In classic Bethesda fashion, Brink had a lot of promise, a lot of potential, and a lot of interesting ideas that wound up being marred by terrible and often-buggy execution. Brink really was unique, though. It had a gritty, rebellious style whose weird islandic touches helped separate it from the military-centric shooters of the time (intriguingly, the bad guys aren't even soldiers, they're cops being forced to fight like soldiers), The Ark is a cool-looking solarpunk-ish location with these stark, alabaster whites that dominate the spires and towers spread across the island in a way that makes the richer parts of the setting look almost clinical, the customization looked genuinely dope regardless of whether you were a bad boy or a boy-in-blue, the lore and worldbuilding seemed genuinely interesting, and the gameplay looked like it would be a fun take on Team Fortress 2's class-centric multiplayer. It had so much going for it.

And then it fucked it all up by feeling buggy & limp and looking ugly even by 2011 standards. The levels are conceptually pretty cool (big fan of the aquarium level), but running through them feels awful. The game's supposedly unique parkour system feels clunky and unsatisfying, the shooting is thin-feeling and saddled with some of the worst gun SFX in the business, the grenades are hilariously weak to the point where you might as well not even use them, and there's no point in swapping between classes unless the game forces you to because the Engineer is by far and away the best class in the game. Not only is the Engineer as good at shooting as everyone else, he can plant mines, disarm explosives, set up turrets, and basically carries the team harder than the medics do (and no one wants to be a medic because you get murdered so quickly). The only reason this game's even worth playing in 2022 is the campaign, and yet the campaign is really short on both sides and the difficulty scaling gets ridiculous the more you play it, with CPUs that just decide to fucking win almost at random, constantly forcing you to replay these long, long missions. The story isn't even all that interesting, the initially-solid setup and worldbuilding ruined by a lack of cutscenes, context, and interesting characters worth caring about.

Only reason I'm giving this a 2/5 instead of a big ol' 1 is because Brink actually tried to be something. It was more than just a TF2 clone - stylistically, it actually had something going for it, and you can see hints of that passion scattered throughout this janky, subpar shooter with a devastating lack of content. Uniqueness deserves to be treasured, so I'm willing to give Brink an honorary 'you sure tried, I guess' participation trophy.

what it’s just a ordinary liscense game....OH MY GOODNESS.

This was a pretty good platformer while also being very faithful to the original seasons of the tv show. The writing and humor of the original cartoon is like the first three seasons. It’s nice to see this game capture that similar level of charm and humor to those episodes. It’s a nice change of pace from most liscense games before and even after that failed to capture the feeling of the source material As a whole it’s clear this game was made by genuine fans of the show. The passion for the source material is one big reason why the game never fell in obscurity like other liscense kids games.

The gameplay itself is solid and pretty fun. it’s a standard collectathon platformer admitly but getting to explore locations from the show is very nice. Controls are very fluid and there are some fun platforming challenges throughout.
The mario 64 mission structure is also a nice addition and leaves the games progression up to the player for the most part.

From a surface BFBB is a bit of a basic game which is true. In some ways maybe even too basic compared to other platformers at the time. Yet it kinda adds to the game. BFBB feels like a laid back simple 3d platformer. Which makes sense because the game was made with kids in mind. Yet even with that said the game has a pretty high skill ceiling. Which is moslty thanks to the ridiculous speed running community for this game. This greatly opens up the game if your looking for a greater challenge within. Or you can be like me and play like a scrub if your looking for a chill experience. that’s not to say the game is completely easy as it does offer nice tricky sections near the end especially the dream level. I guess despite being a game for kids it doesn’t really treat the player as a kid which is nice. My favorite levels were kelp forrest and the dream world.

So overall I think this was a great game. Enjoyable for fans and a good game in its own right.


Also when I was younger looking at the box art I assumed it was a shooter. Nickelodeon make that spongebob fps I need to play some 2Fort styled krusty Krab vs Chum Bucket multiplayer action.

light 4/5