Brink

Brink played well in the lab on a top end $$$ overclocked AMD quad core system.  Most of the review took place on that system.  However since then I bought my own copy to carry home.  I have a entry level medium powered gamer rig.  This home rig runs many games on high settings in 1600 x 1200 very well, which is asking a lot.  Brink didn't run well at all on this system.  Even on lowest settings in 800x600.  There are a lack of in-game performance options (whoopz)  however there are 1500 options you that can be changed on the game engine thru console commands (what a drag)  Many of these are performance based choices.  I'm really lazy so I just used the Brink configurator @ www.rush-zone.com  
 
The problem is that a large chunk of the population doesn't see a clear line between media & reality.  My favorite part about Brink was all the media hype.  I knew it was all B/S sales talk right from the start.  You gota love them for getting you all hyped up, it's a good feeling.  I want to go back to all those demo videos an promos just to get hyped up again.  So you have a lot of folks that got the game an played it thinking that it was going to be the best thing ever since toasted bread.  What, what, what, it's not perfect, ok I give up, *trashcan*  Note to self, don't forget to flame Brink.  You have to understand that Brink took a number of huge risks, and that there were a lot of choices that had to be made to allow that to happen. 
 
I played single player offline for 120,000 XP in 5-6 seperate characters for over 2 months.  A large chunk of this was just playing the Be More Objective challenge mode which is a small map.  It spawns a never ending group of enemies so if you just ignore the stupid objectives you can focus on a hold the line epic blood bath.  The challenges are the only part of Brink without the story because it's threaded through the whole game.  I wanted to learn the mechanics before getting into the story or online play.  It's really a great feeling when you have started getting better at playing Brink, and you notice this quite often.  The normal FPS rules get shifted into a more free flowing combat style unique to the player which can be hard to grasp. 
 
Brink is very random to be based on team play.  They should have put that on the box an just ran with it.   Brink, it's random warfare baby!  Your bots (NPC's) don't care about you at all, they all run around like online players would an do whatever pops in their head that might help the team.  You can follow the bots an get their back so to speak but the only time they will help you will be in the form of Buffage or Revive.  A good example of this is that you run low of ammo, your character says that in-game, a bot runs toward you an gives you some ammo.  It makes it very exciting both online an offline.  I can't really tell the difference between another online player an the bots I play with offline.  Well as far as the battle plan anyway. 
 
The enemies rank up from 1 2 3 4 5 just like the player getting more an more dangerous looking.  The cool part is that they actually fight better to go with the looks.  You have difficulty settings easy, normal, and hard.  There is very little difference between them because the rank more determines the difficulty thru tactics an available weapons.  I play on hard difficulty just because I saw no change between them.  Brink is always hard, it kicks your teeth in, then spits in your bloody dead face.  The online players are evil an wicked an you see tactics you never thought off.  I saw Germans yesterday that Tanked up as very large characters, with thick armor, slowly walking up a escort mission pwning everybody with Mini guns.