I have been Really intrigued by this game since i first read about it about a year ago, but almost every respectable review I've read online has bashed it to hell. With the obvious amazing Rockstar game coming out on friday (In the UK), i just want to know what the opinions are of Brink from the gamers that have bought it and tried it...??? hope its not just Bethesda's way of getting at the "bulletstorm" crowd. coz it svcked ass juice!

It's not what I expected, but it's good

Online play is [censored], on the 360 I can almost not find any human players at all and I end up getting to play with and against bots 89% of the time

It is something different, not as weird-ass as Bulletstorm

BRINK is fun, but could be better and hopefully will get better with patches and DLC

Don't know what to say, really.. It's not what we saw from the Container City videos a long time before, no - they scrapped alot of stuff

I like it alot, it was pretty much what I expected. Once they get the matchmaking tuned up it will go from a 8/10 in my book to a 9/10.
I'd reccomend to anyone thinking about getting it to try it before they buy it. People tend to either love it or hate it with not much middle ground.

If your into team based multiplayer games, I can recommend buying Brink (at least for PC).

I wasn't even gonna buy the game myself, but then I heard that I could get it on D2D for 25€, so I thought it can't go much wrong with that price, and I have to say that it's the best 25€ I've spent in a LONG time.

It's what I expected it to be, a solid team based shooter that has a nice movement mechanic. Just don't expect the SMARt to be some super highlight of the game. For me it's just part of movement like crouching or sprinting. If you expect it to be endless Mirrors Edge kinda play, then your in for a disappointment.

I'd give the multiplayer experience maybe 9/10. There's the nasty sound bug that bothers me the most, but that's it.

Yeah.. There aint a middle-ground now that I think back to what I've seen :l

Maybe we can call it the ''white gray-zone''? Where the people who think it's good thinks it can and will get better with updates?

I throughly enjoy it. Its fun, its competitive and it makes you work as a team, everything they promised. It does have bugs (what game doesn't) but they are working on it and are releasing patches regularly. I say go for it.

Did′t have so much fun in a long while with a Game. PS3′s online is fantastic. No lag, full rooms, great time. I really enjoy it, But what did you mean with: REAL opinions? Some Hate Brink. Many Love it. And others are whining about everything they can whine about.
Xbox seems to have some serious Problems, but I believe they will fix it soon.

brink is a fun game,, but it's missing something to me. the campaign is way too short which makes online pretty repetitive. Because MP is based off the campaign missions. There are also a lack of objectives for Operatives, which is a negative considering how there are only 4 positions you can choose from. So you'll mostly see Engineers, Soldiers, and Medics which by the way will get the most XP. Again I say, Operative is pretty useless.

Online is still a bit buggy, but once it runs smoothly, Brink is incredibly fun in spurts. It's not a game I could play for hours at a time though.

From a ps3 owner:

The game is pretty awesome on how you play but once your beat both sides of the story and beat the challenges and want to move to online there isnt any differense and its boring. Since I beat it already both ways and did the challenges I might just take it back. And just wait for Dirt 3 to come out =/ I'm upset that it was this short.

The graphics and custimization is awesome by the way and the smart system rules. I wish all games could work like that.

Xbox 360 in Australia seems like a ghost town. Or if you do get a match with people, you'll suffer horrendous lag. But if you're not in this sad excuse for a country it might be a lot better. Right now I am experiencing Brink in a, for all intents and purposes; single player form, and it is frustrating as [censored] relying on friendly bots who seem to have no desire to win.

From a multiplayer only standpoint it is a great game, once the Lag gets patched on 360 it will be amazing!

If you ever played Wolf:ET or Quake Wars and enjoyed it then you'll probably enjoy Brink.

PC version here (with an Nvidia graphics card. Apparently some ATIs have issues?).

It's a great game if you give it a chance. I really don't see how the arguments for "repetitiveness" are even valid. Please tell me how playing the same set of maps on any other FPS are any less repetitive...

The campaign was a bit short but it got the job done. If you're looking for an in-depth campaign experience then it's probably not the game for you. Personally, I bought Brink for the multiplayer aspect not necessarily the campaign, it was just an added bonus for me. I'm in the Xbox crowd so I've been experiencing the same lag issues as everyone else. Since then I've started playing Competitive and Old Skool modes. I find them to be much more fun and I rarely run into lag on those playlists.

My two issues with the game are pretty much in line with what everyone else has been saying. The lag and lack of a lobby for parties but I won't go into that because there are a dozen threads about those every few minutes. They're looking into it though and I have faith they'll fix it up.

