Brink
Posted by DaveEllis
Since reviewers are corrupt (as proven by GT5 and Call of Duty reviews), and Brinks reviews are ranging from 10% to 90% in scores, I've decided to do my own review.
As expected this game unfortunately runs like a bag of crap. ATI/AMD cards are especially poor in performance. ATI released a hotfix, and Splash Damage have done a couple of patches which helped the situation drastically. It isn't great yet, but it's much better than it was on release date. If you have an out dated machine, I'd recommend looking into what you need to run this before buying it however.
Customisation is fine. It isn't as indepth as what it made out to be, and it's no where near the level of APBs, but it's good enough for this type of game I suppose. You get to choose the different parts of your outfit, and the colours they are. They could have done with some more items, but it isn't a deal breaker. Customising the weapons is excellent. Each weapon feels different, and the different addons you apply change how it feels quite a lot. The positive things an upgrade brings to a weapon is usually balanced out by the negative, so there are no killer upgrades for the weapons.
The story line they have made up is kinda cool, but in the context of the game it is meaningless and irrelevant. It makes no difference how you play the game, and if it wasn't there then you wouldn't notice. This is very much TF2 style death matches, with more objectives. Why you are achieving these objectives doesn't matter - you just have to do them. They attempt to make the story more of an issue by having intro and outro videos, but it doesn't really work. So if you're looking for a meaningful story, then this game is not for you.
The objectives you have during a mission start off a bit overwhelming. When you're learning the game you don't really know what you're objectives are. The Objective Wheel you can bring up helps this a lot, but it still feels like a lot to take in whilst you're learning weapons, abilities, SMART (we'll come to that later), and maps. However once you get used to it, it's much easier to work out what's going on. The objectives are the sort of stuff you'd expect. Defend this, attack this, and escort him. There are primary objectives, which everybody should be working towards as it decides who wins and loses, and there are secondary objectives, which aid your team in various ways.
Both offline and online missions are the same. Just swap out bots for real people, and you're off playing it again. The difference is that offline you can chose to play the missions in Campaign mode (does them in order, rather than just as a random stand alone game), and online is traditional style matches where the server either goes through a playlist of maps, or the players can vote for maps. If any review you read says the bots are retarded and just stand around, then disregard the rest of the review, because the reviewer wasn't doing his job. The bots scale, and the further up you go in ranking, the harder the bots get. They do become quite a challenge eventually.
The SMART system (Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain) is something the developers made a big deal out of, and it's quite awesome. It allows easy vaulting, climbing, wall hoping, sliding and jumping. It is incredibly easy to use, you just hold sprint (doubles as the SMART button), point the cursor at what you want to do, and it does it. If you want to vault a fence, look slightly above the fence and it vaults. If you want to slide under an object, just look at the gap you want, and it'll slide. It removes the normal confines of FPS shooters which anger players, such as not being able to jump onto a ledge because although it only waist high, it is a couple of cm too high to jump to. The downside to SMART is it isn't complimented by the current maps as well as it should be. Some things which should be climbable are not climbable, and the wall hopping is almost non existent due to lack of places to use it. Some maps are better than others, with a Shipping Container level being excellent, but an airport lounge map being less so. If the maps took advantage of SMART more, it'd be a great system. It is however still excellent in it's current form.
The game is pretty buggy, with lots of reports of random bugs like missing textures, sound issues, server issues, and one that is plaguing me, disconnection issues. But Spalsh Damage have now released 3 patches rather quickly that took care of the major bugs, and performance issues. So whilst it's buggy, it's not like Activision games where it's stuck like that - they are tackling the issues, and quickly. They have also promised free DLC including maps and weapons in June, which is awesome.
Score for me? 7 out of 10. Great gameplay, and as a multiplayer based shooter it's great fun. Just don't expect any sort of decent offline story. The bots, although good, are not as fun to play with as humans. When the games bugs and performance issues are fixed, I'd move this to 8, perhaps 9 out of 10.
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theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com
As expected this game unfortunately runs like a bag of crap. ATI/AMD cards are especially poor in performance. ATI released a hotfix, and Splash Damage have done a couple of patches which helped the situation drastically. It isn't great yet, but it's much better than it was on release date. If you have an out dated machine, I'd recommend looking into what you need to run this before buying it however.
Customisation is fine. It isn't as indepth as what it made out to be, and it's no where near the level of APBs, but it's good enough for this type of game I suppose. You get to choose the different parts of your outfit, and the colours they are. They could have done with some more items, but it isn't a deal breaker. Customising the weapons is excellent. Each weapon feels different, and the different addons you apply change how it feels quite a lot. The positive things an upgrade brings to a weapon is usually balanced out by the negative, so there are no killer upgrades for the weapons.
