Holidays are a great time for gaming news. Not because there's something industry-shaking going on (there's not), but because videogame companies like sending out Christmas cards. They also sometimes like donating money to save endangered tapirs in South America, but it wasn't until Splash Damage came along that these two innocuous activities could be combined.
What you see above all these words is Splash Damage's tapir-themed Christmas card promoting Brink, their upcoming, post-apocalyptic first person shooter, not to be confused with Brink! a late-90s Disney movie about skating. In addition to an admittedly nifty free-running mechanic, Brink's hook is that players will be able to change job classes (Soldier, scout, engineer, etc.) on the fly, gaining experience points and completing missions all the way.
I saw director Paul Wedgwood's presentation at PAX this summer and while the game is certainly interesting—like if Borderlands and Team Fortress 2 had a gritty, Bethesda Softworks-published lovegame—I'll admit that whatever calculus Splash Damage has done to turn Brink's concept into a workable game is beyond me.
Anyway, that was just a really long way of explaining that those tapirs in the Christmas card represent, presumably, Brink's different job classes.
And here's where it gets interesting: according to ScrewAttack, Splash Damage are donating money to tapirs.org for every e-mail they get with this card in it. If you care about tapirs, or conservation, or charity, or any of the reasons that us WASPs get all misty-eyed during this time of the year, get to right-clicking. ScrewAttack didn't mention where to take your tapir-related questions, so I'm going to hazard a guess: Splash Damage's community manager might be a good place to start. More pictures of the card can be found in the gallery.
Just for fun, though, what's cuter: a tapir, a wombat, a red panda, or a capybara?
Contest:
3:00 AM on 12.23.2009
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We've got a card on the way to Destructoid HQ too - postal service seems rather intermittent/on fire this time of year, but hopefully it'll get there before long. :)