Unfortunately Brink is the type of game you have to play to find out really if you're gonna like or not. I was slightly frustrated in the beginning with the Single Player mode and Ai bots, but then realize at heart BRINK is a multiplayer game. It really shines when you play with other people trying to accomplish the same goals of the mission. So if you're only into play single players type games, Brink is not for you, too short and Ai are just clueless most of the time..

Game Mechanics are solid makes for some intense battles on the field.

If you have a good PC i'd say that is the best option, i've played the game on 360 and PC and the 360 version pales in comparison

The meat of the game feels like the old school team based shooters/mods.. but brought up to date with a nice art style and an easy to use/follow UI

There is a fair number of maps, going from the rusted container covered areas to the blue hues of an underwater aquarium keeps things fresh.. all the maps look real nice

Customisation and progression is a double edged sword, character customisation is basically different outfits in different colours.. gun customisation is a little more interesting, but I feel that custom parts for guns should have been part of the normal leveling experience, gaining them through challenges were a chore.. since the challenges were little more then tutorials.. the parkour one has some fun replayability though
Progressing your character is very fast, the more you do in each game to further your teams cause on the mission generally means the more XP you earn.. which speeds your progression, I like the system since it's flexible and lets you remove skills you don't want so you can replace them with something else

Playing Brink on the freestyle playlists is the best way in my opinion, the competative list in particular has no bots taking part.. just 5v5, easily the most fun i've had with this game so far while playing with friends

I tried to leave out the problems with bugs/lag.. as I believe we will see fixes for them, overall the above is my opinion of Brink so far.. enjoying it for the most part.. but I get that nagging feeling that it could have been one of the greats.

As of this moment, I've logged 40+ hours on this game. I'm happy with it the way it is, and DLC will only make it even better.

I agree with Darksider. It took me a couple play sessions to start appreciating Brink for what it is. I've been enjoying it more and more each day. Since it is a team-based game your experience is dramatically affected by the people you play it with.

I can't speak for the folks playing on the dreaded 360 version, :\ I'm on the PC version, and loving it so far. Very TF2esque, which is a good thing. The game runs smoothly on my entry level pc (amd 6000+ dual core, 1 gig nvidia card) high settings. I haven't had any issues with lag like others are saying. Still a lot of bots in the matches, hoping for a steam sale or something to get more folks playing.

There are still a good amount of tweaks that need doing, especially for operatives (the biggest one would be that your disguise isn't dropped while performing sabotage objectives).

It's Bethesda, so I wouldn't really recommend getting the game till june, when the first major patch/update is released. (Bethy is notorious for needing out of the gate fixes, but their support is always well done)

I've gotten about 40+hours logged, I'd give the game a 7.5/10

My two cents:

Brink works. Not as completely as they said it would, and some aspects are frustrating to say the least, but the things that do work, work well and make for a varied and interesting game.

The smart system is game changing. Thats not just some hyperbole statement, it genuinely changes the way you view environments, spaces and encounters. Movement feels fluid, natural and easy. Wall hops with the lights take a little getting used to, but when you nail it it feels amazing. They've taken what could have been a difficult concept and made it second nature. Ive yet to encounter a single occasion where Ive got stuck on the scenery or met an obstacle I think I should be able to get over and not be able to. The beauty is they've really thought about map design as well and there's almost always another way around the objective. Exploring and finding a new pathway is a lot of fun in Brink. I cannot express how much fun moving around in Brink is. The shooting mechanics are solid, but its the simple mundane act of moving from A to B that is the most fun, when was the last time you could say that about a game? This really has set the bar for movement in a FPS game, once you've experienced it you'll struggle to go back to anything else.

The class system also works. Operatives are a little on the light side, their features don't match up to the other classes, they can't buff so have less use as a team class and don't work as well as you'd expect as lone wolf class. Although cortex bomb is a blast - literally. Aside from that each class has their own uses and part of the fun is experimenting with each one is great fun. there's a lot of lifespan in the game simply trying different classes with different abilities and you really can create a character that matches you're playing style.

Graphically its a really very pretty game, lots of colour, vibrancy and the sound compliments it really well. Some reviews slated Brink on it's sound, but I really can't see why, the sound quality and variety is top notch. Some of the environments are a little on the boring side, hanger 18 and reactor come to mind, but only because when you've experienced the likes of aquarium and container city going back to anything else feels a little dull.

My first issue with the game is around the weapons. Most are unlocked from the start and the rest unlocked by completing two star challenges which aren't that difficult and can be done pretty easily. I have no issues with everything being unlocked quickly, but with the weapons it really doesn't give you the desire to experiment that much. There's no "Hey I've just unlocked a new weapon, let's try it out". Instead you complete one of the challenges and you unlock 3 weapons at once, to add to the ones already unlocked. Personally I didnt feel much of a difference between the SMGs and the ARs either, each felt similar to the others in its class and I think they could have done more with the variety and feel of each weapon to make them more unique.

