There's only been a handful of co-op game announcements to come out of E3 this year, but one that seems to be surprising everyone is a game called Brink, developed by Splash Damage and published by Bethesda.
Brink is a first person shooter with a strong emphasis on character development. Your character is one you bring with you not only in single player, but into co-op and competitive multiplayer modes. In all modes you'll earn experience that allows customization options and upgrades.
One of the interesting features the game has is something called SMART. The idea is, you press a button and the game figures out where you need to go. Perhaps it's a difficult jump, the game will basically do it for you. I'm not quite sure how this works or why it's there, but I suppose for someone getting frustrated at enviornmental puzzles it could prove interesting.
Brink will feature dynamic open ended gameplay with missions and goals generated on the fly depending on your status, class and co-op partners.
TeamXbox got some hands on time with the game at E3, and had nothing but positive comments.
Visually, the game looks like a cross between Team Fortress 2’s stylized reality with the granular detail of Gears of War. Not only do the buffed-up characters look unique from any other game you’ve seen, they look really unique from each other. You can customize them to look differently—which is really nothing that new in the world of games—but the characters you end up with look really cool. Tough, but in a cartoony way. A non-silly cartoony way.
And a bit on the unique co-op mission structure:
For example, you can be in the middle of a firefight, working your way towards the final objective you need to complete and move the story to the next level, when someone on your team will come over the radio asking for an engineer. You quickly bring up your mission-wheel interface, which gives you the ability to choose between that mission and a bunch of others that include things like “go interrogate that guy” or “plant a bomb” or “switch to this class (like engineer) and plant this turret.” If you’re playing co-op, you’ll sometimes get missions dependent on one your teammate chose, usually along the lines of going and covering them while they take on their task. Of course, you probably don’t need to do any of them outside your main mission, but it would be a lot cooler if you did.
Brink is set to be released Spring of next year on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
