Video Game Vintage Title: Brink

Brink

Brink is a first-person shooter video game developed by Splash Damage for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was released in North America on 10 May 2011, in Australia on 12 May, in Europe on 13 May and in Japan on 16 August.

In Brink, two factions, Resistance and Security, battle in a once-utopian city called The Ark, a floating city above the waters of a flooded Earth.

Brink has Steamworks integration, including Valve Anti-Cheat. It runs on id Tech 4 and has an updated rendering framework with improved support for multiple CPU cores. Brink is a first-person shooter with a focus on parkour-style movement. Online multiplayer servers hold up to 16 players; players can play cooperatively or competitively, or against artificially-intelligent bots.

Despite the game having received mixed to mediocre reviews, Brink has reportedly sold 2.5 million copies to date.

Plot
Brink takes place in the near future during the mid-21st century on a man-made floating island called the Ark. It was established as an environmentally and economically self-sustainable island, a contemporary model for green, sustainable living. However, global warming caused a dramatic rise in sea levels around the world. Decades later, the Ark became a place for refugees all around the world as they viewed the innovative island as the only suitable place to live. The Ark is now home to tens of thousands more people than it was originally meant to sustain, and its supposedly renewable resources are being pushed to the limit. Now, the Ark exists in total isolation and has lost contact with the outside world. Many refugees live in tight spaces made from rusty shipping containers and live in poverty. Those who work for the Ark Security get an extra water ration. Now, a war has begun between the Resistance and Ark Security.

The Resistance is led by Brother Chen, a name that the Resistance affectionately uses for him. Chen played a significant part in the Ark's construction and design. However, he became angry at the Founders' and Security's decision to ration water and isolate the Ark's refugees from the rest of the island while Security and the Founders live in luxury. Chen armed and founded The Resistance, a group of well-trained refugees, and demanded that the Founders share the Ark's resources, and water, equally. The Resistance's goal in Brink is to protect refugees from Security forces, distribute Ark's resources to those in need, and to establish contact with the outside world. The Resistance agrees with Chen that the Founders and Ark Security are corrupt and oppressive, and that only the outside world can help them.

Ark Security is led by Captain Mokoena. Security's point of view is much different than that of the Resistance, whom they view as terrorists with dangerous ideas and goals that could destroy the Ark. Ark Security's goals in the game is to stop Chen and his terrorist plots, protect the Ark's remaining resources (and maintain control over them), and to preserve the Founders' vision of a self-sustaining island. Captain Mokoena believes that the rest of the world is in worse shape than the Ark, and that it is too dangerous to establish contact with the outside world. At one point in the game, he tells "classified" information to Ark Security, telling them that there is an outside world, and that years ago they sent out Ark representatives to try to make contact with it, until Ark's representatives were tortured to death for information of the Ark's location, and the Founders were forced to move the Ark.

The player will choose one of these two factions. While each level is the same regardless of the factions for which the player fights, the goals of each side will be different, and the plot-point revolving around each level will be different. For example, in one level, if the player fights for Security, the goal will be to break into a bio-weapons lab and steal a viral bomb that could infect the Ark's inhabitants so that they can launch a counter measure. However, if playing for the Resistance, the goal will be to protect a vaccine from the greedy Founders and Security so that it can distributed fairly among all of the Ark's inhabitants.