People need to give it a rest, seriously. This is a message board, a public forum -- for a video game made by Splash Damage. People are going to come here with all sorts of issues with the game -- they like it, they hate it, or they have significant problems with the game and/or technical issues. What I am seeing on these forums is just plain ridiculous, and the term "devoted fan"(edited for censor) has just been brought to a whole new level.
1: The Anti-COD- I think it's safe to say that everyone is familiar with COD and the MW series. I think you'd be just straight up ignorant to say it's not popular and/or successful. I think the more hardcoe of us PC Gamers can agree that everything went downhill with the release of MW2 and IW's decision to not include dedicated servers. This created a lot of anger in the PC community and resulted in less than stellar PC sales. It also turned the tides in the sense that a lot of people (such as myself) will never purchase another MW game unless it has dedicated servers, period. Whether you like COD or MW or not, you can't deny its presence. I think most of us can agree that MW2 was not a great game either, all the killstreaks and all the new COD BS with chopper gunners etc is just plain silly and bad.
With all that said, all I see on these boards is this sort of "Anti-COD" ism, if I may call it that. I think a lot of the people on these boards have never played anything other than COD and are just scratching at the doors looking for something different -- they found something different and now it's suddenly their all holy messiah of FPS. YES, Brink is different -- it's not about KD/R, and there's no silly killstreak chopper gunners flying around. Does that make it a good game? Just on those grounds? Is Brink GREAT because it's not COD? Just sit and think about it. If you need more experience with good games, PM me I will give you a list of recommendations. For starters I'd suggest TF2, ET:QW, CS, Section 8:Prejudice.
Stop being foolish, please.
2: "The game just came out, give it some time"- I for one am tired of hearing this from people, and it scares me that so many people say it over and over. "The game just came out, it has bugs -- Look at FO:NV, it was nigh unplayable for months". REALLY? I mean, is that OK NOW? Let me tell you something, and I really want this to stick -- "IT IS NOT OK TO RELEASE GAMES THAT FUNDAMENTALLY DO NOT WORK.". Just because we have the internet and the capability to patch, DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN RELEASE GAMES BEFORE THEY ARE READY.
Patching is for hotfixes and BALANCE ADJUSTMENT, not FINISHING THE GAME.
I want this game to work, I really do. I've been looking forward to it for some time now. I'd say once or twice a day I get into a decent game that works -- and it's fairly fun. It's not worth the work though. I see hundreds of EMPTY servers in my server browser, I am forced to play on servers with pings above 120 because that's all I can find with other players.
3: Let's be honest here- The guns are sloppy, usable yes, but very sloppy. The movement system is sluggish, very sluggish. Yes you can mantle things, you can climb things -- GREAT, but you still get stuck on EVERYTHING and the fact remains, it's sluggish as all hell. The maps are bloody terrible. I like close quarters fighting and intense firefights -- but this is just too much. One corridor to the next. Container City is a disaster of map design, seriously. I wonder if when they were designing it if they actually said "OK, spawn point here, and right outside of it put a bunch of really good defensive camping spots. We want it to be nearly impossible for the team to get out of their spawn here." IT'S NOT EVEN FUN ON THE DEFENDING TEAM. I FEEL BAD. I feel like the map design is probably the worst problem in Brink.
The graphics are TERRIBLE. I know they are going for a certain art style, and I like it -- but the actual textures and effects are JUST PLAIN UGLY. I run this game at 1920x1080 with an i7 and a 5870 -- and I have to turn settings halfway down because the game is so poorly optimized. Yes I've updated drivers -- YES, I used to 11.5a ATI hotfix.
No excuses here. Splash Damage is a PC DEVELOPER. You know what you're supposed to do before you release PC GAMES? YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO TEST THEM.
I dropped $50 on this game, I'm trying desperately to get my money's worth and to like this game, but I'm here posting on the forums instead.