By Jim Rossignol on May 12th, 2011 at 8:04 pm.
Brink is out now in the US and apparently out in the UK tomorrow. We’ve spent the last couple of days playing it, but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for our full critical verdict. Nevertheless I thought I’d say a few things tonight, including venting my frustration with a critical bug, and providing you with our server details for US and UK-based Brink servers. Read on for a mixed bag of information!
Quick thoughts on Brink: I like it, but it’s flawed. The teamplay is really rewarding, the slidey stuff is great (if a bit random), the character creation and progression works okay, and the general look and feel of the game is largely what I wanted and expected. On the other hand, it’s a bit disappointing. The maps are often dominated by a couple of chokepoints, a situation which is exacerbated by the corridor-based nature of the whole thing. The selection of weapons too is a bit… well, we’re going to talk about all this tomorrow. In short: it’s not a bad game, but so far it’s not a great game, either. I’m getting into it, though. I know exactly the kind of gamer who is going to get a kick out of this, because they’re kind of PC gamers I’ve been socialising with for years. I think even some of them will struggle to get past some of the issues herein, however.
BUGS: There are some minor bugs in there, but nothing that seems to really hurt play. IF YOU CAN PLAY. The most significant bug so far seems to be people simply not being able to get into the game. Threads like this one seem to reveal a gamut of bugs, some of which are driver-based, but others which – and I am extrapolating from my own experience of being locked out of the game here – seem to be from some kind of file corruption. The upshot of this is that some amount of people (impossible to tell how many) can’t get into the game to play. I’d imagine it’s a pretty small number, but it is there. This is, of course, a pretty awkward situation for the game to be in, and is probably going to take weeks to iron out. Not good.
SERVERS: If you do have the game, or are getting it, then why not play with RPS chums? Look for Rock, Paper, Shotgun servers both UK and US on the server browser. They’re set to objective for now. Here are the IPs, in case that is any use:
LONDON: 85.236.101.11:27315
CHICAGO: 209.212.144.158:27615
Servers supplied by the ever-helpful Multiplay.
I’ll hopefully see you online… Or you can wait for our thoughts tomorrow.
12/05/2011 at 20:10 Stammer says:
Brink has helped disabuse me of the notion that Splash Damage could ever make a game as good as Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory again.
12/05/2011 at 21:56 Speedbuggy says:
The game design feels a bit like they wrote down notes on things people complained the most about in other FPS shooters and went off to make this game.
People don’t like grenade spam, okay so we’ll just have them knock people over and have a long recharge rate before you can toss another.
One shot kills with sniper rifles are frustrating, okay we’ll have it take a whole magazine to kill someone.
Then you have oddball design decisions like not being able to pick different body type (heavy, medium, light) while your in a game. Don’t try to force some stupid character persistence nonsense on me.
12/05/2011 at 22:02 Dominic White says:
Yeah, server admins are, by and large, morons who will listen to the loudest and stupidest players on their server.
This is why the vast majority of TF2 servers out there have 32-40 players with reduced spawn times, turning the game into an unholy clusterfuck. Sometimes, giving users freedom is the wrong way to go, as a lot of people WILL ruin things for themselves given half a chance, and then blame the developers when the balance is horribly broken.
13/05/2011 at 00:17 Hunam says:
I’m not sure that is what they are talking about but what you said is true. Trying to find a decent server for some valve games is almost impossible. PC CoD is pretty broken too, though the treyarch ones less so because they makes most of their maps really big.
13/05/2011 at 08:43 notjasonlee says:
go on…
12/05/2011 at 20:12 Tatourmi says:
Meh, I was more or less expecting this game. Slightly disappointed that it is “average” (even though we will see tomorrow)
12/05/2011 at 22:18 qrter says:
I think a lot of people were expecting this game. I mean, there have been a couple of announcements, it wasn’t a big secret.
12/05/2011 at 22:27 RiptoR says:
In the words of Michael Kelso: BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURN!
12/05/2011 at 20:13 TheCheese33 says:
I hate Brink so much. I am happy that I bought it for the 360, because it gave me the ability to return it the next day. What a messy title, thin in content and fun. And the netcode is absolutely atrocious. 1 in 5 games you jump into are playable, and even then you get all sorts of crazy connection issues.
12/05/2011 at 20:14 Jim Rossignol says:
The PC has the bonus of having dedicated servers. I have had no problems at all with that.
12/05/2011 at 20:15 Hallgrim says:
FWIW: I’ve read in a number of places that the PC version runs a lot better than the console version. I don’t own either, however.
12/05/2011 at 20:22 Stammer says:
Yes, dedicated servers with a whopping 16 player limit. Did I mention the server browser has no filter options too?
It would be unfair to out console brethren to call this a “port” because from what I’ve heard it sucks on the consoles too.
12/05/2011 at 20:24 Jim Rossignol says:
I don’t get how the player number is a complaint. A game serves the number of players it serves. I used to play 5v5 Quake III, because that suited it. No one says OMG about that.
And yes, the filter is there, but appears not to work.
12/05/2011 at 20:25 -Spooky- says:
Or try to pimp id tech 4 with sikkmod ;)
http://www.moddb.com/mods/sikkmod
/e @ QQ ply limit
Give it some time. W:ET got 64ply srv too, TF2 has 32 ply .. all with mods.
12/05/2011 at 20:32 Stammer says:
It’s called options and people typically enjoy having them. Valve had the same argument when TF2 came out over 32-man servers. Fortunately they pulled back on that and server owners were able to serve as many players as they wanted, not how many Valve wanted.
Also Spooky, grow up.
12/05/2011 at 20:41 Jim Rossignol says:
And yet 8v8 seems like a great number for this particular game’s maps on release. Sometimes you’ve got to go with the dev’s design choices, and not say that Chess should have been on an 128 square board.
12/05/2011 at 20:54 Stammer says:
In your opinion 8v8 feels right. You and Splash Damage may be correct that 8v8 works better mechanically than say 32v32, but my point still stands – why limit your communities options? It’s not as if Splash Damage or Bethesda are paying for some guys 64-man, instant respawn, birthday server.
The same applies to some guy who wants to play chess with all pawns, if his opponent agrees to his rules then what harm has it done to you? You might think he’s mutilated the rules of chess but nothing is stopping you from playing chess proper.
We could probably argue this back and forth forever so I am just going to let you have the last word Mr. Rossignol (if you want) and politely disagree with you.
edit: I wanted to add one last thing, variety is the spice of life (and multiplayer-centric video games).
12/05/2011 at 20:59 Frakattack says:
As a sidenote, as long as the server browser is as terrible as it is, you can use the Steam server browser as a nifty little workaround (View -> Servers -> Filter by Brink)
12/05/2011 at 21:13 Vandelay says:
Agree completely with Jim. I really do not understand people’s constant demand for games to have 32+ player multiplayer when a game completely should not have them. Team Fortress 2 is a perfect example of game balance that is damaged by increasing the player cap above the standard 24. Brink seems to be in a similar vein.
