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Slowly Liking Brink
14 years ago
Im slowly working my way into maybe enjoying brink as a major multiplayer game. I think this is due to map familiarity and strat familiarity.
At any rate. From the get go brink was a bit of a disappointment. From the time the game first boots it felt like a console port. And immediately i had to rebind a lot of the keys to make the game more streamlined. Had to tweak things a bit. Having buttons for buff, self buff, grenade, melee, and lean left and right, sort of gives my left hand a work out. Not to mention crouch, sprint, and jump. Thank god for SMART, else my hand would be a cramped up mess by now.
So yah, the game is obviously not TF2. It takes itself very seriously, so no funny moments, wtf moments, or interesting and fun voice acting. Its all straight and cut and feels like it belongs in a CoD game. The story telling and cut scenes are done in a L4D sort of style, but lacks any fun charm.
The char customization is awesome, as it really lets you define your char, but in the end this makes each char hard to distinguish from each other in the form of their rolls. Not that this matters mind you, as the only real difference between the classes is what buffs they give out. Save for the sentry guns of the engy, and special grenades of the operative.
In the end though, you feel like youve drawn the short straw when it comes to picking a char and playing online as you have to stick with that char through thick and thing. Even though you can change what weapon your carrying, you cant customize the weapons in game, and you def cant customize your chars body type. So if you picked the heavy wielding the Gatling gun, your sorta stuck playing that roll the entire game. Even when you switch classes, you cant switch out to a dif char, so playing a heavy set operative really isnt going to work in your favor.
And fianlly we come down to balance. There are some balance issues with the game in both mechanics and the maps themselves. The weapons seem rather balance save for the lack of bite from the big weapons. Simply, there are a number of maps that can be choked down to a couple of hall ways, and those hall ways are easy to snipe through. Couple this with everyone having the ability to auto regen health behind cover, and a good sniping team will simply own.
Yould think certain abilities could diminish this, but no. The medics "uber" does not last that long and will not let a friendly cover the distance to take out the snipers. A fast operative is easily spotted due to map design, and the smart move system becomes worthless as the enemy team can snipe you before you even vault over the bench your stuck behind. The best option in this situation is to try and spam grenades, but without the skill points put into grenades, they are worthless for damage, and there is a cooldown, so unless your entire team throws them at once, your not gonna get very good explosive coverage. (Save for a grenade launcher heavy type chars can wield, but if no one is heavy, then your boned.)
In the end, certain maps devolve into sniper vs sniper. Luckily most maps offer a plentiful amount of attack options, so its rare to be that bad off. But when a map isnt bad in that sense, its bad in others. One map has you pushing the robot (cart) right past the enemy spawn. This leads to either horrible spawn camping, or a horrible time trying to push the cart. You could call it a choke point, but thats a bit moronic.
Basically, the game tries or an over the top cartoony style, but then plays itself off as a serious game. It tries so hard to be an RPG that it limits your strategic options, and the game favors playing a sniper behind cover way to drastically. Follow this up with poor map design, which i fault to them relying of the smart moves system. In some maps it works awesome, and in others it just feels lazy. Id love to see custom maps made by the community, cuz i think some community involvement in this title would really spice things up and make it more fun and dynamic to play.
In the mean time, ill play brink off and on while ill continue to play TF2 and NS2 like im paid to do it. Frankly, skulks walking up, down, and around walls feels more fast and fluid than SMART. Now i just need to hold an SMG in my mouth while i do it.
At any rate. From the get go brink was a bit of a disappointment. From the time the game first boots it felt like a console port. And immediately i had to rebind a lot of the keys to make the game more streamlined. Had to tweak things a bit. Having buttons for buff, self buff, grenade, melee, and lean left and right, sort of gives my left hand a work out. Not to mention crouch, sprint, and jump. Thank god for SMART, else my hand would be a cramped up mess by now.
So yah, the game is obviously not TF2. It takes itself very seriously, so no funny moments, wtf moments, or interesting and fun voice acting. Its all straight and cut and feels like it belongs in a CoD game. The story telling and cut scenes are done in a L4D sort of style, but lacks any fun charm.
The char customization is awesome, as it really lets you define your char, but in the end this makes each char hard to distinguish from each other in the form of their rolls. Not that this matters mind you, as the only real difference between the classes is what buffs they give out. Save for the sentry guns of the engy, and special grenades of the operative.
In the end though, you feel like youve drawn the short straw when it comes to picking a char and playing online as you have to stick with that char through thick and thing. Even though you can change what weapon your carrying, you cant customize the weapons in game, and you def cant customize your chars body type. So if you picked the heavy wielding the Gatling gun, your sorta stuck playing that roll the entire game. Even when you switch classes, you cant switch out to a dif char, so playing a heavy set operative really isnt going to work in your favor.
And fianlly we come down to balance. There are some balance issues with the game in both mechanics and the maps themselves. The weapons seem rather balance save for the lack of bite from the big weapons. Simply, there are a number of maps that can be choked down to a couple of hall ways, and those hall ways are easy to snipe through. Couple this with everyone having the ability to auto regen health behind cover, and a good sniping team will simply own.
Yould think certain abilities could diminish this, but no. The medics "uber" does not last that long and will not let a friendly cover the distance to take out the snipers. A fast operative is easily spotted due to map design, and the smart move system becomes worthless as the enemy team can snipe you before you even vault over the bench your stuck behind. The best option in this situation is to try and spam grenades, but without the skill points put into grenades, they are worthless for damage, and there is a cooldown, so unless your entire team throws them at once, your not gonna get very good explosive coverage. (Save for a grenade launcher heavy type chars can wield, but if no one is heavy, then your boned.)
In the end, certain maps devolve into sniper vs sniper. Luckily most maps offer a plentiful amount of attack options, so its rare to be that bad off. But when a map isnt bad in that sense, its bad in others. One map has you pushing the robot (cart) right past the enemy spawn. This leads to either horrible spawn camping, or a horrible time trying to push the cart. You could call it a choke point, but thats a bit moronic.
Basically, the game tries or an over the top cartoony style, but then plays itself off as a serious game. It tries so hard to be an RPG that it limits your strategic options, and the game favors playing a sniper behind cover way to drastically. Follow this up with poor map design, which i fault to them relying of the smart moves system. In some maps it works awesome, and in others it just feels lazy. Id love to see custom maps made by the community, cuz i think some community involvement in this title would really spice things up and make it more fun and dynamic to play.
In the mean time, ill play brink off and on while ill continue to play TF2 and NS2 like im paid to do it. Frankly, skulks walking up, down, and around walls feels more fast and fluid than SMART. Now i just need to hold an SMG in my mouth while i do it.
Also if it's not a recharge timer and actual inventory for the grenades (say, 3 max) it would be better.
And yah, they supported dedicated servers... thats about it.