So is Brink actually good?

[Magellan]

I can't read a single review where in the comment section doesn't consist of pissed off nerds saying

"Fuck you"
"You have no I idea what you're talking about"
My personal favorite "This game is a 9.75"
"Go back to playing Call of Duty @#$%%^!"

Does the parkour add anything to the game?
Does it do anything that another game hasn't already done.

[Chardok]

Please don't let Stark see you write the word parkour.

[Sarevok]

It's Unreal Tournament assault mode for 2011. Single player is bunch of bot matches and multiplayer is your generic online shooter. Only made worse by lack of vehicles.

[TheFeniX]

Good concept, terrible implementation.

Bots either stand around getting shot or will pull immediate 180s and 3 shot you. Sometimes they brutally assault an objective, plant/repair/sabatoge, then find cover, or they just stand there and die. Pity the man who attacks a bot defending something though, they'll kill anything that comes within a 50 mile radius of the objective.

And the turrets are bi-polar. Sometimes, they immediately track a target and pump them full of lead. Other times, they'll sit there and do nothing while a bot stands right in front of it, shooting the turret with a pistol.

Who cares though, this game is meant to be played online. 8-player co-op sounds like fun. Too bad the lag is atrocious forcing multiple disconnects and migrated server hosts. After a while, you may get lucky and just have bearable latency. Bots will still teleport around and kill you dead.

As for 8 vs 8? Don't make me laugh. I tried it once. I literally couldn't move.

The game is a fucking laggy, broken (at least on 360), unbalanced piece of shit. An online game, launched with broken online. I knew it was going to suck (although I didn't expect it to be broken) and I still let my buddy convince me to waste money on it. Serves me fucking right.

[Magellan]

Please don't let Stark see you write the word parkour.

Why?

[Chardok]

Please don't let Stark see you write the word parkour.

Why?

It's a....thing. Trust me.

[Molyneux]

Please don't let Stark see you write the word parkour.

Why?

It's a....thing. Trust me.

Not a fan of the parkour luck, is he?

[Stark]

The best part about the game is the bunch of monkeys who made it didn't even test 8v8, so the lag is so bad they want to limit the number of players in a match to make it playable.

That's right; in a game that is only 8v8, 8v8 is officially unplayable. QA? What's that? It's almost like the devs are a bunch of Quake modders with no clue how to make a quality game! The lazy 'kill you in 2 shots with a pistol while facing the other way' AI only works to highlight this, and the chokepoint-filled maps give a huge advantage to the defence leading to plenty of laughs.

However, describing it as 'generic online shooter' is pretty stupid. Brink has a lot of interesting ideas; it's just totally broken. Where vehicles would even fit in is a fascinating question, since the game uses maps from 1998 made of s-bends and tiny rooms.

[White Haven]

Wait, waitwaitwait... I got to the end of that post, nodded to myself slightly, then looked back and saw the author. Who the hell are you and what have you done with Stark? That was coherent and to the point, it actually had non-hyperbolic criticism, and there wasn't a retarded meme in sight.

I...find myself deeply unsettled by this new, non-asshole Stark. It's like a pod-person. But in a good way.

Don't be a substanceless dickhead, or I will remove your ass from this thread. --Lagmonster

[Stark]

I'm sick.

You don't have to reach far to get fair criticism of a game where if you try to play a challenge with a friend, all the bots that make up your team will never spawn, leaving you in a 2v8 match.

There are unfair complaints though - many reviews complain that bots don't always heal or res you or whatever, but a core mechanic is supplies and most bots are throwing their buffs around so much they rarely have any. The combat AI, where a medic will run past you, towards the enemy, then try to throw the syringe back and die, is a more serious problem.

[White Haven]

That squares with what I've heard about the game as well. Horrible AI which would be redeemed by the multiplayer side if the multiplayer side wasn't shit-broken as well. In other news, you need to get sick more often, G&C becomes a more coherent place.

[defanatic]

It's almost like the devs are a bunch of Quake modders with no clue how to make a quality game!

I think they were. I also have a vague inkling that was your point.

It's basically ET, with parkour. Give or take. Interesting features, but poorly polished.

[Sarevok]

The game itself is based a Quake engine. Id Techg 4 to be exact.

[Stark]

Yeah, they used a famously unscalable engine for a cross-platform game, which is why the console versions look like dogshit compared to the PC version.

[Sarevok]

Actually superb crossplatorm performance is where engines developed by ID shines. They have been ported to everything from cellphones to mp3 players.

The problem is that the underlying technology is very old. Just trying to make a map in GTKRadiant makes it clear how limited it is.

[Stark]

Except Tech4 scales down really badly? Rage (which 'runs' on phones) is Tech5. The developers are limited by their skillbase as modders, with their background meaning they're limited to 'use Tech4' and 'start from scratch'. It's not like Bethesda cares about the console market anyway, but you'd think they'd have questioned the wisdom of using such a terrible engine in 2011 for a cross-platform game.

[DPDarkPrimus]

It's a solid but not exceptional game that has an older-school vibe that is plagued by technical issues. If you have a group of people to work as a team, it's pretty good... wait, we can't have 8v8 any more... uh... hope they fix that in the next patch.

[Jade Falcon]

Well I thought this seemed like a decent game from what I'd seen, but by the descriptions here including Starks (Thanks for that), I'll wait till it hits the bargain bin. I'm in no hurry anyway as I finally got a new graphics card, so I'm catching up on some of the stuff that didn't play too well on the old settings.