After spending the latter half of this past week reading the many whining and complaining posts / threads in this forum I have decided to throw my two cents into the pot. What do I think of Brink? Simply, I love it. A beautiful looking game with fantastic gameplay. A game that tries to move away from the common theme of 'In it for myself' fps and push the genre toward actual productive 'Teamwork'. Brink has succeeded in doing this. Play this game like Quake or CoD and your team will suffer and you will not complete your objectives. I LOVE this approach to the fps genre. The character customization side of the game is simply beautiful. From spending hours on end detailing out the aesthetic of your toon to fleshing him out with your desired abilities. Awesome!
I have been playing this game and greatly enjoying it, then coming to read the reviews and forum posts and feeling like I am in an alternate reality. I am seeing a whole bunch of pissing whining and hate for a game that although initially temporarily flawed is still awesome and after the fixing of the flaws is even more awesome.

I would though like to address a few of the issues that have been thrown out in the midst of many a tantrum over the last few days:

LAG:
Sure the lag for the past few days has been awful and utterly unmanageable and has pretty much prevented many of us from hitting the online multiplayer side of the game but lets be honest here... The game was released on Tuesday for Pete's sake, they were informed of the problems and today the patch was released that from what I have personally seen has pretty much fixed the issue. It seems so many out there slapped the disc into the drive, loaded up and upon seeing the lag threw their teddy out of the crib, jumped online whined up a storm and tantrumed themselves back to the game store and threw the game away. I hardly saw one person say that although the lag was horrid (and my God was it horrid) they were willing to give Splash Damage the chance to rectify the issue. Personally I saw the lag was monstrous, figured it was opening day teething pains and decided to let them figure it out because this game is just too fantastic to give up on simply because of opening day lag issues. Spash Damage get my kudos for working on this issue and getting us this latest patch that seems to at least have taken the wicked edge off the lag, if not solved it altogether. Last night i couldn't move an inch without being rubber banded across the map, by noon today I was sliding about depositing sticky bombs on the rear ends of security scumbags totally lag free. NICE ONE S.D.

GRAPHICS:
Yes the graphics still have a bit of a chunky feel to them, it has improved somewhat but it is still a little chunky. This again i expect to be rectified in due course and i am happy that S.D. are bashing away at a solution to it. It does not impede the gameplay in any way and is purely aesthetic in nature. Like i said i am happy to keep playing because i know this issue will be fixed.

RAPID LEVELING / XP GAIN:
Many folks are complaining because the leveling process is too quick and they want a more drawn out journey to flesh out their character. I am not going to slam these people that is their personal choice and desire. Personally I feel happy to rapidly blast away the frivolity of leveling up to get all the bells and whistles and get my guy fleshed out as quickly as I can so I can finally concentrate on gameplay. For me that is more important than grinding away for the occasional doggie biscuit. If i wanted to do that i would play fallout.
I also play Bad Company 2, that game allows you to buy your skills right at the start so you can right away get into the actual gameplay rather than flounder around for the first 50 hours scrabbling for decent gear. I LOVED that feature, for me it make the game so much more enjoyable. Still, I can see this continuing to be an issue for some folks and hopefully the many (It better had be many...) DLC that come will offer up new level caps and the accompanying bells and whistles to keep everyone happy. This issue is by no means a game killer and for you if it is, sorry but you missed the whole point of the game.

FRIENDLY / ENEMY AI:
Ok, you got me on this one, the friendly AI is at times like someone emptied the 'special bus' into my XBOX and shoved them all on my team. The enemy will be hitting objectives like special forces ninjas and my team will be swanning around completely ignoring the main objectives and instead deciding to en masse run from CP to CP. Many a time I have been stood alone at a main objective being serial pimpslapped by the enemy, screaming at my tv while trying to single handedly complete an objective. This does need to be sorted out. And as with the other issues i trust it will be. I realize the main purpose of the game is for us to play with other humans but now and again we want to hit solo play without our AI team basically running around the map giving each other hugs, screaming "Franks and Beans!".


These are really the only complaints / issues i have seen out there that seem to be voiced time and time again. None of them for me is a game killer. I am happy that Splash Damage are doing their best to fix the issues we are finding and I am more than happy to keep playing.