Quite honestly, I wish there would be more shooters that actually radically lowered the numbers. I want some games that featured duel modes, such as Jedi Knight, or some kind of 2v2, like Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. Those are infinitely more exciting and personal battles than some 32v32 player clusterfuck (not that those can’t be fun sometimes too.)
As for giving options, fine. Just as long as you ensure I can easily disable seeing them in my server browser. The reason I hardly ever play Team Fortress 2 now is not because of the huge number of weapons and hats, but because it is almost impossible to avoid 32-player, instant respawn, modded servers. I love real mods, community maps, etc. but server tweaks are almost always annoying.
12/05/2011 at 21:19 Tin_man_Tex says:
SD built the maps and game around 8v8, as seen on other games, gameplay tends to break down when pushed past it’s designed player count.
I certainly wouldn’t mind trying large playercount but I’d wait for a SDK and maps to acommodate them.
And I certainly would like some time for people to just play the game as intended for a while before splitting off.
Currently I like 8v8, it means I don’t get lost in the crowd and I can contribute meaninfully.
It also means it’s more likely to play ok with less players for when servers are not full (and nice for competetive without having to drastically revamp game elements), and less time for those servers to get to the intended player count.
12/05/2011 at 21:21 Delusibeta says:
Basically, the reason is balance. Increasing the playcount inevitably results in a clusterfuck. 32-player TF2 is a mess, for example.
12/05/2011 at 21:32 Mo says:
@Stammer: The problem with choice is that *everybody* seems to have this grand notion that more players = better game. Counterstrike just stopped being fun for me “back in the day” because it was *impossible* to find a 16 player map, or even a server without ridiculous game-breaking server-side mods. Vandelay’s comment just confirms that this is still true today.
Developers put a lot of time and effort into crafting a well-balanced experience. I don’t get the appeal of breaking all of that, all the time.
12/05/2011 at 22:13 Monchberter says:
@ everyone complaining about overtweaked online
All your issues are easily solved by finding a good server, with good admins and a set up you like and STICKING WITH IT. It’s not difficult. I used to run a 24 man TF2 server and community and good regulars are a godsend.
Problem is that most people are in fact looking for spammy fastspawn action. Find good players and contribute to the long term viability of the good servers. The admins and owners who put the money up will thank you for your loyalty and you’ll be able to influence how the server is set up.
12/05/2011 at 22:40 phosgene says:
To everyone defending developers and their decision on balancing games around a small number of players:
Thank you. I have been saying for years that 1v1/2v2/3v3 games on suitable maps are infinitely more fun than 64v64 clusterfucks.
I don’t like myself for saying this, but I’m pretty sure it’s so close to fact that I can get away with it. The typical person who likes huge playercounts is also the typical person who is bad at the respective game and wants their lack of ability to be masked by the sheer number of people on their team.
12/05/2011 at 22:47 QuantaCat says:
AssCreedBro has only eight players in most games.
12/05/2011 at 23:45 Devenger says:
Giving players choice is not always the best idea, because sometimes what people think would be best isn’t actually the most fun in the long-term (and they won’t even realise what they are missing out on – many of the people who will play on high player count servers haven’t given smaller games a fair trial, for example). I’ve yet to play Brink (and who knows when I’ll get to, since D2D are having some trouble), but it never looked like a ‘giant battlefield’ game from the trailers – I don’t feel misled or disappointed now I know the games have quite a tight player count.
12/05/2011 at 23:56 Groove says:
I’m with everyone supporting developer intentions.
I share the TF2 story, I almost stopped playing because every server was instant respawn and capturing points was nigh impossible. I actually thought I was playing the game the wrong way and that the balance was out of whack.
13/05/2011 at 00:16 Koozer says:
I concur. Battlefield is a thousand-fold better at 32v32 than at 8v8, but Team Fortress 2 at 16v16 is a mess.
13/05/2011 at 00:20 Hunam says:
This is kind of ‘The Problem’ with PC gamers, we can have 32 player TF2/CoD/DoD etc so lets do that. Instead of going, wait up, that’s fucking stupid, 16 players is enough.
13/05/2011 at 00:24 PoLLeNSKi says:
4v4 CTF on Quake. Fuck Yeah.
13/05/2011 at 00:25 stupid_mcgee says:
@ Frakattack: Thanks for that. The server browser in Brink is terrible! It’s worse than ET:QW’s. I never thought I’d actually pine for the TF2 browser so much.
Also, the filters in the server browser have worked for me. Click the little light colored box with the three lines in the right corner of each field and it brings up a box to type stuff in. Made finding online Challenge servers a lot easier. For the “private/public/all” field it’s a toggle.
13/05/2011 at 06:18 oddshrub says:
Brink is the first game I’ve preordered since Diablo 2 had managed to utterly disappointment because I’d hyped it way too much. I was thinking Brink might be able to replace what MAG has been giving me for the past year, but the joke is on me for not researching it enough because I don’t have any interest at all in a game with such small teams.
Aside from that I think splash damage have done a good deal of “advertising”, trying to sell the game as a hybrid shooter/rpg with this big involving story and there is certainly none of that in the game. I really can’t see how a regular shooter that only supports 8v8 is worth 50euro on steam when there is a billion other titles which will give you better value, better matches and less bugs for 1/5 the price.
But hey, I got ripped of by my own stupidity and that’s that.
13/05/2011 at 12:36 Makariel says:
@PoLLeNSKi: I approve, 4v4 CTF is the good stuff :)
12/05/2011 at 20:14 drplote says:
It felt a little too console-y on the PC. But beyond that, I just kept thinking that Enemy Territory was a better game that came out years previously and, on top of it, was free.
12/05/2011 at 20:14 Davie says:
It would be kind of hilariously, ironically sad if after all these gushing previews and exciting videos, it’s actually a mediocre game.
12/05/2011 at 20:19 jerkstoresup says:
That’s kind of the general consensus already.
12/05/2011 at 20:23 Joshua says:
Hmm…. Wouldn’t go as far as to call it mediocre just yet. But I get the nagging feeling that everything Bethesda does is… rather overrated.
12/05/2011 at 21:04 Reapy says:
I’m surprised anybody who watched any videos/previews for brink thought it would be some sort of amazing game? I always feel like some of the games that get gushing previews like brink are put up here for money and/or buddy buddy relations reasons, rather than them being actual games to get excited for.
I kept looking at brink stuff trying to figure out why people are excited and could find no reason to get excited for it, so to start seeing mediocre reviews doesn’t come as a surprise really.
I really don’t expect any kind of FPS will excite us old jaded gamers unless it is made for the PC and not optimized for dated console hardware and/or the target audience on consoles. Don’t get me wrong I love my 360, but games are designed differently for consoles… just look at portal 2 and its load times, immersion breaking and clearly done for consoles. Half life 1 had smoother loading times than portal 2.
Also, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning so I’m being extra cranky.
12/05/2011 at 21:12 skinlo says:
Disagree with the Portal 2 thing, Portal 1 had just as many.
