What i got from the magazine…
In the article he mentions that XP can be used for char upgrades, new outfits, weapons, abilities and attachments. Attachments mentioned were muzzle breaks for reduced recoil, larger clips, scopes and sights and silencers. The curios part though was he mentions on completion of the map, he’s gifted a new outfit… so they can be gained as well as bought?
They talked a bit about … erm… ‘buffing’. Basically your class can ‘buff’ other classes, an engineer can increase your weapons damage, medic can increase your health, soldier can give more ammo etc. All this comes at a cost, of what they call ‘pips’. You can buff yourself, but it costs more… so this adds to the cooperation of the game where you buff me and i’ll buff you (oh dear). It says 2 pips to buff yourself, or 1 pip to buff a team mate. The odd one out obviously is the Operative, but what he lacks towards the team he gives towards the enemy as he can spot undercover enemy Operatives.
The bot AI was mentioned as well. They had them locked down in a section of the map, knowing this was going no where, the bots changed tactics and started trying to get at them from a different direction heading towards a new area of the map. When that wasn’t working they switched to nade launchers to go for mass damage to weaken them all. The criticism they gave was as an Operative, they managed to walk merilly past and hack the objective while being left to it.
Which brings me to hacking… it’s a distance thing. hacking is remote, so the closer you are the stronger the signal so the faster it goes. You can however hack from a safer distance, but that obviously goes slower. A tactic employed was hiding in an empty container. The downside is the hacking tool gives off an audible beep, so yiu can be heard hacking even if you can’t be seen.
Command posts have a dual benefit where you can heal/reload and change class from them, but capturing and owning one also means your team as a whole gets a small health boost as well… making them another point of attention you want to keep control of. it mentions that ‘every command post you control gives a health boost to your entire team’. I don’t know how to take that, whether it means controlling one or more and you get that single health boost… or the more you control, the more health boost you get.
Apparently death is not the end either (well incapacitated any way). This was only mildly hinted at, but there was mention of ‘death streak’ type upgrades… i believe there was a mention of a self revive upgrade or something similar somewhere… again it wasn’t talked about in great length.
Similar to ET and ETQW the objectives are a mixed bag, the 1st part was escort the cutter and the last was get the objective to the helicopter. The story was also a little clarified for container city. As far as the Security are aware, they’re trying to capture and defuse a dirty bomb. The Resistance are saying it’s a cure for Ark flu… which also could be true as the Resistance want to maintain a monopoly on the vaccine. Guess we’ll need to play it to find out 
Overall it was a very positive article, and just whetted my appetite even more!
Brink is all over the cover of the latest issue of PC Zone here in the UK. The Zone’s new acting editor Steve Hogarty recently had the chance to play Brink and has chronicled his experiences in a colossal 8-page preview filled with plenty of new screenshots and information. PC Zone subscribers should already be holding the issue in their hands, while the rest of us will be able to pick it up tomorrow. For more information and a larger version of the cover, head over to PC Zone’s website.
Some of the stuff they said SD are still toying with.