What is more, today i read that to compensate for the issues we are dealing with in this opening we will get the first major DLC completely free! It is good to see S.D rewarding our sticking with them by giving us the DLC. Good move guys, and thank you!



In summary... Yes, Brink's opening week was... To be honest, a bit of a disaster on some fronts. Lag, Graphics issues but I've lived long enough to know that now and again mistakes happen and what counts is that when you drop the ball you pick it up and run your ass to the end zone and get the touchdown. Had Splash Damage shown a "Thanks for the cash now go F yourself" attitude I would have took the game back. But they didn't and this game is just too much damned fun. I like Brink and the game is too good to let totally fixable issues kill it in it's first week of existence.



Nice one Splash Damage, thanks for the upcoming DLC and keep the fixes and the new stuff coming.


(Oh, and if anyone is on XBOX and is looking for an extra body for their brink team give me a shout! Gamertag = JR00STER (zeros not o's)).

Pretty much sums it all up!

good work + :turtle:

Tbh,is it any different from any other game that comes out these days?

I got Homefront on release and the crux of my complaining was more than the fact that the game had major issues,rather the lies the the devs told to the public,via podcast,about how they shopped around for quality servers to run the game.They also preached about how if there were any issues in the game that they had contingency plans in place so that if Plan A fails,then they had Plan B,C,and D to compensate.I guess they didn't have Plans E and F.

In all,I hated that game because of many reasons,so I took it back the second that I finished the single player,BUT,I gave it a change,and it just wasn't my cup of tea,and I think that's the important thing.Through all of the gameplay misfires that didn't appeal to me,that far outweighed the technical issues that the game had.

Maybe that's what's going on with this game.Too many people expected one thing,and got something else.That and the fact that the majority of people are very impatient and like the OP said,wanted,better yet,expected it to be perfect right out of the box.

People need to stop having knee jerk reactions and either rent games first or just give games a chance.

I think impatience is a major player in this situation. We live in a plug and play world where we get what we want NOW and it better fulfill ALL of our desires or it is off to the garbage can with you! Did I honestly expect this game to work flawlessly upon release? Are you serious??? Let's look at Blizzard, that gaming company has insane amounts of money just POURING into it from it's World of Warcraft customer base, yet even with the stupid amounts of money they have to use, every single time a major patch, update or expansion is released all hell breaks loose for at least 2 weeks. Lag, disconnects, gear disappearing, the list goes on. Speak to the average WoW customer within that initial release period and you would think it was the most shoddy, poorly designed and detestable game in existence. Yet come back two weeks later and everyone is happily svcking on their world of warcraft heroin teat like nothing ever happened, happy as happy could be (... in a world where you willingly give $15 a month, every waking hour and your college degree or marriage to Blizzard).
When the much heralded 'Black Ops' was released you were lucky to even get into a game for the first week or so. Lobby wait times would reach 10 or so mins for some people. Plus trying to join as a 'party or team' was damn near impossible for a few weeks at least. But they sorted it out and everyone was happy.

Brink's release was tainted by problems / mistakes but they are being resolved. Two weeks from now we will all be happily dining on our hearty meal of beautiful graphics and fantastic gameplay, washed down with a nice steaming mug of free kick a$$ DLC and it will be as if nothing had ever happened (other than the fps genre being kicked in the side of the head and shown that it actually ISN'T all about playing like angry self centered little kill count addicts, you can actually play as a team and still have a stupid amount of fun).

You guys rock!

I feel like the generation we live in is riddled with people who expect too much and have no patience. People were selling PS3s to get an XBox because they couldn't go without multiplayer. They couldn't wait. They gripe about this game, but they can't see the overwhelming good this game has to offer the community.

The one and only thing that got me down was the writing in the "story." The people saying the stuff they say don't look like they should be saying it. (If that makes any sense) It is cool, CUZ I'M IN THE FLIPPIN CUT SCENE. :3

Nice Work!

i think they should make something that you can 'lead' your team to guard you when you go to a objective.
I thought if i yell, that i'm going to blow up the door, they will protect me, but they just ran away, like a couple of chickens.

still, i like the game, and i hope mine will get working again soon, and not in blue like now, but just the normal collours.

Good work on this topic
It explains almost everything that people, such as my, are complaining about.

That was one really long way to say it .