Comparing Half Life to Portal 2 is a bit silly, Portal 2 has a lot more data to load. Its more a limitation with the engine over console issues.
13/05/2011 at 00:35 FRIENDLYUNIT says:
@Davie
Not at all! Wish it were so. The truth is it’s quite the common occurance and it’s just plain vanilla sad.
13/05/2011 at 08:46 KenTWOu says:
skinlo says: Disagree with the Portal 2 thing, Portal 1 had just as many.
Portal 2 has loading screens after every test chamber. Portal one hasn’t loading screens at all, and loads few chambers in one huge map.
12/05/2011 at 20:18 Tom OBedlam says:
Right, I’m hovering over the buy button at the moment. Finances being what they are the £5 off for pre-order makes all the difference and when I played this at the eurogamer expo I really enjoyed it, so do I get it now while a bit cheaper and dip in and out while my free time is a bit limited or do I wait till its more expensive, the bugs are ironed out and there’s a group of people who’ve been playing since day one who already know the maps inside out?
12/05/2011 at 20:45 Gnoupi says:
In my humble opinion, too late to be savvy.
Last weekend you could get it for 22 gbp on D2D uk, and in my opinion that’s as low as it could get in digital.
According to the reviews, I would wait a month max and get it boxed. No doubt even Amazon will have it for half the price by then.
(Not saying the game is bad, I haven’t played it, but the backlash it is currently taking opposed to the expectation means there is likely to be a stock to clear in the coming months for the box editions).
If you want a cheap multiplayer shooter, I would go with Section 8: prejudice, great value for the price (in my humble opinion).
12/05/2011 at 22:31 Tams80 says:
I agree with Gnoupi, you’ve missed the ‘fairly cheap get game early phase’. Wait and it will be cheaper than any of the pre orders.
If £5 makes such a difference and you really want a new shooter, the I again agree with Gnoupi. The multiplayer is great and the singleplayer, although really just a good cheesy tutorial is fun as well. Plus it’s only £9.99. The only real downside is GFWL (log in to save progress, WTF?!), but even that isn’t that bad.
12/05/2011 at 22:49 QuantaCat says:
Er, well I ordered it yesterday for 21GBP. Boxed, though. (ie itll be here in two weeks, hopefully patched by then :D)
12/05/2011 at 20:19 airtekh says:
I probably will buy Brink, but I might give it a month or so, for the bugs to be ironed out.
12/05/2011 at 20:44 Jad says:
That has been my approach to nearly every PC game for the past decade and a half.
13/05/2011 at 00:29 Hellraiserzlo says:
It sounds like no one will be playing this in a month.
13/05/2011 at 03:20 snv says:
Blow up that period to about 6 months and then the price will probably be drifted closer to the worth too
12/05/2011 at 20:22 Bilbo says:
This sounds… seriously ominous. I’m definitely going to shy away from early adopting on this one.
12/05/2011 at 20:23 Dekken says:
Am I the only one that is not enjoying this game due to the dramatically low FPS?
Running i5 with 6950 in crossfire, and I am getting 30fps.
12/05/2011 at 20:48 BathroomCitizen says:
The ATI cards are having problems with the game, but a soon-ish patch will fix that. Anyway, for the short term, I heard some guys saying that disabling ambient occlusion gives a lot of boost to the fps, strangely! Luck on ya, brother!
12/05/2011 at 20:56 Snargelfargen says:
The game is limited to 30 fps.
12/05/2011 at 21:02 mkultra says:
It’s a 30 FPS cap in single-player only.
Crossfire does not work at the moment.
Try reverting to an earlier set of drivers if you have the 11.5a hotfix. Most likely won’t do anything, as it’s not your hardware but the game itself.
12/05/2011 at 21:10 Dekken says:
This game is sad. It wont even work now.
It just crashes after the brink logo, The hell with it. I give up!
12/05/2011 at 21:24 Delusibeta says:
Obvious question: have you tried rolling back your drivers? I heard that rolling back to 11.3 worked of one dude. Your mileage may vary, of course.
12/05/2011 at 22:06 Dekken says:
Yea, I have rolled back to 11.5 from 11.5a now.
And the game feels so choppy now..even when I get 80-120fps.
12/05/2011 at 22:53 Tin_man_Tex says:
Yeah there’s framerate issues for some people, while lower cards are getting a nice high framerate, some modern cards are struggling for some reason.
Anyhoo, make sure Ambient Occlusion is off, it’s pretty much only a ‘kill fps’ option at this point.
Also try r_shadows 0 in the console (ctl alt ~)
12/05/2011 at 20:24 thedeadface says:
I’ve had a good time with it so far, a couple connection problems that first day, but none since then even got a chance to play on the RPS server when i stumbled across it earlier, very glad u guys got one up lets hope they get some of these problems ironed out before the dark cloud above the game keeps growing
12/05/2011 at 20:27 mR.Waffles says:
There’s also this great driver failure bug which renders the game unplayable. Some people have fixed it by lowering their resolutions.
http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24899
12/05/2011 at 20:29 Unaco says:
What a shame.
12/05/2011 at 20:32 LarsBR says:
The Tuesday-Friday release thing at least gave me the opportunity to cancel my pre-order. So they’d have had my money if the game had been out at the same time in us and eu. That’ll teach ‘em.
12/05/2011 at 20:49 Mark says:
Hah! I did the same thing.
Game is probably okay. Sadly, I’m about to be unemployed and don’t have the money to spend on just okay games at the moment. Looking forward to the inevitable Steam sale/retail price drop.
12/05/2011 at 20:34 innociv says:
When they can’t even make a decent recoil animation, I figured the rest of it wasn’t much good.
It looks nice in screenshots, but in motion there is so much wrong.
I’m glad it’s bad since there is Red Orchestra:HoS(who doesn’t love ho’s?), Battlefield3, Guild Wars2 beta, and Deus Ex 3 coming out this year. It means I don’t have any compulsion to waste money on this title.
It sounds seems from this, and other reviews I’ve read, things I’ve heard from friends, that I’ll get just as much enjoyment from the $15 I spent on Section8 than I would of gotten spending $50 on Brink.
12/05/2011 at 20:44 Vandelay says:
The worries I had that I would stop playing Section 8 when this came out seem to have been misplaced. I put the initial bad buzz down to reviews being done on consoles and mainly with bots, but the lack of any really substantial comments from people in the Brink thread on the forums makes me thank everyone is rather “meh” about this one.
Whatever happened to buzz around those that played it at expos? Has the game changed that much?
12/05/2011 at 20:46 DeathHamsterDude says:
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
I JUST bought this on Steam about a minute or two before I saw this article! Cockmonkeys!!!
Where did this come out of? Everyone was sooooo positive about this game!
12/05/2011 at 20:50 Teddy Leach says:
That should have been a warning signal. I hate to be that guy, but I had the weirdest feeling that it wouldn’t live up to the hype.
