I've been lurking the forums for a while now and I'm planning on going to Best Buy later today to pick up Brink. I just wanted to make an observation for those of you distressed by the negative reviews so far:
I know some of the negative reviews have been pretty suspect, but remember that these pre-release reviews were all based on offline versions of the game where the reviewers played exclusively against bots. Brink was designed from the ground up as a multiplayer game, so it is pretty dishonest of these review sites to rush reviews out the door before they can meaningfully test the live multiplayer against actual humans. Did you only play Tribes 2 or RTCW offline against bots? Of course not. Indeed, you probably shouldn't buy any of these games if you have no intention of playing online to begin with. If a friend of yours said she wanted an FPS but couldn't afford Xbox Live, for example, would you tell her to get Brink? Don't think so.
Gamers are well aware of Brink's multiplayer focus and the multiplayer pedigree of its developers. That said, it's pretty ignorant for these review sites to rate this game based on (A.) the depth of its single player campaign mode, and (B.) how the bots perform in offline mode. Any self-respecting reviewer would have waited two weeks after release to see how the online experience is. Maybe it's great, maybe it's not. Instead, we get a bunch of link-baiting negative reviews that nitpick ancillary parts of the game.