Yeah, I did. I was impressed by its potential, but disappointed by its execution. I’m really trying to keep the whine to a minimum here, but some might sneak in. For the rest… It’s pretty much just a comparison between what I expected, what I hoped for, and what I got. Keep in mind that I’m a fairly competition-oriented PC player, there.
And competition seems to be headed the ETQW way: Great community interest early on, but because of the lack of support for it, it’ll die out. When there are major sponsored tournaments (such as ESL), we’ll see some quality teams taking part. These teams then find out that Brink has issues, and move on. By the time SD/promods fix the problems, half the community is gone. Key features that are missing are ways to pause/spectate/record demo’s, as well as means to enfore rules properly.
What’s currently bothering me most, though, is how the weapon balance makes every fight the same; run/jump/strafe while holding down the trigger and keeping your crosshair near your opponent. No sneaky long-range kills, no skillful multikills; mostly just luck of the draw. To demonstrate my point: All aimbots for Brink aim at the chest rather than the head.
Now, I’ve seen some people mention that it’s “good for teamplay” when aiming is less of a (or not) a requirement. I’d like to disagree. When it comes to teambased games, the most commonly played ones would be sports, such as soccer. There, while teamplay is incredibly important, it’s the individual skill that gives the game it’s flair; I find this applies to Brink as well… But there’s not much room to demonstrate individual skill.
The movement system has it’s pro’s and cons, I’m not quite sure whether or not I like it yet. While I love W:ET’s movement, I can understand that it might be quite intimidating to new players; the gap between them and experienced players shows very easily. ETQW had this to a lesser amount; missing a jump in your run wasn’t as momentum-killing as in ET. In Brink, though, while the movement has a flow to it, the movement seems far more ‘lumpy’ (for lack of a better word) than the previous two titles. Quite a shame, as I believe smooth movement makes a game far more pleasant to play.
There’s a lot of little things that bother me apart from this, too; things such as the level design being rather bland, and the amount of visual customisation (crosshairs, for one!) lacking. I also think it rather unhandy that I can’t visually tell apart the different classes until I’m actually aiming at them; not very handy when there’s multiple opponents coming towards you and you need to take out the planter/defuser/pandabear quickly. There’s more things like this, but I don’t want to go on more of a rant.
In conclusion, I think that SD(/hannes) might have spoiled me with Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, but as a result, there’s just not a lot of fun for me to be had with Brink, while there’s all the ingredients it needs; it feels like it’s missing a few more months of testing and polishing to me. I just hope that through patches/mods (sdkplzgimmenow) the game will be more like what I expected.
Sorry if I bored anyone there, I just needed that out of my system. >.>