12/05/2011 at 22:06 Jahkaivah says:
Maybe it’s just all the failed MMOs and shoddy Free to Play microtransaction driven games, but I am finding that boasting a game’s character customisation features to be a warning sign that it’s developer might not have spent as much time working on the actual game as they should have.
That isn’t to say anything about Brink though, I have yet to play it and am hoping for a demo or free weekend of some sort.
12/05/2011 at 22:16 DrazharLn says:
1) Steam pre-orders can be cancelled for a refund
2) How about you try the game and make your mind up then?
12/05/2011 at 23:50 mod the world says:
Heh, i was also JUST about to buy Brink, then i did what i always do before buying a game at full price: I googled for the metascore. The reviews are mixed atm, so i will happily wait a few more days to see what the final hive mind verdict will be.
13/05/2011 at 00:05 mouton says:
Congratulations. Maybe now you will learn to mistrust the hype.
13/05/2011 at 00:25 mwoody says:
How can this be a surprise? The metascore – currently at 74, a definite “research more” warning sign – is right there on the Steam page, right next to “add to cart.”
13/05/2011 at 00:54 DeathHamsterDude says:
@DrazharLn -
1. Thanks. Didn’t know that. Assumed pre-orders were lumped in with the Steam no refunds policy.
2. I will, but I don’t think it’s crazy of me to read up about it too, and I pretty much trust the opinions of RPS. They tend to like what I like.
@mod the world & mwoody-
As far as I recall, the Metacritic data wasn’t up there at the time. Plus, I try not to read number reviews. That’s why I much prefer RPS’s style of reviewing . . . which had indicated, along with many of those who previewed it at various cons, that it was going to be a rather good game. And Metacritic is hardly unbiased. Look at the whole Portal 2 thing. I’d rather read articles by people who I feel have the same idea about what makes a game good as I do than gorge on the whole smorgasbord, regardless of whether what I’m eating is to my taste or not.
Wow, was not expecting to use the word smorgasbord when I began that paragraph.
@mouton -
Woo. Snarky comment. Never saw that coming. And I didn’t get hyped up about this game in the fanboi way you are assuming, but rather saw that games journalists that I trust were liking it, and hearing good things again from trusted sources who had played it at cons. I didn’t go ‘ooooh, pretty picture, and explosion! Must be great!’. The game looked promising. Who knows, it still might be after things have straightened out. Hype isn’t always the devil, sometimes it can be nice to try and stop being cynical once in a while. This is coming from a cynic.
In conclusion; Yeah. Gonna keep the game and see for myself. I really want a good FPS to play for the longest time, and maybe this will sync with me. We’ll just have to see. At least it’s not CODBLOPS; A Sequel Too Far.
*EDIT*
@Jahkaivah – Yeah, I get a little worried usually when I hear that. Look at APB. the Character Customisation was pretty much the only thing that game got right.
But I do still yearn for better customisation in games, especially RPG’s, and it’s not a bad thing to flaunt by any means, as long as you’re flaunting other, more concrete features too. I mean, I would have loved a better character editor in ME2 or DA;O. ME2 moreso though. no proper beards? That’s heresy to a bearded man! luckily at least the long beard in DAII looked pretty much like mine actually does, so my character was relatively close to what I look like. Although after forty minutes in APB, I had pretty much nailed a facismile of me in-game, which was pretty cool, and I’d like to be able to do it more. In good games, of course. Make a really good game first, and then make a really good character editor.
12/05/2011 at 20:46 Mr_Initials says:
Personally I like it. I may be mentally compensating because I’ve wanted this since it premiered though. The game play is quite fun and the character maker is great. Some of the faces creep the hell out of me though. The only bugs I’ve run into were server crashes
12/05/2011 at 20:50 mkultra says:
Here’s what it boils down to:
If you pub games, you probably won’t have an enjoyable experience.
If you play competitively with friends or with an organized group, you will have a blast.
Scrimmed Emong and rob-wiz’s team last night after they played on brink tv, some of the most intense, fun-filled matches I’ve ever experienced in the last 5 years.
If you’re a single-player campaign type person, don’t get it.
If you’re an ATI card user, you’re taking a gamble (I run a 6870 and after some heavy tweaks and trying numerous drivers, I can get ~90 FPS on an 800×600 resolution. Others have no problems at all).
The naysayers and haters are more vocal than the people enjoying the game, because the people who enjoy it are busy playing it and not spamming forums.
12/05/2011 at 21:14 skinlo says:
Because the people that aren’t enjoying it can’t actually get into the game.
12/05/2011 at 21:26 Delusibeta says:
“The naysayers and haters are more vocal than the people enjoying the game, because the people who enjoy it are busy playing it and not spamming forums.”
That applies to 99.99% of hatedoms on the internet, really.
12/05/2011 at 22:52 athropos says:
mkultra, it’s laughable in 2011 that you should be forced to be play a game in 800×600 on an HD6870 to get 60+ fps. My own HD5870 cant get more than 30-40 fps when staring in an outdoor environment. This game has some serious issues with ATI card, and I feel very cheated and ripped off.
13/05/2011 at 06:56 Burning Man says:
>>The naysayers and haters are more vocal than the people enjoying the >>game, because the people
>>who enjoy it are busy playing it and not spamming forums.
>
>That applies to 99.99% of hatedoms on the internet, really.
That’s what they said about Dragon Age 2 OH SNAP!
12/05/2011 at 20:52 Outsider says:
I’m sorry to hear this isn’t looking so great, I wanted it to do well even though I didn’t plan on purchasing it.
The anemic gun sounds and terrible animations are what turned me off buying this about a month ago. :(
12/05/2011 at 21:44 Flappybat says:
The guns sound fine. Don’t understand the complaints about that. It’s not Bad Company 2 but it’s ok.
12/05/2011 at 20:53 cheese lol says:
Hopefully all that stuff gets ironed out in patches before the game loses its potential player-base. Somebody already said it, but what a shame. /baggycoat
12/05/2011 at 20:55 Snargelfargen says:
I already blathered about the Brink in an unrelated thread so I guess I should add my thoughts here too.
It’s a lot of fun, especially as a step away from the CoD-style games. There are far fewer one-shot kills, letting you play with all the abilities your class gets and the weapons/skills unlock quickly. I would actually also recommend Brink for anybody not used to fps’ or gaming on a pc. There is always something to contribute, even if you aren’t playing a relevant class or suck at shooting. Plant mines, escort engineers, hack supply depots, etc…
The bad news is that its super buggy. Personally I’ve had to lower or turn off almost all the settings to get a smooth frame-rate and there is still a strange “grid” that appears on all surfaces. (This is common to anybody running a 4800 series AMD card.)
Sound also disappears entirely on a specific map. This is quite common according to the chatlogs for those games.
The devs are aware of the problems and are working on them, so here’s hoping it gets fixed before the player-base moves on…
12/05/2011 at 21:34 Tin_man_Tex says:
Geek time – The grid on 4xxx series cards seems to be texture sampling not doing what was expected.
