more modern and much more popular takes on the genre in recent years tend to look completely baffling to me as well. I’ll be making an effort when I get there to try to get a bit more out of them, but Brink already didn’t catch on the same way even when it was all up and running. As a route in, playing this on my own appears particularly futile.
Top of the charts for week ending 14 May 2011:
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