Has no legs
I had very high hopes for this game. I heard podcasters talking about it prior to release and the whole concept of a Team based Objective oriented FPS with parkour elements had my mind churning about a mashup for Mirrors Edge and Battlefield. I joined gamefly so I could get this game on release dayand play with the others out there.
Art Style - I don't know how best to explain it but the at style of this game is stunning. I love the style and look of the players and environments. Definitely one of the biggest strengths. I did notice after some longer play sessions that the clarity of images did seem to drop during heavy action segments and looked more like SD on my HD monitor.
Game Play - A very strong Meh... Running around and using the sprint/auto-parkour button is a lot of fun. It is great when you can pull off slides into enemies. Now for the bad... Gunplay is no very fun. The guns don't sound like normal guns. On top of that they just feel kinda crappy. Aiming did not feel snappy enough and it felt like it took forever to kill/knock-down opponents. Lastly doing anything objective-oriented felt like it took forever to complete.
Maps - Not enough of ‘em. 8 playable by either side (Security or Rebels). Also with the objectives being tied to the map and never changing, replayability is greatly reduced.
Multiplayer - Single player and multiplayer are the same missions with or without bots. There are some lag/latency issues that were looked into and "corrected" by only allowing 8 players in matches unless it is a custom Big Teams match under freeplay. I only played Campaign Co-Op in multiplayer and did not notice an improvement since there already is a max of 8 players in that mode. I did attempt Campaign Verses but was not able to get enough players to start a match (note - this was before the 8 player limit change).
With all that being said I enjoyed the time I had with Brink. I'm glad I did not purchase it for $60 (which I tend to not do that for any game nowadays) but i had fun for the week I had it. I was hoping this might steal some players away from the typical CoD and Halo FPSes but with only 8 maps and static objectives I think that most people with get bored quickly with Brink. Whether Bethesda and SplashDamage make a Brink 2 or name it something different I think that a more refined version of Brink with additional multiplayer only content could just be the diamond in the rough they are trying to create.
