I usually have a sixth sense with what games I will and will not enjoy from gameplay videos and whatnot whether or not they got bad reviews. So, despite what the lovely ladies and gents (mostly gents) at the SeC and everywhere else has said, I decided to go with my gut and buy Brink. Here's what I have to say about it:
These are my observations of my first day of Brink over the span of about... 11 hours. I haven't jumped into the online yet, but I've done all the challenges, the security campaign, and most of the resistance campaign on hard difficulty.
Let's go over a few things:
The AI - Your team's AI doesn't really do too much to be honest. They do just enough to be kinda useful, but not so much that you can sit in the back and let your team do the work. If you're playing alone, the objectives are almost completely up to you to handle, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The enemy AI however... Good. Lord. Not sure how bad they are in the other difficulties, but on hard, the enemy team will make you want to kick a small child. There are a lot of choke points, so you will often be stuck in a corridor, small room, or open path where the team will set up and cover every angle of wherever you are going and if you've ever tried the CoD Black Ops training mode, their aim is pretty similar to that and they also almost always kill you after you've been incapacitated so that you can't be revived. Side observation - engineers on your team and the enemy team are really good at placing turrets / land mines at good spots.
Textures popping in and out - For the first few minutes of a game, if you turn quickly, you'll catch a little glimpse of blotchy graphics. I found that it's only really noticeable in small maps and even then, only when you're actually looking for it. Despite the texture pops, I'm really enjoying the graphics and art style, but some people might find it off-putting. If you've seen videos or pictures of Brink, you know how it is.
Lag - Again, I haven't played online just yet, but I have been seeing slight slowdown when I'm spectating. I can imagine it could get bad when you're playing with people, but that will be fixed soon hopefully
SMART system - Definitely a gimmick more than anything, but it works how I expected it to. Getting to high ledges is simple and fun, but don't expect to be doing backflips and moonwalking wall runs.
Character customization - You choose from a number of faces, a skin tone, and a voice actor for your new character. Not as crazy as I thought it would be, but I kinda like having a relatively simple choice instead of spending 2 hours figuring out exactly how wide my jaw is. The outfits you can create are somewhat limited, but you do have a pretty good choice on color. Personally, I'm very happy how my character's security and resistance outfit looks, but I can see someone else settling on items for lack of liking anything better.
Guns - Not much here. In 2 hours, I've unlocked every gun and mod in the game. I used the default weapons for all the challenges and then once I hit the campaign, I looked for a gun with the stats I liked the most and pimped it out with what little mods were available. You can only put 4 attachments at the most; Front mod, underbarrel mod, sights, and magazine mods with only about 5 parts each. Besides the magazine, almost everything is aesthetic. A little disappointing. One good thing to say about the guns though is the sounds. Each gun has a nice bang to it and every grenade has a nice thump. Only game with better gun sounds is of course the battlefield series.
Story - The campaign is comprised of about 8 (maybe 6) security and resistance missions and 4 what-if missions. Pretty short, but you will have to redo a few because the missions are long and the enemy team can be formidable. The story is explained before you start, but nothing really happens in the campaign worth noting, it might as well be random missions.
At the moment, I'm short on time, so I have to cut this for now. In short; Brink has it's issues, but it's a damn good game in my opinion and all I did was play the campaign. (the multiplayer is the exact same thing, just with actual people) I can only imagine how much of a blasty blast the MP will be. Definitely worth checking out. Don't shrug it off without trying it for yourself.
Yes, this review is very unorganized
Feel free to ask questions if they haven't been answered by the hundreds of other SeC reviews
These are my observations of my first day of Brink over the span of about... 11 hours. I haven't jumped into the online yet, but I've done all the challenges, the security campaign, and most of the resistance campaign on hard difficulty.
Let's go over a few things:
The AI - Your team's AI doesn't really do too much to be honest. They do just enough to be kinda useful, but not so much that you can sit in the back and let your team do the work. If you're playing alone, the objectives are almost completely up to you to handle, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The enemy AI however... Good. Lord. Not sure how bad they are in the other difficulties, but on hard, the enemy team will make you want to kick a small child. There are a lot of choke points, so you will often be stuck in a corridor, small room, or open path where the team will set up and cover every angle of wherever you are going and if you've ever tried the CoD Black Ops training mode, their aim is pretty similar to that and they also almost always kill you after you've been incapacitated so that you can't be revived. Side observation - engineers on your team and the enemy team are really good at placing turrets / land mines at good spots.
Textures popping in and out - For the first few minutes of a game, if you turn quickly, you'll catch a little glimpse of blotchy graphics. I found that it's only really noticeable in small maps and even then, only when you're actually looking for it. Despite the texture pops, I'm really enjoying the graphics and art style, but some people might find it off-putting. If you've seen videos or pictures of Brink, you know how it is.
Lag - Again, I haven't played online just yet, but I have been seeing slight slowdown when I'm spectating. I can imagine it could get bad when you're playing with people, but that will be fixed soon hopefully
SMART system - Definitely a gimmick more than anything, but it works how I expected it to. Getting to high ledges is simple and fun, but don't expect to be doing backflips and moonwalking wall runs.
Character customization - You choose from a number of faces, a skin tone, and a voice actor for your new character. Not as crazy as I thought it would be, but I kinda like having a relatively simple choice instead of spending 2 hours figuring out exactly how wide my jaw is. The outfits you can create are somewhat limited, but you do have a pretty good choice on color. Personally, I'm very happy how my character's security and resistance outfit looks, but I can see someone else settling on items for lack of liking anything better.
Guns - Not much here. In 2 hours, I've unlocked every gun and mod in the game. I used the default weapons for all the challenges and then once I hit the campaign, I looked for a gun with the stats I liked the most and pimped it out with what little mods were available. You can only put 4 attachments at the most; Front mod, underbarrel mod, sights, and magazine mods with only about 5 parts each. Besides the magazine, almost everything is aesthetic. A little disappointing. One good thing to say about the guns though is the sounds. Each gun has a nice bang to it and every grenade has a nice thump. Only game with better gun sounds is of course the battlefield series.
Story - The campaign is comprised of about 8 (maybe 6) security and resistance missions and 4 what-if missions. Pretty short, but you will have to redo a few because the missions are long and the enemy team can be formidable. The story is explained before you start, but nothing really happens in the campaign worth noting, it might as well be random missions.
At the moment, I'm short on time, so I have to cut this for now. In short; Brink has it's issues, but it's a damn good game in my opinion and all I did was play the campaign. (the multiplayer is the exact same thing, just with actual people) I can only imagine how much of a blasty blast the MP will be. Definitely worth checking out. Don't shrug it off without trying it for yourself.
Yes, this review is very unorganized
Feel free to ask questions if they haven't been answered by the hundreds of other SeC reviews
