I played the game on PS3 when it was new. I kept playing as the community started to die. I disappeared for a while, came back, and kept intermittently playing ever since. I still - STILL - miss the way the AI behaved before the patch to "improve" it. It was a cool idea, it was worth giving it a shot, but it didn't work. So, they reversed the "improvement", right? NOPE. Game's screwed because of it, and there's no way to un-break it except to uninstall everything and play offline. Doing that has its own issues, including un-patching a few actual bugs that kind of needed fixing, and losing a lot of content.

I still occasionally pick the game up. I'm still impressed by the parkour mechanics, and enjoy using them. I'm still impressed by the customisation, and enjoy playing with my characters' appearance. And I'm still disappointed in the behaviour of what had originally been quite competent and enjoyable AI.

On release, at the game's inception, things were great. If you had to run solo (or if you wanted to), the AI would support you, back you up, help out on objectives. If they weren't the right class, they'd stick with you if you were. They'd heal you when you needed it, provide support, and being the only non-AI, you felt like you were a tipping-point - a balance breaker. Either you did well, and pushed your team just hard enough to sway things in your favour, or you played poorly and held the team back, causing the mission to fail. You weren't necessarily doing everything yourself, and that's fine. It's a team game, not a solo mission.

But apparently, in spite of the complete lack of ANY feedback I've been able to find ANYWHERE on ANY official OR UNOFFICIAL forum relating to the game on any level which suggested it, the developers decided it was time to "innovate" again. They had somehow pulled out of nowhere some crazy idea that players need to "feel like the hero" and do everything themselves. To be fair, this sounds like a reasonable-ish idea in theory. But it wasn't backed by feedback that was being posted A-N-Y-W-H-E-R-E at all. Nothing - absolutely NOTHING - was suggesting that players wanted the AI's behaviour changed to force the player into the role of hero in a team game.

So, the patch came out. And with it, the game's possibility of being played not-multiplayer was thrown out the window. If one team has more humans than the other, that team's bots become noobasaurus rex and a half. They didn't just go "herp derp we won't use the required class for the objective". They didn't just go "herp derp we'll only go near the objective if the player is there". They went "OMG THERE'S AN OBJECTIVE RUN AWAY". They actively and aggressively kept themselves from ever getting close enough to any objective to actually be of any use. Regardless of the AI's chosen class, or the player's chosen class, every single friendly AI will - if your team has more players, which in single player is forever - keep themselves from ever providing anything resembling support. The non-player-team AI remain just as competent, while the player's backup, who are meant to be there to help win the game, are actively SABOTAGING any hope of success.

On Easy, the friendly AI becomes even more stupid than usual. On hard, it's less impactful... but on hard the AI has stupid aimhax levels of unfair advantages. Not just an aimbot where they line the shot up perfectly, but at maximum range for a shotgun, where it's going to be barely possible to see a single pellet hitting a target, the enemy AI will LAND EVERY SINGLE PELLET INTO YOUR HEAD. This isn't an exaggeration. Half the time, it happens on normal difficulty. The rest of the time they still land enough headshots to one-shot you (unless you're a double-buffed heavy with the health console buff on top), but occasionally a few hit your upper body instead, which is totally an improvement.

One other thing which was a problem all along, but didn't grate so much without all the other changes, is that the AI doesn't behave like it's playing on a console. No matter what you do, a console player is limited by the controller, and their sensitivity settings. If you wind your sensitivity too high, your precision aim suffers (not too badly if you're good, but it's still a slight loss in accuracy). If you turn it too low, it limits how fast you can turn. And more importantly, even when you turn sensitivity all the way up, there's a hard cap on how quickly you can turn. With a mouse, that turn speed limit is significantly less of an impact, and you can quickly spin without losing as much of your precision aim. When you're playing a console shooter, this means that getting behind an opponent gives you an edge - you can land a few hits before the opponent begins turning, and maybe 1 or 2 more before they finish turning. On PC, this is going to be maybe 1 or 2 hits, not really an advantage in a game like Brink. But when the proper approach to gameplay for console results in "I got behind him, as soon as I open fire I take a full shotgun blast to the face even though I'm further away than the weapon's effective range", the game stops being fun.

If I play on easy, the AI accuracy seems (mostly) fair. But my allies are so far beyond incompetence that they make the game not fun to play. If I play on normal, the AI behaves slightly less thoroughly inept, but only slightly, but the enemies have magical homing bullets of "screw you, player" and the ability to move in ways the player is barred form using, and it stops being fun to play for slightly different reasons. Neither option is competent game design. Neither option is fun. I've spoken about this back when it happened, and several times since. Nothing has come of it. That said, I KEEP COMING BACK, because the cool things about the game are still REALLY COOL.

I'm expecting not to see anything fixed regarding this issue, but I'm hoping, just with the faintest sliver of hope, that maybe this time someone will see this and actually decide to do something about it.

Please, PLEASE give Brink another chance on PS3. Ideally I'd like to see the AI's accuracy/turning response AND behaviour reworked, but just undoing the destruction of their objective-based behaviours would be a huge benefit.