When Brink was announced, I immediately took notice. A shooter that was going to break new ground in the FPS genre, where “the formula” was standard practice. Insane parkour movement, paired with team based game play, and a new visual style, got a lot of us FPS fans really worked up. But should they have been so excited for Brink?
At first glance, Brink looks like it will bring the current kings of the FPS to their knees, but after picking up the controller, it appears that it may be just another niche shooter not meant for the masses.

The character creation really is deep, as there are quadrillions of ways to mix and match what you have. What they don't tell you, is that some of those quadrillions, are simple color scheme changes. The same problem was ran into with the gun customization. There are a lot of guns, but each gun has about a dozen attachments, and they are the same dozen attachments that all the other guns have as well. So again the quadrillions, are very minute changes to the guns. All in all, the character customization feels flatter than they made it seem.

After I picked out my character (Security first you know), I jumped into the Campaign. After a short introductory video, I was thrown into my first game. During my first 5 minutes of game, it was apparent to me that their default controls were not for me.
Lucky for me, Splash Damage decided that they would make the controls fully mappable. Thank you! Too many games today force the player to play the way the developers think they should, not how they feel comfortable. This is where I found that Splash Damage had included defaults from many popular games including Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Left4Dead. Brilliant move on their part, I think.

So after swapping a few buttons around, mainly swapping Grenades and the SMART button, I got back into game.

The first thing I noticed when trying to play is the AI seemed to either be abnormally good at finding me, getting to me, and shooting at me. Then in the same instance, another AI would stand next to an enemy and call out that they are laying a mine. There wasn't a whole lot of gray area when it came to the intelligence of the AI bots. They were either drooling imbeciles, or near super human gun fighters. Often the drooling imbeciles were on my team. Sure, medics picked me up, and other AI classes would help with the main objective sometimes, but overall, they proved to be nothing but than another set of eyes.
Then I had a revelation, I would invite the AI bots onto my Fireteam with me. Lo and behold, you can Fireteam with the AI, and overall they seem to like and help me better now. I'm not sure if this is just the placebo effect, and honestly I don't care at this point.
Overall game play is mostly solid. The SMART movement system seems a little clunky, until you learn to guide yourself better, and add in manual jumps, mantels, and slides. So with a little work, running through and up a level is smooth and intuitive. The SMART movement system is something that all FPS developers should be looking at closely.
The gun play is also well done. With Splash Damages's history of FPS, it is no surprise that Brink's weapons are well designed, balanced, and deployed. What is surprising is the lack of recoil, and the forgivable hip firing. Though I am sure this is a development that sprang from the SMART system, it is a nice change.

The firing of weapons in this game are very, very satisfying. You feel like you have full control of the weapon, and your character, the sound of the guns are something to be marveled at. Audio Director Chris Sweetman, did some amazing work. Not only did he record all of his own gun firing sounds, he also laid down lion roars, women screaming, and his own voice, to the samples to make them more violent. I know some of you will not be able to enjoy Brink at this level through your TV speakers, but if you have surround sound, or a set of video gaming headphones, use them! You will begin to hear the work that this man put into this game. The only problem I have had with the sound is sometimes the sound will pop and glitch. This happened the very first time I put the game in and it started popping and glitching on the Security introductory video, forcing me to restart the game. This will happen in game also, and often is accompanied by frame rate drop (I'll talk about this later)
I am sad to say though, that the sound design was more engaging than some other parts of this game. Mainly the story line. The premise of a civil war on a floating city was a great one. In fact, on paper, both sides have an extremely valid reason for picking up their guns and marching to war. The cut scenes are well done and are well written. Though what is lacking from this equation is the investment of the player character. I was left feeling as though I just got hired to come in to work for one side or the other. There is no investment of myself in the battle. I'm just there to shoot bullets.
I think this could have been avoided with just a bit of in game lead in such as your character arriving at the Ark, or going through Security training. Being dropped in on the first battle of the war may have been a good idea, but it didn't pan out very well.
The graphics in this game are good. They are colorful and engaging, unlike the current generation of triple a titles. It is easy to tell your teammates from your enemy with a quick glance. They did great work on the excellent graphics, though there are some problems. Textures like to pop in late, particularly when you are moving quickly though a map. This seems to fight against the SMART system. There are frame rate drops that seem to be related to the audio glitching. These kind of problems can be fixed though patching, but I feel that Splash Damage should have had these kinds of problems squashed. Paul Wedgwood has said that they had spent the better part of a year polishing Brink. I have to say, I think they were polishing something else, because it doesn't feel like they were polishing this game.
So, after a few days of playing Brink offline (Thanks to the PSN), I was able to play online with my clan. If you didn't have problems with Brink before you tried to play online, you will soon after.
I am all for developers going out on a limb and trying new things in games, heaven knows we need innovation in the FPS genre. I have to say when you make it difficult for players to play a game based on team work with their friends and clansmen, you need to reevaluate what is going on in your game. The lack of a lobby system is frustrating to say the least. At this point it almost seems like Splash Damage had a list of features that larger FPS titles have, and purposely avoided them.
Along those lines, I have to ask. Where is the clan support? It was my understanding that most of the Splash Damage crew originated from a highly competitive circuit. Why would they neglect to add a clan system into a game that is so heavy handed team play? Your guess is as good as mine my friend.