Brink is the first comercial game to use virtual texturing, the larger texture space is split into physical tiles, the error seems to be the texture sampler is picking up the borders of the tiles.
Interesting that it’s just on one range of cards, also interesting that AMD did get a hotfix out a little prior to the games (US) release, but the fix by all accounts doesn’t do much.
A lot of the other issues with the game is likely due to there not having been an AAA OpenGL game for a while (as far as I’m aware), so this is really the first stressing/shakedown of things.
12/05/2011 at 20:59 Nomaki says:
RPS: The saviour of my meagre-sized bank account.
Protip: Always check RPS before buying any big new releases
Going to give Brink a month or two to iron out all the large bugs and then decide again from there, but I was really hoping this would do well from all the starry-eyed previews we’d gotten.
12/05/2011 at 21:39 Chris D says:
I find any money RPS saves me on avoiding big releases is only lost again on obscure games I would never have heard of otherwise.
12/05/2011 at 21:53 Ysellian says:
haha true Chris! Recettear instantly comes to mind.
12/05/2011 at 21:00 Crimsoneer says:
I love VPNs. Not that I’d encourage anybody that has preordered Brink to use them to unlock it early, but if they wanted to, they could, because that’s how awesome VPNs are.
12/05/2011 at 22:48 DrazharLn says:
Wouldn’t an American proxy be enough?
13/05/2011 at 00:05 Koozer says:
I can never tease the workings of those things out into something useful…
12/05/2011 at 21:06 Spectre-7 says:
Been enjoying it immensely since the release Monday night. Internet play is smooth and fun (although the laggy server browser is a bit of a pain), and it really comes alive when you have a few friends along with you. Single-player is underwhelming but I wasn’t particularly interested in that, so I’m willing to overlook it. The weapon selection is something of a mixed bag; there’s a good variety and quite a few are decently differentiated from their neighbors, ably filling specific niches, while a goodly number of others are essentially alike and offer nothing but aesthetic differences.
I haven’t had any trouble finding good games and I’m quite pleased with my purchase despite a few rough edges, which I hope will be patched out in short order. The general backlash leaves me a bit bemused, but I guess folks were expecting a different game than they got.
12/05/2011 at 21:09 meatshit says:
If the popularity of de_dust in Counter Strike is anything to go by, the general public loves them some corridors and chokepoints.
13/05/2011 at 01:51 Tatourmi says:
Isn’t dust rather free? Not a big counter strike player but I got lost quite some times when I first began with the game in these maps, I can remember that pretty well.
12/05/2011 at 21:13 zergrush says:
Felt quite happy for not having pre-ordered it, cause apparently some people with similar ATI cards are having framerate issues.
Also, from post-release gameplay videos the shooting seems to be quite lackluster, the guns don’t go BOOM BOOM very well and people seem to take a few too many shots to die. And doesn’t the alleged corridor based maps sort of undermine the “freedom of movement” that was advertised?
I’m a bit sad tho, I really wanted to like this game simply because of W:ET, but it seems that the only things it does right are the team-based objectives which are quite nice but not nearly enough to keep me hooked on a shooter =/
12/05/2011 at 21:14 wererogue says:
I’m enjoying it, mostly for potential – I haven’t had a chance to play real multiplayer yet, just the bots, which are ok as bots go (i.e. kinda stupid)
I hope the final verdict mentions the utter fail of selling your game on character customization but having no women.
13/05/2011 at 19:16 wererogue says:
I am disappoint.
(Only on this issue though, the rest of the verdict was very fair.)
12/05/2011 at 21:15 Chris D says:
Oh well, too late to cancel the pre-order now. Here’s hoping this isn’t as ominous as it sounds.
12/05/2011 at 21:20 Spiny says:
Damn, ET:Quake Wars was great :(
12/05/2011 at 21:25 The Sombrero Kid says:
Sounds like it’s not as good as Enemy Territory quake wars & while that still leaves room for it to be a good game, it will not make it a long living multiplayer game (since the only people pushing through the horrible word of mouth will be Enemy Territory Veterans).
I for one enjoyed ET:QW but at the time not enough to pick it over TF2, Brink has no TF2 to compete with but the bad Word of Mouth combined with the press sucking their teeth have scared me off.
12/05/2011 at 21:34 TheOx129 says:
Well, I think I’ve been one of the luckier ones, as I have had only one crash thus far, no character deletion (pre-patch that they released yesterday) and no graphical/framerate issues (on an ATI card, too).
So far I’ve got a solid 12 hours on the game (the vast majority multiplayer) under my belt, and I can honestly say I’m generally happy with my purchase. Bugs are the biggest issue, followed by certain maps (e.g. Container City) that, IMO, need more tweaking. The leveling system is a bit perplexing, too, IMO, as you tend to average ~1000 XP at the minimum each match. So there’s not much grinding with the XP system as there is in, say, CoD or, to a lesser extent, BC2, which is nice. On the other hand, why bother with it at all? I think I’d have been happier if XP ONLY unlocked new outfits, not body types (Light is unlocked at 7, Heavy at 5(?)) and abilities, too. Guns are unlocked through challenges, which are minor diversions if anything.
Otherwise, this game really scratched my itch for a team-based shooter in which teamplay is the major factor in determining victory. So, as others have said, playing in public servers is generally gonna be a shitty experience, whereas playing with your buddies/people who know what they’re doing is a LOT of fun.
12/05/2011 at 21:40 Flappybat says:
If you want to unlock your preorder early I recommend Always VPN. £5.34 will get you 5GB of bandwidth and they have no overage fees (you just get cut off) or automatic renewal. I used it for Borderlands and I’ve used it again for Brink.
Steam will treat you as a US user but DO NOT buy any games whilst on the VPN, that is the kind of thing they ban for.
12/05/2011 at 21:57 ffordesoon says:
I’ve played an hour of the game, and within that hour, I grasped exactly why there’s been such a sharp division in reactions to the thing. I’ve had a total blast with it so far, and yet I can totally understand why people would hate it with the blazing fury of a thousand eternal suns. A certain type of gamer is going to go absolutely apeshit over it, and I thankfully seem to be within that group, but those gamers are going to have a tough time selling it to anyone else, both because there are many rough spots and because it’s just a bizarre goddamn game. With a couple of patches and DLC packs, it’ll be one of the best games out there. The question is, can Splash Damage sustain interest in it long enough to get that far? Because it’s so, so close to where it needs to be, and if it never gets there, I can promise you we’ll be looking back at it as a tragedy of V:tM – Bloodlines proportions.
Not yet, though. That’ll be in about five years. Right now, everyone’s getting out their Louisville Sluggers and going to town on it, and they’re not entirely unjustified in doing so. If you can’t forgive a game some faults, and allow yourself to see the game it’s so desperately trying to be, you probably won’t like this game. That’s not a criticism of anyone’s tastes, it’s just the truth.
I really, really hope it sells well enough that they can make a sequel, because I will be all over that game.
