Home Gaming The Brink Review Round-up and Patch details – Brink or Sink?

The Brink Review Round-up and Patch details – Brink or Sink?

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The Brink release is upon us and with so many not-so-cheap games coming out these days, everyone is being very careful about where they splash their cash. I’ve been very personally excited about Brink for a long time now, it looked like it had some serious Mirror’s Edge/Team Fortress 2 crossover potential going for it.

We take a look at what the critics are saying. Game of the year material? Fail of the month?

Taking a look through all of the scores on Metacritic, it’s pretty clear that Brink is not exactly lining up for game of the year, but at the same time it doesn’t seem to be a complete train wreck, scoring an overall metascore of 69/100.

What most of the reviews seem to be saying, and it’s something that personally really gets to me when developers do it, is that the game seems to have lots of potential a bunch of its elements, but not enough to carry it.

The highest score run into the 80s, with the highest being an 88/100. Machinima scored the game an 80, and praised it for its originality saying:

“Truly an original offering: it’s got all the requirements of a solid class-based shooter, it injects some story into the mix, and it forces you to work together with your teammates, be they AI or human, to win.”

After that, most of the scores range between 60s and 70s with so many of the sites making similar statements about the great customization and parkour system being unable to hold up the rest of the game. As I mentioned earlier, many sites are saying that there was wasted potential.

Eurogamer Portugal expressed that sentiment by saying:

“After several hours of play, Brink conveys the feeling that it could have been much more. It’s one of those games with huge potential, but it doesn’t take advantage of it. “

Scarily, the bottom three scores come from sites that are usually praised for their reviews, and they come from Giant Bomb (40/100), Joystiq (40/100) and 1UP (25/200).

Giant Bomb summarizes their major concerns well, saying:

“The structure of the game is decent, but it’s brought down by issues both large and small. The largest one is a simple lack of content. With eight maps, a lackluster arsenal, and a campaign mode that is, by default, populated with terrible AI-controlled bots, Brink just doesn’t have enough going for it to justify a full-price purchase”

Splash Damage have already detailed updates for the Xbox 360 and Steam versions of the game that went live at launch, addressing “several of the issues raised in some of the early US reviews of the game,”, saying:

“It also improves client prediction when playing online – in other words, you’ll experience much less ‘rubber banding’ in multiplayer,”

“We’ve also fixed several issues that could lead to the game freezing, and resolved an issue where Brink would insist on playing all of the training videos rather than just the introductory one”

“We’ve also been getting new reports of lag when playing online, especially in matches with lots of human players. We’re all huge multiplayer fans here at the office and we know how important a lag-free online experience is. We’re urgently investigating this issue and seeing what we can do to improve things in that area. Stay tuned.”

The Playstation 3 already received the patch and can be downloaded if your console is connected to the internet, even with PSN being down.

More information on the updates can be found here at our source over at VG247.

For me personally, I can’t say that I am willing to dish out any money on the game right now, especially with the other major titles surrounding its release (Portal 2, Mortal Kombat, L.A Noire) and remember, I was one of the people really gunning for Brink, so it’s sad.

In this day and age, if you are going to release your game in the middle of some other heavy hitters from companies like Valve and Rockstar, you had better be bringing your A-Game and nothing else, it doesn’t even matter if you aren’t in the same genre.

Anyone else here buying it regardless?

You can check out all of the scores on Metacritic.

Last Updated: May 12, 2011

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