The story line they have made up is kinda cool, but in the context of the game it is meaningless and irrelevant. It makes no difference how you play the game, and if it wasn't there then you wouldn't notice. This is very much TF2 style death matches, with more objectives. Why you are achieving these objectives doesn't matter - you just have to do them. They attempt to make the story more of an issue by having intro and outro videos, but it doesn't really work. So if you're looking for a meaningful story, then this game is not for you.
The objectives you have during a mission start off a bit overwhelming. When you're learning the game you don't really know what you're objectives are. The Objective Wheel you can bring up helps this a lot, but it still feels like a lot to take in whilst you're learning weapons, abilities, SMART (we'll come to that later), and maps. However once you get used to it, it's much easier to work out what's going on. The objectives are the sort of stuff you'd expect. Defend this, attack this, and escort him. There are primary objectives, which everybody should be working towards as it decides who wins and loses, and there are secondary objectives, which aid your team in various ways.
Both offline and online missions are the same. Just swap out bots for real people, and you're off playing it again. The difference is that offline you can chose to play the missions in Campaign mode (does them in order, rather than just as a random stand alone game), and online is traditional style matches where the server either goes through a playlist of maps, or the players can vote for maps. If any review you read says the bots are retarded and just stand around, then disregard the rest of the review, because the reviewer wasn't doing his job. The bots scale, and the further up you go in ranking, the harder the bots get. They do become quite a challenge eventually.
The SMART system (Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain) is something the developers made a big deal out of, and it's quite awesome. It allows easy vaulting, climbing, wall hoping, sliding and jumping. It is incredibly easy to use, you just hold sprint (doubles as the SMART button), point the cursor at what you want to do, and it does it. If you want to vault a fence, look slightly above the fence and it vaults. If you want to slide under an object, just look at the gap you want, and it'll slide. It removes the normal confines of FPS shooters which anger players, such as not being able to jump onto a ledge because although it only waist high, it is a couple of cm too high to jump to. The downside to SMART is it isn't complimented by the current maps as well as it should be. Some things which should be climbable are not climbable, and the wall hopping is almost non existent due to lack of places to use it. Some maps are better than others, with a Shipping Container level being excellent, but an airport lounge map being less so. If the maps took advantage of SMART more, it'd be a great system. It is however still excellent in it's current form.
The game is pretty buggy, with lots of reports of random bugs like missing textures, sound issues, server issues, and one that is plaguing me, disconnection issues. But Spalsh Damage have now released 3 patches rather quickly that took care of the major bugs, and performance issues. So whilst it's buggy, it's not like Activision games where it's stuck like that - they are tackling the issues, and quickly. They have also promised free DLC including maps and weapons in June, which is awesome.
Score for me? 7 out of 10. Great gameplay, and as a multiplayer based shooter it's great fun. Just don't expect any sort of decent offline story. The bots, although good, are not as fun to play with as humans. When the games bugs and performance issues are fixed, I'd move this to 8, perhaps 9 out of 10.
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theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com
A comprehensive and un-biased review Dave. 
[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to. [www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central
[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to.
[www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 CentralAn update on this review.
There has now been more fixes for performance and bugs. Performance isn't an issue for me any more (but I've read others complaining), but there are still numerous bugs, including severe sound issues and minor graphical bugs.
DLC announced is quite extensive with new maps, weapons, abilities and clothing. Everything you could want from a DLC.
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theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com
There has now been more fixes for performance and bugs. Performance isn't an issue for me any more (but I've read others complaining), but there are still numerous bugs, including severe sound issues and minor graphical bugs.
DLC announced is quite extensive with new maps, weapons, abilities and clothing. Everything you could want from a DLC.
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theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com
Performance was never fixed properly and the maps are badly designed (game play wise). 70% score is too low given shite like GT5 and Halo get 90+, but it's still not that good.
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theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com
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theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com
Brink is free on Steam until Sunday night. It should appear in your games list. For anyone that owns the game, you can buy the DLC for free for the first 2 weeks. If you haven't bought it by the end of the 2 weeks then it's a £10 purchase.
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theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com
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theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com
DaveEllis Wrote:
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> Brink is free on Steam until Sunday night. It
> should appear in your games list. For anyone that
> owns the game, you can buy the DLC for free for
> the first 2 weeks. If you haven't bought it by the
> end of the 2 weeks then it's a £10 purchase.
I was trying to get it but since I don't really use Steam I got lost and the Brink page I saw still had the game for a certain price. Was it a free forever in TF2 sense or free for the weekend?
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> Brink is free on Steam until Sunday night. It
> should appear in your games list. For anyone that
> owns the game, you can buy the DLC for free for
> the first 2 weeks. If you haven't bought it by the
> end of the 2 weeks then it's a £10 purchase.
I was trying to get it but since I don't really use Steam I got lost and the Brink page I saw still had the game for a certain price. Was it a free forever in TF2 sense or free for the weekend?
It was free for the weekend.
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theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com
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theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com
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