12/05/2011 at 22:16 Corbies says:
I registered on here just to agree completely 100% with you on your post.
I have rarely enjoyed a game as much as I have enjoyed brink,a nd while yes it is full of many unforgivable bugs, it is an absolutely fun experience for many reasons that I cannot sell to others!
I HIGHLY encourage people on the fence to at least try it if you are looking for a ‘not tf2 teamplay FPS, but still fps’ sort of game.
That is the only way I can describe it. It is BIZZARE, but it is fun.
12/05/2011 at 22:24 Vague-rant says:
Hmm, can’t play it because I doubt my PC will run it at the framerate an FPS deserves. However, I did see a HMV advert this morning saying you can get it for a fiver if you trade in the console version of Portal 2. So for those with a PS3 version of Portal 2, who have registered their steam version, I imagine that might work out a treat.
12/05/2011 at 22:31 Apocalypse 31 says:
Things I like:
Weapon customization without penalty. In real life, I can put 9 different attachments on my weapon. Why can’t I do it in video games? Each attachment has its own penalties, but at least I have the option to do it.
Player Customization: I like being able to change my facial features, scars, tattoos, etc. and of course, the clothing is a must – although, I’d like to unlock the damn baseball cap, but its taking forever
In Game Objectives: I’m really enjoying how you can set your own objectives, and that there are several to choose from. This WOULD be great for a squad skirmish, where you have dedicated players…but that will never happen anymore (with the kinds of people that play games these days). I’m not really one who enjoys going up the middle to capture the main objective, so I enjoy the secondary objectives, and helping shape the overall mission. Good touch
I highly dislike:
Player movement is terrible! The in game characters move entirely too fast, and it looks like everyone has a mixture of tourette syndrome and severe cases of attention deficit disorder.
Weapons damage is absolute crap. Takes at least an entire magazine to kill anyone. Head shots? I haven’t seen that ability. complete crap
Game performance – the trailers made this game look smooth. I can assure you that is not the case. The graphics are not even close to as crisp as in game.
I’d say dont really waste your money on this. I had a few ‘neat’ features, but overall not worth it and does nothing to separate itself from the masses of shooters already out there.
12/05/2011 at 23:28 laikapants says:
As someone who has been headshot a number of times, they do exist and are quite painful.
Here’s the complete weapon stat breakdown: http://denkirson.xanga.com/738334226/brink/
13/05/2011 at 01:20 Warskull says:
The problem with weapon ‘damage’ is that some weapons are quite bad and others are great. You are going to feel like every weapon is crap when you first start.
For a medium:
Gerund with coga scope and duct taped mag, CARB-9 with front grip, drum mag. Scope the ARs and they feel way more effective.
13/05/2011 at 02:19 Axyl says:
i have both Tourettes and A.D.D, and move perfectly fine tyvm..
dick.
13/05/2011 at 08:44 Tom OBedlam says:
Yup, ‘nother ADHDer here, get from A to B just grand
12/05/2011 at 22:38 Jamison Dance says:
I ran into some crashes that were fixed by lowering the resolution. There was another bug which caused the sound to drop out.
ಠ_ಠ
The movement system is great, the objectives are fun, and the classes are all unique and can contribute in different ways. Playing with friends who work together as a team is amazing. This is a very unique game, and I am loving it. It is much different from any other FPS I have played, but overall Brink is awesome.
ʘ‿ʘ
12/05/2011 at 22:41 GeorgeB says:
I wonder if Bethesda’s marketing of this game may have thrown off expectations. Some of these reviews I’ve read are absurd… like the guy at joystuck, who reviewed the game negatively by listing the things he expected but it didn’t (and never was going to) have.
I’m a pretty hardcore W:ET pub player, so it’s right up my alley, and I have enjoyed it so far.
Most disappointing thing to me is the movement. The jumping stinks, as it is just a guide for your smart leaps. Where’s the circle strafe jumping, where will the trickjump scene come from??
Maneuvering through space was one of W:ET’s best feature, the jumping (or double jump, bless it’s heart) was snappy, and the circle strafe jumps were icing on that cake.
I havent tried a light body type yet, but I don’t imagine it’s jumps will be much more responsive than teh medium.
BRINK!
13/05/2011 at 00:55 stupid_mcgee says:
Actually, I thought the light body type’s jump was pretty noticeable. The medium’s jump is rather “meh” but the light can hop around a bit. Not as huge a difference in movement speed between the two, IMO, but the light does move a bit faster.
13/05/2011 at 08:31 mondomau says:
Sorry, I’m not all that up on FPS terminology – are you talking about the thing where people run around in circles, jumping up and down like deranged bunny rabbits on a trampoline? If so, and that isn’t in this game, you just made me 100% less anxious about my pre-order. That shit is ridiculous yo’.
12/05/2011 at 23:01 Tin_man_Tex says:
It’s a polarizing game, for people that have the game it seems to be a combination of:
How angry someone gets if they hit technical problems.
What their expectations were and whether they are willing to spend enough time learning what the game is.
12/05/2011 at 23:11 QualityJeverage says:
I like the game a lot when it works. The sooner it gets a patch (Or ten), the better.
12/05/2011 at 23:27 MrTambourineMan says:
What’s really worrisome is that atm Brink isn’t even at top 20 in Steam sales being rather heavily advertised and all. BTW: I wish Splash Damage guys all the best since I’ve followed them trough thick and thin since they started as a modding team Q3F. It’d be a real shame if they went under because of this – obviously- flawed release.As far as I’m concerned they’re one of the top UK game development teams.
12/05/2011 at 23:34 Spectre-7 says:
Hrm… When I go to Steam’s top sellers, Brink is at the top of the list, and it’s been within the top 5 for the past week. *shrug*
12/05/2011 at 23:43 Rii says:
Steam’s top seller list is made of lies and bullshit in any case, so it’s not like it matters.
13/05/2011 at 01:10 Hunam says:
This. I’d rather believe it was like GAME’s top 10 sellers list, i.e. top 10 donators to the cause that week list rather than believe thousands of people bought the Black Ops map packs.
12/05/2011 at 23:51 EBass says:
Still honestly don’t get why everyone is obsessed with Brink, always looked like a fairly forgetable generic multiplayer shooter to me, still does. What is the big deal seriously?
13/05/2011 at 00:03 TariqOne says:
Shocker. Who’d have thunk this wasn’t going to be remarkable?
13/05/2011 at 00:10 Rii says:
Yeah, I never even gave it a second glance on account of the first glance revealing extensive cases of uglyfoid and genericitus. Oh well.
13/05/2011 at 00:16 Tin_man_Tex says:
There seems to be plenty of posts here explaining why they like it.
13/05/2011 at 00:26 mouton says:
The big deal is called “hype”, everyone talking about the game for months and whipping themselves into a frenzy. You might be not familiar with this technique, of course, it only happened with a hundreds of games before.
