» Sat May 21, 2011 2:17 pm
Great concept, poorly implemented.
Brink is a great game, it's fun to play both pve (coop) and pvp matches... the real issues with the game mostly arise from the fact that it was released too early, without any official beta testing done. The game is chalk-full of bugs, compatibility issues, random crashes, multiplayer connectivity issues, poorly optimized performance, and numerous glitches that all could have been solved if the game had been put through a proper testing phase.
Replayability is going to become a huge issue soon as well, I think - there are only a dozen or so different maps, and objectives are pretty similar on every map. Replayability is always an issue in shooter games, though - you can only do the same thing for so long before the game starts to wear thin and lose it's appeal. What SD should consider here is releasing weekly or monthly content patches that continue the storyline and add new maps and objectives to the game, that's the only way they'll really keep players hooked. I mean, I just hit level 20 a couple days ago on my first character, and I'm already starting to lose interest in the game. I imagine that by the time I level my other two characters up to 20 I'll be done and wont have much interest playing anymore until something new is released.
Weapon, attachment, and character customization options are pretty heavily limited as well, so there's no true customization value here, which was another big selling point of brink. The website has a flash app that shows hundreds of combinations... and there are that many, but they all look so similar that your chances of running into other players with a nearly identical appearance to your own are pretty high right now.
Ultimately, my opinion is this: Brink will keep most players entertained for a month, maybe two... but past that time period the only people likely to stick around are those die-hard team fortress 2 or counterstrike [censored] that view this as an evolution of those games. If a month or two of relatively decent entertainment is worth 50-60$ to you, then by all means get brink - I would, however, recommend getting the game on a console rather than PC though, since most game stores will not accept trade-in PC games.