The 6.0 displayed in the corner of the screen is a miscarrige of justice.
Here I am reviewing Brink just for the sake of setting the record straight.
First of all,
The Good:
Fast paced gameplay, a lot of fun offline, great objective/class based play, great customization system, all battles feel large scale, only rated Teen.
The Bad:
Even with DLC costumes we could definately use more, some graphical oddities, no splitscreen, AI buddies are borderline mental disorder.
The gameplay is fast and fluid. The SMART system is really an interesting twist for a first person shooter. Diving, running and climbing suddenly is as important as shooting or fragging the enemies. If you aren't moving, someone is behind you with an SMG ready to strike. Games like Halo are already fast paced, Brink is like Halo on LSD. Reflexes and skill are all that will keep you alive.
Although I finally have cracked and bought Xbox live, Brink is still a lot of fun offline. And considering I am still on a limited bandwith any offline time is apreciated. Brink maintains it's paced and large scale feeling (Actually caused by small maps, which never feel large enough to get lost in) even offline. However the AI system feels mentally handicapped as they can sometimes ignore important objectives and don't prioritize as well as human teammates. In my 16 hours (So far) I also noticed that when you are in a machine gun nest they can sometimes walk right by you, without firing a single shot or acknowleding your exsistence.
The objective and class based gameplay is amazing. I can honestly say it's Team Fortress 2 calibur in this regard. A strong emphasis on teamwork sets Brink apart from the hordes of FPSes out there.
The customization system in Brink feels like a combination of Sim's and Halo Reach's customization sytems. You have lots of options and colour choices, BUT not nearly as many as I would have liked.
Another major benifit of Brink is that unlike a lot of good FPS games on the market right now, Brink was only given the ESRB rating of Teen. This detracts nothing from the game, and gives it a larger demographic. A major bonus.
Even with the DLC costumes I feel that we don't have as many bells and whistles for our characters as I would like. Although it doesn't reallly detract from the game, it can seem like a lot of characters look identical to yours, which is not something you want from a game that puts emphasis on customization and individuality.
The rendering distance in Brink is actually pretty poor. Anything more than twenty metres from your chararter looks like it's engulfed in fog. This was not intentional, and feels like an oddity.
The lack of splitscreen in Brink is disappointing. From the day we heard of Brink we had our fingers crossed that it would allow single console multiplayer. It does not, and this ends up feeling like Brink misses out on a huge opprotunity and co-op market. Hopefully this is changed with patches, DLC or in the sequel.
Also related to the lack of splitscreen, your AI help is borderline mental retardation. They can ignore important objectives, enemies, have delayed reflexing or firing speeds, you name it. Although these don't ruin Brink it can be discouraging to try an objective again and again with AI teammates only to find they aren't helping at all. I would like more squad tactics that allow you to comand teamates ghost recon style.
Although Brink has it's quirks, I can honestly say I enjoyed it more than Call of Duty Black Ops (Although I am guilty of never really liking Tyreach as much as Infinity Ward.) This game is $30-$40 dollars at pretty much any store these days, and worth every penny of it.
- Justin