13/05/2011 at 00:31 Jamison Dance says:
You can call Brink many things, but calling it a “generic shooter” is one thing that is completely untrue. It is pretty unique in art direction, movement, feel, objective, and more. You might hate some of these things, but I can’t see how someone wouldn’t at least acknoledge that they tried to do something different.
Then again, opinions, ect.
13/05/2011 at 00:55 Rii says:
“You can call Brink many things, but calling it a “generic shooter” is one thing that is completely untrue.”
Maybe it is. Like I said, that was just my first glance impression. I saw an ugly brown shooter with nothing in particular to recommend it and moved on. It’s easy enough to do in a genre as congested as FPS.
13/05/2011 at 00:06 zerosociety says:
Absolutely loving the multiplay… but it favours a type of teamplay – where the participants have to play like an actual team, as opposed to people who just happen to be wearing the same colour – which people either seem to love or hate.
But man, there’s nothing like skimming the side of a wall, dropping down onto a bridge and sliding under heavy and sniper fire to revive a teammate.
13/05/2011 at 00:40 stupid_mcgee says:
I agree. The thing I’ve noticed is that it takes most players a while before they realize they can climb and run around, and exactly how far they can take that. I mean, I know that people know it, but it takes a bit to sink in. A good example is in Container City. Everyone kept running around the corner to the main gate to engage. Then someone saw me jump up a few crates and over a wall and then they realized, “hey, we can jump over there to attack them!”
13/05/2011 at 00:09 NaloaC says:
Been playing on the UK servers this evening, good ping, nice and stable :)
13/05/2011 at 00:11 Koozer says:
It seems this is a pretty niche game, like, say, Alpha Protocol. A niche I think I fit snugly into, and I shall find out tomorrow.
I am also incredibly saddened by the volume of people that take a reviewer’s word and a Metacritic score as gospel. My favourite game on the Gamecube, one of my favourite games of all time, was slated by reviewers at the time for many of the things I loved about it. I learned to never take a review as absolutely objective again.
EDIT: Things! I thought of more things!
Thing 1) I’m disappointed by the people saying “Wait, so it isn’t the equivalent of the second coming of Christ, but for video games? The marketeers lied to me!”
It’s their job to make their product sound like the best thing since sliced bread, you may want to take that into account next time.
Thing 2) Metacritic needs to show the standard deviation in scores, preferably with accompanying graphs of the reception by differing demographics.
13/05/2011 at 01:29 mouton says:
Yes, well, most people want their world simple, with good and bad, numerical scores and as little of their own effort as possible. So they pay for it, thank god.
13/05/2011 at 01:38 TillEulenspiegel says:
Metacritic and review scores in generally are pretty worthless, unless you just want to know what the gaming press thinks. And to be fair, they probably represent the general market fairly well.
What the scores absolutely don’t do is sort out the flawed gems from the mediocre schlock that receives an obligatory 70. If you go by the scores, Two Worlds II looks skippable. If you read a decent review, it sounds like a lot of great ideas with many rough edges. I haven’t played it myself yet, but it’s on my list.
Just glancing through Metacritic, here are some games under 75 (and therefore yellowified): X3: Terran Conflict, Majesty 2, Gratuitous Space Battles, Warlords Battlecry III, Mount & Blade (!!!), Gothic 3 (63 !!!!!!), and Patrician IV are all excellent if imperfect games. But they’re lumped in with the crap and the DLC shovelware. Bah.
13/05/2011 at 02:07 Tatourmi says:
Yes, it is their job to make their games look wonderful, but it doesn’t really suffice for someone to be somehow put into the hype. You also have to be part of the “targeted audience” of the product. You don’t just say “blah, this game is shit” whenever a comercial shows up I guess, you try to look behind the babble towards what it actually offers, and that was kind of interesting:
Brink seemed to be (And probably still is) an FPS with quite a unique way of dealing with movment, an interesting art direction and setting (At least not a contemporary conflict or a world war…) and a pretty nifty way of dealing with teamwork and objectives. That, along with the customisation (Which I always was a great fan of when well done, for many reasons) was enough to make me like this game. And I don’t think they lied on that. It seemed to be present. The problems are lying elsewhere.
13/05/2011 at 02:11 Tatourmi says:
And also: Different websites rate their games differently. It is not a tradition for every website to only rate games from, say, 70 to 100, which is a bit absurd and fucks up these ratings a bit.
13/05/2011 at 00:20 seattlepete says:
I’ve been scanning the internet to try and find a comparison between this game and ET:QW or the old Wolf:ET and haven’t really found that yet. I loved ET:QW, but the player base for that game was always a little on the small side and the learning curve rather steep. I also remember critics calling it “rushed”, but I thought it was well balanced and a lot of fun, even the vehicles. Is there anyone out there who loved ET:QW but is so-so on BRINK?
I’d find out for myself but I am on vacation in Costa Rica and have to wait until next week to fire it up. Pitty me.
13/05/2011 at 00:36 stupid_mcgee says:
Loved ET:QW. It plays just like ET:QW did. There’s outposts, the map setups are similar, the classes and the way they function are similar. It’s basically Enemy Territory + the movement of Mirror’s Edge. The personalization is neat, but not as robust as some had envisioned. Still, it’s rather expansive for a game of this type and I’m sure DLC will only add more items.
Also, many of the servers that I used to play ET:QW on have Brink servers. AOD, Pink Taco, GeezerGaming, Stompfest, etc. and I’ve seen a few nicknames that I remembered from the ET:QW days, before TF2 took over my online murder time.
13/05/2011 at 01:02 Milky1985 says:
Quake wars was great and me and my mates played it a lot, it had one MAJOR issue which they never fixed tho, i think becuase the people that used it woudl shout loudly if so.
The airship rockets had the longest range of anythign in th egame INCLUDING the soliders rocket launcher. If the air ship was parked out at air around your base there was 0 ways of taking it down without getting a rocket in the face.
13/05/2011 at 00:50 stupid_mcgee says:
A few quick things:
Alternate routes are important! If you’re at a bottleneck, there’s probably a route to flank it. Find it and use it. Sometimes you have to hack/demo something, other times exploring and climbing.
Cap command posts! That one measly health pip? Yeah, that can mean the difference between being mulch and being able to duck away to heal and continue the fight.
Buffs! Use them! Engineers are good for more than just mines and turrets. Their damage buff can sway the tide of battle, as well as medics overhealing and soldiers making sure everyone has ammo.
Run free and experiment! It will take most people a while before they feel comfortable with the parkour elements. It will take a while before you begin to think about how and where you can climb to. Once you do, the better. Nothing says “surprise!” like dropping from high above onto your enemies in a flurry of SMG fire.
13/05/2011 at 00:59 Milky1985 says:
RPS you talk about the internet having no oceans so why are you waiting till tomorrow to release your review? Theres already a big load of US based publicaitons which have reviewed the game (and considering some of hte scores i will assume they are not early ones) so why the sodding hell should you have to wait just cause your from the UK?
