I’ve had a lot of fun the past three and one half hours. Brink definitely has it’s ups and downs, but the pros personally far outweigh the cons for my playstyle.
This isn’t really a review as much of a list of pros and cons. Sorry for the misleading of the title.
This game is largely reminiscent of the first few days of Wolf: ET. It’s a little more hectic, and there are a few bugs, but nothing that can’t be fixed in quick hotfixes. I’ve made a fairly verbose list of my personal pros and cons to the game, feel free to read or skip on by, up to you.
Pros:
The game is what I expected. It’s fast pace if you play correctly. Having an engy buff your guns makes deaths just as quick as CoD if that’s your playstyle. If your engies aren’t buffing weapons… yeah… killing people takes a little while.
The leveling system is great. It is a nice refreshment to oh I know at level 15 I’m going to get the M4, and after 20 headshots I’ll get Golden Goose Egg camo. The perks are all nice too. Nothing super overpowered, all pretty well balanced.
For me the game runs like a dream. I never go below 60 FPS (unless I’m recording with FRAPS, but that’s a personal problem.) I get very few lag hiccups (try joining a server below 100 MS before you complain about MS issues?) No stuttering, and my computer is far from beastly.
The gun play is exactly what I wanted. I’m not the greatest of shots yet, but I have noticed that (oh by the way, no recoil huh? derp) shooting from the hip is a lot better for me, but the first FPSs I played were Tribes, RTCW, ET, etc. There was no ADS then. (Minus snipers)
The game can get very hectic, but can also be slow. It’s never gone to a snails pace and it’s kept an extremely average tempo overall. When it’s fast and in your face (playing a light, infiltrating enemy lines) it’s great. Awesome action. When it’s slow and you’re setting up defense, that’s another part of gaming I love, personal opinion matters here definitely… some people don’t like that part of gameplay.
The graphics are great. No, they’re not cutting edge. They’re not Skyrim, or Deus Ex: Machina, but they’re good. The stylization is fun, the exaggeration of points is goofy, and the scenery is something to take in. The cut scenes are pretty nice too, though I haven’t been jaw dropped.
The sounds work out great. It has that feel of frantic comms chatter with nice background non generated noise, as well as decent ambient noise. No… it’s doesn’t touch the golden standard BC2 has set, but it’s by no means shabby. It’s got a good soundtrack, and very well done sound over all.
The levels, while slightly linear, corridor driven, are fun. They look good, they’ve got a few different paths to each objective, and they play well. Granted some of the defense maps can be EXTREMELY defense oriented. If you’ve ever played TF2 or Wolf: ET, you should be used to this style of map making. When the SDK is released I’m sure we’ll see some AMAZING community maps.
The skill level is there. While hip firing seems entirely too accurate at time, cone of fire is definitely in place. Truth be told, the only time hip fire seems WHOA accurate is when I’m playing light and up in their face pewing the poo out of people. Recoil definitely sets in while using the more damaging ARs if you’re holding down the trigger while ADS. The cone of fire is also done well. Random > Patterned CoF.
The SMART system is extremely fun! It’s just what I expected out of it. Sometimes in the heat of battle it can not go the way you want, but can you honestly say (what if- you were a parkour expert) you’d be able to scale a wall, hop off, grab a fence, vault over, and not make a mistake in the heat of being shot at, fragged, and chased? Probably not. When you’ve got time to set up your run it’s smooth and looks nice too.
The objectives are your general run of the mill objectives, take this from point a to point b, escort this from point a to point b, etc. However there’s a nice mix of objectives in each map. Mixing escort, destruction, courier, and the like. It feels like a nice progression of missions.
Now for some of the cons.
Cons:
The game can be a bit frustrating, especially playing with bots solo. I only played two missions with hard bots, and believe it or not… they were pretty hard on defense. It seemed like my teambots were on Easy while the opposing force was on Hard. Some of the objectives are a bit… difficult when playing MP as well. As I mentioned earlier some of the maps just lean too heavily to defense winning.
I don’t like the fact that you can’t chose your body type right away. I know it’s a small thing, but I would of liked to had light right away.
The heavy is useless, that extra pip of health is at MAX 2 bullets, one with a buffed weapon.
Turrets don’t seem to do anything… ever. I’ve got my heavy turret and it sometimes just watches people walk on by.
Mines don’t always detonate in time to kill. This is a huge change from ET where you matter where you went, it messed you up.
There have been a few times when I’ve been shot through walls. I don’t know if there is bullet penetration, but I was under the assumption that there was not. Bug? No probably not. Hack? More than likely not. Lag? Probably.
A lot of people are having lag issues, and it can be seen in games sometimes. I don’t know if this is poor netcode or these kids are on Wal-mart connections.
The team play isn’t there in pugs yet. GRANTED, the game has been out for 4 hours and not everyone knows the roles, maps, and maybe just want to mess around. So not really a con, just an annoyance that I’m sure will soon fade.
VoIP doesn’t seem to work at all. Regardless of being set to all-talk, team wide, or fire team. Just doesn’t seem to go through. (Tested with buddies whom do have mics.)
I realize the cons are not nearly as verbose as the pros, but I’m having fun with the game, what can you expect? This isn’t a grandiose list of all the pros and cons that are in the game. Just a list based on my short 3 hours of played time so far. I’m sure much has been left out on a player to player basis, but this is purely based on my experiences.
I’m enjoying the game. It hit fairly dead near center on my expectations. When compared to games I was extremely hyped for this year like Homefront and Shogun 2. This has been my best buy this year.
I give it an 8/10.
Also, I’ve recorded some Light covops and engy gameplay on Container City that I am currently rendering (to 1080p yay no more 360 footage) that I will upload later for people to see.
Feel free to comment or question, though I will not fight with anyone in this thread. Please keep the conversations civil and clean.
I just copy pasted this from the Steam forums, so if you post there as well - I apologize for you seeing this twice, nothing new.
Any comment from a Dev would be splendid.