My impressions of Brink so far
By sleeprockss 4 Comments
Out of all of the games that were released last week Brink got the most attention, but not because of rave reviews instead its from the low reviews it has been getting. Brink wasn't a highly anticipated game in most circles but there was still a size-able contingent of people eagerly awaiting its release. I was leaning more towards the latter. Splash Damage had a good track record and I was hoping that they could bring a Team Fortress type of multi-player shooter to consoles while still supporting it after it's release (the opposite of how valve handled TF2 on consoles). They succeeded in bringing that type of experience to consoles but its too soon to say whether Splash Damage will support it more than Valve did with Team Fortress 2 on consoles.
So far I'm enjoying Brink more so than some reviewers but not by much more. Some reviewers didn't find the shooting to be fun, but the shooting felt
The game includes three different body types-- light, medium (default), and heavy. The Light body type can wall jump but has less health than the other body types which makes the wall jump useless in combat, while the Heavy Body type is slower and can use heavy weapons. None of that changes the game-play drastically considering the game only includes 5 different heavy weapons and they all feel the same with the exception of the Grenade Launcher, because its the only one in the game. The simple act of shooting still felt good compared to other shooters I've played recently (Homefront) I just wish they took some cues from Team Fortress and made every class have it's own unique weapons instead of sharing the arsenal across all classes.
It seems like every time I find something enjoyable in Brink something else comes up and changes that. For example I like the art style of the game a lot and the idea of customizing your character/weapon really excited me, but as soon as I started playing I noticed that your allies are coated in a blue aura and your enemies are coated in a red aura. That aura covers up the characters to the point where all enemies and allies look the same no matter how different they look in the customization screen. The game is also a first person shooter so you have no way to look at your custom character in the match. Problems like that really killed my excitement over time and if that wasn't enough, Brink also has problems that no online focused game should have.
Its been a week since Brink's release and the lag is still unbearable. I don't understand how you can release an online focused game without making sure the net code is good, there is no excuse for it. Splash Damage could have at least had a beta to test out their net code because Quake Wars even had a beta before it's release. They're an experienced developer with online shooters I don't see how this is even a problem for them, even the PC version is getting lag from what I've read. The lag got on my nerves so much that I just finished up the campaign with bots, which was in retrospect probably harder than fighting the lag. Even the design choices make me wonder what they were thinking while developing Brink.
The design choice that confused me the most was that the only way you could unlock weapons/attachments was to finish all 12 of the challenges in the challenge mode. After I heard that the first thing I did was the challenges and by the time I was done I had unlocked all of the weapons/attachments. Then I did whatever anyone else would do I found the best
Brink has some interesting ideas and features but I wish they were in a better game, because the issues it has far outweigh the features i enjoyed. The interesting features like the customization and the S.M.A.R.T system seem wasted here and I hope more games in the future use them in much better ways.