This no oceans thing isn’t going to work until game makers and reviewers get some balls and stand up to the publishers and point out that they are being stupid beyond belief :/
13/05/2011 at 01:38 trjp says:
They’re said already they won’t release a review until they’ve played it online against some retail customers on UK servers – and as no-one in the UK HAS the game (officially) they have to wait until they get it!?
It’s actually disappeared from Steam entirely – which is a bit odd…
13/05/2011 at 01:48 Rustkill says:
TL;DR: I am loving Brink and it runs like a dream on my system.
—–
For what it’s worth I am using a Core i5 with 4 gig of ram and a Geforce 9800GTX. The game looks great and runs very smoothly at 1680×1050.
I had an absolute blast playing Brink last night. There is definitely a lot to take in and it feels quite different to the FPS games I usually play (mostly TF2 and the Battlefield games). It is definitely becoming more intuitive though. Once I got into the rhythm of things the SMART system was really fun. Vaulting, sliding jumping etc feels really natural.
I get the impression that as I get a feel for all the abilities that are on offer the classes will really begin to shine, but even from the start I was having a lot of fun changing between classes to try different things.
Over the course of about 3-4 hours of play I had the sound drop out once (which sorted itself out when I changed servers). Besides that I have not had any technical issues with the game.
I bought the title for the multiplayer, but as with most multiplayer titles I like to play the singleplayer to get a feel for how the game plays. “Single player” in Brink is painful. The defensive AI is vastly more effective than the friendly AI (to the point where friendly bots would stand within 2 meters of enemy bots and literally do nothing but stand there). Playing co-op might be fun. Playing online was definitely fun.
Despite reading a bunch of stuff about Brink’s shortcoming I have really enjoyed it so far and can’t wait for work to finish so I can go home and play some more. Surely that’s a good sign?
13/05/2011 at 02:17 Mario Figueiredo says:
I came to this game totally in the dark. Since early reports and up until recently, I actually thought this game was also meant to offer a solid single-player experience. I don’t know why I thought that. Definitely I must not have been reading the previews and all the media hubbub right. My bad.
However just recently I learned about all the bots and realized this was just another L4D. Brink, as such, becomes just another great concept game that could actually have offered also a unique single-player experience… but doesn’t. A shame. Definitely not a game for me and the very few friends I multiplay with.
Still… dedicated servers? Insane offering these days. For that alone everyone should love this game. Even if they aren’t going to buy it.
13/05/2011 at 03:29 Gunny says:
I was worried how this game would turn out, given the volleying reviews.. but I kind of knew how it would be, knowing it’s from SplashDamage. And it really did turn out just as I had imagined. This game is a gem, a flawed one currently, but all can be fixed with a couple of patches. The combat in Brink is unlike any I’ve ever seen, so fast paced, so dynamic.. so ACTION it leaves you craving for more.
I’ve seen a lot of comments about the bots, the bots apparently level up with you as you go, I’m around level 8 and the bots are becoming tougher and harder to defeat already. At higher levels they will become wild, they will do all their objectives and ferociously participate in the game.
Can’t wait for the patches and SDK, to make this game even greater, to push it to the top where it belongs!
13/05/2011 at 03:54 Ogun says:
I like it, and haven’t immediately dismissed it for not being BFBC2, which is always a good sign.
Was worried about it not running on my gfx card (ati hd 5700) or having some other showstopper technical issue, but it seems fine so far :)
First impressions:
No vehicles, which is great because they were the crappest thing in ET:QW, but it does have the same guided teamplay from QW/ET:QW which is what I bought it for. Hopefully all the negative press won’t stop some sort of playerbase building up.
You can customise your character. This is a pretty, well-implemented feature – but who in their right mind gives a monkeys about character customisation in a game like this? It means it takes a fraction of a second longer than it should to tell friend from foe. Obviously there’s commercial value in character prettification, but it brings nothing to the game.
The 16-player cap is a little disappointing. I know there’s a long chain about that already, but the people who play these games like to clan up and those clans typically contain more than 8 members who might want to play together. I haven’t seen enough of the maps to know if they’d even cope with more players, but the low cap does make it more of a niche niche game than a niche game.
The art direction/style is a refreshing change from brown on brown but the little ‘Assassins Creed’ twiddles in the sound/music are irritating.
Dedicated servers :)
13/05/2011 at 03:57 Joseph says:
Brink is SUPER FANTASTIC, fuck the haters. The game is unique, stylish, skill based, and teamplay based. It plays like Wolfenstien ET. It is good. I play as d:3_[catguy]
13/05/2011 at 07:18 Chizu says:
I’m having an okay time with this so far.
I unlocked the 2 body types and got myself the chaingun so I can heavy engy it up.
Biggest issues I have so far is teh bug on the one stage that says “Hangar 18″ on its load screen.
It seems I and most of the people I was playing with today, suffer total sound failure on that stage, and have to play it in silence after a few minutes.
The other is despite my framerate being smooth even with everything at max, when I am running, the movement feels jerky and uneven.
Like a mini lagspike or something, only its constant when running.
Oh, and for all they made of it, I am not finding the whole SMART thing to be particularly usefully implemented.
It works, and there are places where its fun to do, but so far the levels have just had a lack of good places to use it, aside from vaulting walls and boxes.
I expected more vertical play in the levels, so people could be on several levels depending on where they climbed
And there are some horrible choke points, and one map where we couldn’t even get out of the spawn area, because the other team had the way out totally blocked.
13/05/2011 at 08:33 Strangera says:
Good! Se ya on the UK battlefield lads!
13/05/2011 at 08:40 Davie says:
So I did get a chance to see it in action today, on my friend’s ECKSBAWKS, and honestly, most of the problems I encountered–spastic aiming and a bizarre control setup–seem like they would be non-issues on the PC version, things that a little key mapping and sensitivity fiddling would easily fix.
Granted, I only played for fifteen minutes, but it seems, overall, pretty solid.
13/05/2011 at 10:41 GHudston says:
I’m one of the people having some serious issues (curse my Mac Pro limiting me to ati cards!) the game has some serious texture gridding and just looks awful. The performance isn’t great either…
It’s a shame because the game looks like one hell of a lok of fun and when the textures do work (i.e. on the character selection screen) it looks very, very slick. Hopefully I won’t have to wait too long for a patch, for both my sake and the sake of Brink itself. I hope this botched launch doesn’t kill it…
13/05/2011 at 11:39 TheChillburger says:
Having played it online over the past few days, I find it to be a very enjoyable alternative to my regular TF2ing. The core gameplay is very strong, and the choke point issue can be worked around with a good team. The server browser is a bit laggy, but I haven’t really experienced the bugs about not being able to join a game. The biggest frustration I have is that 95% of the players just play the game like Black Ops, but I’m hoping that works itself out.
13/05/2011 at 12:04 abraxas says:
Nothing to see here! Moved to another Brink related post!
14/05/2011 at 09:31 ghiest says:
Probably would have bought it but they have pulled it entirely from steam (even the videos …) with not a word (at least for the UK guys). So I just can’t be bothered going out to buy it.