Brink: All The Right Moves

By now, you know that the Official Game Guide for Brink covers all of the Campaign and Freeplay map missions in meticulous detail, and that there’s copious information on creating and tailoring your character to your own play-style. But what about some advanced maneuvers and weaponry? Fortunately, the guide has this covered, too.

S.M.A.R.T. is a key technique to utilize throughout every mission. Short for Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain, S.M.A.R.T. enables the more lightweight and dexterous types to maneuver across obstacles too high for the more cumbersome, heavy-weight (but heavy-hitting) teammate. Knowing the precise movement techniques, how they work, and when to use them, is imperative. Which is why the guide has a large section of the Gameplay chapter devoted to just this type of scenic mastery. The guide doesn’t simply rehash the video instructions on S.M.A.R.T. that come with the game. Instead, it provides a master class of techniques, beginning with the basics. There’s sprinting (and how inertia affects the height and distance of your S.M.A.R.T. maneuvers), climbing, mantling, and vaulting (what each is, and why one of these maneuver types is much more advantageous than the others), as well as sliding (useful for moving under scenery, as well as into enemies), and wall-jumping (the key technique to a more proficient use of game space, and the key to unlocking all the shortcuts dotted throughout the maps, which are flagged throughout the walkthrough too).

Where the guide gets “hardcore” is with the advanced uses of S.M.A.R.T. For that, we knew what was needed: diagrams. Not only diagrams, but instructional diagrams that show how where you look dictates how your S.M.A.R.T. move evolves, what the differences are between ascending and descending at speed, and how spatial awareness can affect your maneuverability. Then we needed a senior team member of Splash Damage to run through the more advanced S.M.A.R.T. techniques. This includes (but isn’t limited to) using wall-jumping for distance, for height, and mantle-jumping around a target, as well as combat tips. Parkour enthusiasts have never had it so good.

These agile antics aren’t for everyone though, particularly those that enjoy a slightly slower, and more ultra-violent method to winning a match or backing up their teammates. For those players, the guide offers an in-depth weapons chapter. Not only does this inform you of every in-game rifle, revolver, grenade launcher, heavy machine gun, and other weapons, but it also lets you know which body types can use them, and how the more vicious ones are unlocked. Each weapon is showcased (both Resistance and Security versions), including the pre-order ones, and all the attachments are listed along with their strengths and weaknesses, to allow for the maximum amount of fiddling, with the minimum amount of wasted time. But what you’ll really use this chapter for is the exclusive weapons stats table.

Want to know which weapon is intrinsically “best”, or more proficient than the rest? Want to figure out how each type of weapon compares to all the others? Desperate for the knowledge on the delay between reloads of every firearm to the nearest 0.1 of a second? Well, if you aren’t, the chart is still here for the more obsessive gun-caressers out there. The stats table lists the damage, rate of fire, mode, burst delay, clip size, ammo reserves, reload time, and equipment speed; so you can finally figure out whether the Maximus Heavy Machinegun really is better than the Ritchie Revolver. We even tell you whether higher or lower numbers are preferred for each statistic, to avoid embarrassment in the combat zone.

This has been but a glimpse into the construction of a guide created to fully complement the game in terms of both detail and entertainment. We hope you enjoy it.