Intelligent level designs and a class structure that encourages teamwork are all benchmarks of FPS greatness, but...
I really like this game. Set aside my personal affinity for dystopian settings... Brink starts with a lot of the concepts typical of FPS deathmatch games and starts building towards progress where a lot of the market's leaders simply rehash the same tired stereotypes. I'm especially thrilled to see level artwork that communicates context in a practical fashion. Crates, walls, barricades, all there for you to exploit for cover and ambush positions. Much more practical than bushes, trees and dubious rockfaces.
Introduce a class system that's founded in teamwork - some distribute buffs, another distributes ammo, and a short-lived reward system guides new players towards those objectives... at least for the first few days before a relatively low level cap is achieved. I'm especially thankful for a lack of "cloaking" mechanism. Brink's covert class instead can disguise himself as a random member of the opposing team, a function that comes with an appropriate measure of gameplay balance.
Though Brink brings us the FPS deathmatch a much-needed dose of progress, it does falter on some of the genre's major flaws. Firstly, PC multiplayer is relegated to third-party servers, and "third-party servers" is synoymous with cheating. A player only needs a few moments of Spectator mode to recognize the jerky aiming symptomatic of a botter tabbing his way through potential targets, or the impractical shuffling from a botter who clumsily attempts to drag his cross-hair over an opponent's hit-box.
Also typical of today's game market is a lack of content. Most players will hit the level cap within ten hours of gameplay, after which the in-game rewards for victory dry up. There are a sum eight maps, and deathmatch play on those eight maps are all that Brink offers. No tutorial zones, no practice yards, no custom level designer... Nowhere to grow, and the game's enjoyment quickly plateaus.