I’m mistaken then. It’s just that I never saw the level of communication from SD during Brink’s development that I expected. I’m a casual player, not really a SD fan, so I was drawn to the game because of the trailers, rare gameplay footage and details. Not knowing much was enough to get me excited for it, but in retrospect for Brink in particular all fronts were pretty silent on how the game actually played and how parts of it functioned. Hands-on gameplay from any source was very, very rare now that I think about it.
To be perfectly honest I think Brink as a game was relatively satisfying as an experience. Cut out the frustrations of the progression system, single-player, UI problems, yadda yadda, and the game itself is pretty fun to play balance problems notwithstanding. It’s exciting the first time, but like someone mentioned it doesn’t have sticking power. It also doesn’t help that the game had hardware compatibility problems on release, which is frustrating enough for players like me.
I thought the same thing about UT3, although I was much less disappointed with that one. I had criticisms of the game but most of my disappointments were with how the game functioned and not necessarily with how it played (if that makes sense). Strip away all the stupid crap in the way and the game’s fine. Disappointing, but playable.
Although playing Brink for longer periods of time made me realize how flawed and repetitive the game really is, which is sad because playing it gives the impression that there’s a good game buried in there somewhere. It’s the most frustrating thing in the world to want to like something you were so excited for, but you just can’t.