So, I waited till the last minute to preorder Brink via steam. Was it worth it? Yes, is my mind blown… meh.
Sorry for the random paragraphs, things occur to me and I don’t feel like writing segues at 4:40 am.
Brink sets out to do what many FPS’s struggle to do, promote teamwork and eliminate the k/d whores who inhabit this planet. While it hasn’t totally converted the gaming population yet (4.5 hours after launch), it is most certainly on its way.
Of Course the main selling point was SMART, which is both fun and frustrating in one. Running around the field of battle and pulling off that perfect parkour move in a firefight to get the drop on an opponent or heal a teammate is very satisfying. The only main thing that is frustrating to me is when you attempt to move too fast to turn a corner and slip off the edge of the terrain and have to start your move all over again.Other than that, SMART works just as advertised.
Alot of commenters on sites like kotaku, etc. have noted that it takes a hell of a lot of bullets to down a man. This is true. CoD Fans will not make the move easily if you aren’t adaptable to shooting atleast 5 times as many rounds into a target for a significant impact or death. This said, it makes the whole aspect of teamwork ever more important. Rushing into a room with 2 or 3 buddies and cleaning house is the way the game is meant to be played and it works rather well. Don’t forget that the health and weapon buffs distributed by the Medic and Engineer are vital to any team.
Adapting to the gameplay:
As far as getting used to how to play this game, I was a little bit leery. Having to manage jumps and climbing and teamwork without being able to go rogue is a little bit odd for me, but I hit the ground running. The learning curve to this game is not very steep, playing through 1 of each of the challenge missions before hitting multiplayer prepared me for the real thing in no time. I finished my first full round as the Best Medic and the Best Overall Player in the game, so learning to play effectively is not an issue from my perspective.
Bots bots bots:
Oh god, what can I say that hasn’t already been said before? The Bots are incredibly idiotic, when they’re on your team. On the other side they just happen to be killing machines incapable of failure. This is a major drawback to players who can only play local coop (xbox, ps3) or who want to play campaign in any way shape or form. Knowing that the bots were dumb from early reviews I read, I bumped the difficulty to hard hoping to challenge myself a little bit only to find that defensively bots cannot be stopped unless you pull some very tactical maneuvers.
Graphics are fine, nothing cutting edge. The Menus are really crisp and good looking though, I am a huge fan of them for no particular reason.
Sound is nothing to get excited about, not Bad Company or anything but I like the fact that the sound of your weapon changes as you get lower on ammunition, which Is a great way to remind me to swap out guns.
Turrets are near useless
Mines are a little late sometimes
Pop in textures, but those don’t bother me too much
Story is thin but it works to keep me invested in the cutscenes a bit.
Escorting is painfully slow but also exciting (all the action concentrated on 1 point on the map)
Good system for choosing objectives (the wheel)
Promotion of teamwork is beyond top notch, I receive way more points for healing a teammate than trying to mow down the enemy forces
Grenades kinda suck, about a 10 second fuse with an odd arc (get used to their throw arc early, saves you alot of hassle
Character customization and gun customization is all kinds of fun.
Servers didn’t quite work for me around time of launch, haven’t tried since other than the match I got into
AMD gfx cards are beyond hated for some reason by this game, odd girdding of textures hurts the games value by a bit
You level up rather fast. Hope you like making new characters, although making new ones is almost useless once you have 2 made, you can simply reset the skill tree for a new build
Why are there sniper rifles? I get semi-auto rifles, but not Bolt Action.
Individual objectives are separated by a brief break which gives you time to think of what class you need to capture with, which I like.
Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 7/10
Gameplay 9/10 (when you play it right)
Overall: 8/10 (good)
I hope this helps for those of you doubters, if you need anything else answered I’d be happy to help. Drop a line here
