"What the hell is it?" That's been the question around team-based shooter Brink for a while now. It's multiplayer but it's single-player. It's like its predecessors Quake Wars and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory but it's totally new. It's a way into online shooting for newcomers but it's hardcore. It's... nope, no idea. Until now.

Now we know, and we know well enough to be enormously excited about where UK studio Splash Damage are going now their young lips have been prised away from the id Software teat. "What we're trying to do with Brink really is create something that newbies can get into," says Splash Damage's mile-a-minute bossman Paul Wedgewood, "and that starts with co-op. We really believe that if we can get more people in through the co-operative mode they'll want to keep playing online."The idea, essentially, is that going from single-player to multiplayer is no longer a leap - instead, it's a gentle staircase with a sturdy handrail. "The next thing you solve is the problem of people being outflanked if they've only ever played corridor shooters. What we do is slowly introduce ideas in the map that prepare you for multiplayer".Documenting the near-future conflict between the anarchic, lo-fi Resistance and the slick peace-through-tyranny Security in a failing socio-environmental utopia known as the Ark, this is no series of random deathmatch arenas. You'll play through a story - two, in fact, as both factions are playable - interspersed with high-quality cut-scenes which reveal the Ark's secret past and desperate future. There are personal moments too. We're shown a sad'n'angry Resistance member revealing that his brother has joined up with Security, and worrying what would happen should he encounter him in battle.And battle there will indeed be - you'll spending your time in Brink shooting a lot of dudes in large, objective-packed levels. Sounds an awful lot like a single-player game, doesn't it? Yet it's also a collection of tightly-designed maps in which you pick a class, join a team and vie with the opposing faction for points and kills. Sounds an awful lot like a multiplayer game, doesn't it?It's both. Brink's aim is to tear down the church and state separation of single and multiplayer, so you're using the same disciplines, chasing the same goals and enjoying the same rewards however you play. This is, of course, the theory: other games are sniffing around the same idea, with Left 4 Dead arguably at the head of this young pack. With Brink though, there's a real sense of no compromise. This is not two separate modes which happen to be linked by persistent unlocks and experience points: it's one sprawling action game which you choose to play in your preferred fashion.