Secondly the story line. Coming up with a good, original concept these days is the hardest thing, but Brink does that. It creates a world you can believe in and a story concept that could make you really care. This makes it all the more shocking when you see just what they did with the story. It's poor. There's potential there to create something special, but the game doesn't give you any characters to care about (and aside from the leader of the resistance and the leader of the security, doesn't even give names) and tells a story that is disjointed and badly told. There are flashes of creativity here and there, the mission in container city for example, the security believe its a bio weapon they need to stop, the resistance are told its a vaccine for the sickness thats devastating the guests, both having a valid reason to fight, but since we never find out whether it was a vaccine or a bio weapon it become a mute point, quickly forgotten as we move onto the next set play. And thats all the story of Brink is, a series of set plays, a flimsy pretext for the objectives you need to carry out. When you're playing multiplayer, sliding into cover while firing away madly you wont care, but to take such an original concept and create such a poor story is nigh on unforgivable. The hard part was done, creating a world we could lose ourselves in, but for all the talk of whose side will you fight on, in the end you just don't care either way, and thats tragic.

However the biggest issue I have with the game is online and the AI in particular. There is no lobby system. What that means is you select a mission to play and choose to play it online then the game tries to match you up with other players and uses bots to fill in any gaps. The problem is it simply doesn't give you long enough to match up with other players before putting you in game and populating the open positions with bots. The highest number of humans Ive played with so far is 4 in total including myself, with two on each side. This would not be such a problem if the AI were any good but in a lot of cases they're simply not. Let me use an example...

I'm in a game on Aquarian playing as security. Our first objective is to destroy a door. It's a tight space and the fighting is fierce. We plant (we as in me and the other human on my team) and they defuse. We get down to a minute of time remaining, we're going to lose if we can't plant this bomb in the next 60 seconds, yet all I keep hearing from my AI squad mates is "I'm going for the health command post". Really? Right now? See human players can see the timer and know that what needs to be done is pile in there and overwhelm the room with bodies so someone can plant a charge and then defend it like crazy until it blows, but the AI is still trying to do secondary objectives at a time when it really doesn't help the team.

The next objective is escorting someone out of the aquarium. This generally goes well up until a particular walkway which is long and narrow and is overlooked by a machine gun nest. It is a proper bottleneck in every sense of the term. And invariably the hostage gets downed and stuck on the walkway pinned down by constant enemy fire. Now there are three approaches to the top of the walkway, there's up the walkway itself, the stairs underneath which lead up to the machine gun nest and there's stairs by an elevator that lead up to the top of the walkway from the side. Again, what most humans can see is that going straight up the walkway is pretty much suicide, so the best strategy is to send half the team up the stairs behind the MG nest and half up the stairs by the elevator, clear out the enemy and have one person go back to escort the hostage up the walkway. Humans can deduce this, the AI cannot and simply run headlong up the walkway, or once again all I keep hearing is "I'll defend the generator". The generator? How does that help us? If there was just some way to give them direction it would be so much better, but there isn't and the AI, on offence at least are useless.

Now if there was a proper lobby system, you could join a lobby, wait until it was populated with human players and then when everyones hit ready go into the game. With a full game of human players this really could be something brilliant. I've yet to experience a full game with human players and the less than competant AI means games sometimes end up in hugely frustrating matches.


There's a lot to read through there so kudos if you actually did read it all. In short the gameplay itself is fun and original, the framework and story are critical flaws in Brinks design. If you buy it, you'll have a blast, but I expect you'll be moving on to other things before the summer is out. Brink could have, should have been a game to change the face of FPS games. Instead its just a temporary, albeit extremely fun, distraction.

Uhh... Great post and all, but I suppose you don't think it's a bit long to be two cents? It seems to be 2 [insert highest coin denomination of your country] to me.

￡40? Cut the price in half and it'd be worth it.

Wow dude, you certainly got plenty of feedback from your thread. I paid 60 bucks to be an Official Brink Beta Tester and I think you should too cause it is an awesome game. Like mentioned before. This game is a 8+/10 and once they get this mp lag issue fixed it will be a 9/10 for sure.

In Braveheart land two cents goes a long way... :biggrin:

[censored] (Insert generic adjective)

It's one of those games that you need to play a good few hours before you can judge it.
Your first impressions are almost always wrong with this game, because there will always be something that suprises you and changes your opinion, whether it's a drastic change or not.

BRINK is very different from other FPS games even in the good way its a good game that is fun but one problem is like said before the matchmaking is [censored] there is no lobbies so if your not in the US or UK you well not join many games i hope they add a lobby future that would be awesome and i like that they are giving free DLC in june for 360 users that futures new map and new content but its really fun alone or with friends