I'll be honest, i thought brink had some potential. It was taking some bold steps into a new style of a class based online shooter. The game was suppose to truly be about working as a team, and completing the objective. Heck, they even removed the k/d ratio. With so much customization, and the ability to play the "campaign" online, this game sounded fantastic for me, as i loved team fortress 2 and Shadowrun. What i came to find when i actually purchased the game was that it was nothing but a rushed disappointment.
As previously stated, Brink is an online class based FPS, with an emphasis on completing objectives and working as a team. There are four different classes (soldier, medic, engineer, and operative). Each class has different abilities, such as medics being able to revive, and engineers being able to place turrets. You can upgrade your abilities as you level up, and get different "perks". You can also customize your character, and unlock new clothing as you progress through the levels.
So it sounds kind of like an interesting game, right? Let's get to what is wrong with it. First, the gun play. None of the guns in Brink feel "good". Generally in a game, there's one gun that just clicks with you. It's the one that you just prefer using. All of the guns felt the same in Brink. None of them felt dramatically different; none of them clicked with me. The shooting mechanics felt clunky as well. Generally it seemed better to not even aim, just hip fire and walk in circle and try not to get shot. If you have two enemies on you, they will have more firepower and win. It is as simple as that, you can't do anything spectacular and pull of a double kill if you are by yourself. Maybe i just sucked, but this is how it felt.
I'll be honest, i returned this game as defective two days after playing it. I haven't played it since the day after launch. Why would i return it as defective? Because it was an online based shooter, and there was game breaking lag. I was able to play a few games without the lag, but generally if a game didn't have lag, about half way through it would start to pick up. This game breaking lag forced me to play most of the game offline, with bots, which is a whole different story.
The bots in brink are stupid. That is all that really needs to be said, however, you are probably asking why. When i played against them and they were on the enemy team, they just stood there half the time, allowing me to get easy kills. Also, it seemed the bots didn't fully understand how to complete the objectives. Near the end of every match, all the bots decided to kick in to full gear, and actually do stuff correctly, which was really weird.
The graphics are actually pretty good in brink, that is when they actually load. The texture in this game is bad. Like, this is 2011, and this should not be a problem. It's actually probably some of the worst texture pop in I've seen in a while. I did actually like the variety of colors on different maps.
If a game is online based, and team based (so you and a couple of buddies can easily get into a game), then it should have a great party and matchmaking system. Brink doesn't. In brink, you have to join a game, then hit your guide button, and send an invite to your friend. At that point, your friend may or may not get into your game, and may or may not be on your time. I could have been doing this wrong, but i didn't see any type of party system.
In my opinion, It is important for the objectives to be varied, and a large variety of them in a game like this. There should also be a large variety of maps. In Brink, the "campaign" missions are also the "online" games. When you join a game, it's simply a mission from the "campaign" (if you can even call it that). The story of the campaign really didn't make a lot of sense, and in all reality i didn't care about it at all. There's no team death match mode, just "online campaign" mode. Also, there's only 8 maps. The objectives include you either standing in a place destroying or opening or hacking something, escorting someone or something through a level, or capturing something and bringing it to a certain location. For a game that is based around online team play, there needs to be more maps and a larger variety of objectives, because it gets old, fast.
Brink had some good ideas, and there are things that i actually liked about it. The customization was great, and it was a great incentive to level up. I also liked the classes, and stuff you unlocked with them as you leveled up. One thing i didn't mention previously was the "SMART" system, simply because it didn't do anything at all for the game. The game has many problems, I'm sure the game breaking lag will be fixed, but that doesn't make up for no party system or matchmaking. It also doesn't make up for the small variety of maps and objectives. This game feels nothing more than rushed. If they spent more time working on it, i'm confident this would have been a fantastic game. In 2011, you can't launch a broken rushed game, and Splash Damage did, and they knew they did. At the end of the day, it's just sad that Brink was such a disappointment.
