Brink should be renamed "Brick" instead, because this game can't stand without some good 'ol mortar.
Firstly, I am 100% glad I rented this game from Redbox. There is no way in the world I wouldn't be crying to myself if I just bought this game. This is not an attempt to knock the producers, and honestly I think it's a decent concept. There is just a LOT of work that needs to be done.
This game feels on the level of something like Lost Planet 2. Sure it works, guns shoot and stuff, but you never really feel like you're actually DOING something. It's got some weird game design and mechanic choices that totally disconnect you.
For one, there are escort missions. You escort a CPU "hostage" who is basically a really slow walking guy who you have to constantly revive when he gets shot up by the enemy. This is SO annoying. Yes - this gameplay mechanic is back. Follow a really slow moving guy and hope you don't get fragged. If you do, you're down, and most likely your whole CPU team is down too. Then there are something like 10 enemies around your hostage who is down waiting to be revived (only a medic class can revive anyone, even CPU hostages) and your teammate will run into the room and die. It took me 1 hour just to finish the first two missions on the campaign on normal on either side. To be honest, one side requires you just protect a door and my whole team ended up just camping it and never really getting tested until there were around 30 seconds to go. Easy win.
That's the point though - this game is so heavily slanted towards the defenders. Which, honestly, is usually how real life engagements go. The problem is, this isn't real life. The shotgun is a BEAST. It's actually cheap. If you get hit with it, you're down, you have no idea where it is usually, and it can be extremely irritating to be the only guy working on your team and being constantly taken down with shotguns.
The audio is weird. Its noisy, but it doesnt feel like any sort of a battle. In fact it's kinda hard to tell what is going on. Your CPU teammates are absolute morons half of the time and brilliant the other. The enemy is just as stupid, routinely standing right by you shooting at someone else.
The Melee is totally broken in this game. No other way to put it. So is the parkour. It's so confusing and moves so fast you usually go past things. This is like a fast paced Assassins Creed. You hold a button and it does things for you. Kind of pointless, because that's also the sprint button. So you can just sprint and jump anywhere, slide under things, and oh, shoot people.
I'm sorry if I sound so harsh but this is how I see this game. It's got a weird mix, and it seemed like it could be good - but it's just a flop. It needs a lot of patching just to make it playable. You can't even play decent online matches due to lag and they've defaulted it to 4 on 4. That's pretty lame considering it's a multi-class game with various objectives.
This game just feels like your dorky neighbor trying to land a supermodel. You want to pull for it to succeed because you like the idealism of it all, and you realize that helping developers make alternatives means we get a good variety, but at the same time, it's not that fun to know the market is being flooded with incomplete and poorly thought out games.
Unfortunately, this seems to be just that.
P.S. I was going to give it a 5, but just to be nice and show I am not biased, I added another .5