There are a lot of things frustrating and fun with Brink. Fortunately, the things they did wrong can be corrected. And if they fix it in a timely manner, Brink could be the revolutionary title that they touted it to be for almost 2 years.

Verdict: Rent it first.

So tell me, what do you think of Brink?

I agree with a lot of things you said, but if you want my full, unedited thoughts of Brink, let me copy&paste from a different thread what I've said earlier today.

"I have a question for everyone here, since we all seem to agree or somewhat agree that we think a sort of lobby system would be great? But they didn't put it in because....Well I'm not sure why, maybe they think a "drop-in drop-out shooter" doesn't need a lobby. But, maybe we should look at a game that most of the users here who want to suggest lobbies, are completely overlooking, a game that made Game of the year what was it....Last year?

Borderlands. Okay I didn't started in shooters until the first Halo, but the first time I saw Borderlands, I knew it was going to be a fun game, and I still have it, that's right, my original copy, not the one from last year. And I know I don't have enough people on my friend's list that play Borderlands to get the "full experience" of such a stylized drop-in drop-out game, but it does have a lobby. Sure it's a bit of a one-sided lobby for the person's campaign you jumped into, since they have all the power to kick and invite people, but I'm pretty sure if you're not hosting the campaign you can still at least invite people, and sure it's only four people to campaign, but if we think about it, those four people can pretty much come and go as they please. And okay, yes I see why it could be a problem for lobby listings or rosters or whatever else you're all on about, but that's just another beauty of Borderlands, you wanted to connect to an online campaign, and all you had to do was search a list, pick the one you liked the most and join in.

So all I'm saying is this. If we want a lobby, lets leave it at eight people since thats what the skirmishes on any level in this game are restricted to, there is certainly no need for any kind of "tdm" or "big teams" the teams are big enough if we haven't already realized that, and I don't know about everyone else, but the concept of a CTF in this game? Seems a bit silly. I mean if you want to rationalize it, half of your missions are such. "Steal the data key" "Escort this man to safety" "Retrieve the black box" that's almost half the missions right there guys, so....I think we're good on defend/capture objectives. I don't think people would mind a lobby/roster list for this game, but at the same time I don't know how hard it is to just throw in either. No, I'm not saying "Let's take the focus of making this into a CoD clone and focus that on making this a Borderlands clone." Cause that's just stupid, Borderlands will have it's sequel, and it certainly will not take place on earth, or any place LIKE earth, Brink is its own game, but like others, it could use improvements, no matter how major, slight, or overlooked they are, and like other games, it doesn't hurt to take a few basic or general ideas from some really successful games and implement them in their own unique way.

So I guess that's pretty much my suggestion, instead of worrying about what kind of "Clone" Brink turns into, figure out the right way to implement ideas that we know have worked before. Brink and Borderlands will probably never leave my library of games, no matter how "unplayable" someone says either game is. I like them, and I'd get rid of my Call of Duties before I got rid of them. "

Not to mention I also have a definite problem with my character seeming to just be in the background like a guy who's another hired gun. It's bothersome when you consider the fact that everyone else in nearly ever other video has something to say at one point or another, I mean even if they want to make your character that "strong silent type" those guys still open up sooner or later or say something. Master Chief was the all-time Bad*ss of xbox and didn't say but like four words in the first game, that's okay I guess when you consider multiplayer for that game was almost nothing but clones of him until Halo 3 and Reach.

But I would much rather compare Brink to Saint's Row in this manner, why? Because in Saint's Row, your character had NOTHING to say unless you were watching the cut-scene of a mission that just brought down a gang. Other than that? He made faces....Slightly annoying, especially when all your character in that game said were quips, I mean here, in Brink....Your character could have been a character that's like Chen's right hand or something and that's why you're on every mission and could always have something to say to the men....Or you could be a top Security Agent and that's why you're sent on the missions, like maybe you're the Captain's Lt. or something....But I completely more than I can say agree about the lack of character depth.