not at all as advertised.
From the very begining of Brink i felt completely decieved by every article and trailer I had thus far seen, everything we had been shown prior to release suggested that this game would include a full story driven single player campaign, what we actually got was a broken knock off of team fortress 2 with a few cutscenes thrown in for good measure. For the developers of brink only included 8 maps, normally 8 maps would be plenty for a multiplayer experience and it would be if it was not for the fact that the single player side of the game is nothing more then the multiplayer maps inhabited with bots that seem to display easily the worst A.I. i have ever seen. The A.I. doesn't seem to be able to handle the very simple objectives of the game and would rather run off and duke it out with other bots then plant a charge, hack a terminal, repair a device, or any of the generic unimaginative tasks that are thrust upon you.
The game is by all accounts a pretty standard shooter with a few gimmicks added, the SMART system is a assasins creed style parkour mechanic that allows the player to easily traverse the game world simply hold left bumper and soar through the enviroment, and for the most part it works fairly well bounding over crates is seemless, but thats all its good for really the climbing is far too glitchy to be usefull in actual combat. Not that you will ever really need climbing in combat as the level designs are quite linear with only a handful of diffrent ways to move through each map i belive in the whole time of playing I used the climbing twice and both times i was shot dead before even completing the climb.
To Brinks credit the art design of the game is quite good and there really isnt anything quite like it, the ark areas have a very minimalistic utopian feel to them, while the revelutions docks give a real feeling of over crowded slums. The characters all have a distinct angular design to them that works well, the character customisation is fairly robust the rebels clothes have been cobbled together from what ever scraps of raw materials have been left behind while the security forces are sporting the usual police and riot garbs with a few interesting twists. The weapons are also fairly customisable in the usual manner scopes, foregrips, silencer, the usual array of options weve come to expect from military style shooterrs, and most of the weapons appear quite menacing from there looks, unfortunatly they do about as much damage as a paintball gun and feel about as powerful emptying entire clips in to enemis from anything but close up seems to have near no effect, first up i armed myself with a shotgun and the huge 'ritchie' revolver a blast from a shotgun from fairly close range is usually enough to do the trick, but not in brink after blasting someone from close range i turned to continue planting a charge only to be shot from the downed rebel on the ground. The next time this happened i made double sure my foes demise was certain after gut shoting a rebel it took an additional 2 shots close range while he was lying onthe ground. Another example of the rather weak arsenal is the grenades they spark and fizzle withe the same potential for mayhem as a party popper the tiny puff of black smoke that billows from the tennis ball sized explosion is a testement to the lack of weapons power in Brink.
In a few updates and a major price drop i can see this game being fairly good, unfortunatly i simply cant recommend this as a purchase to anyone.
