1. Implementation of menus:
They really tried to reinvent the wheel here. My biggest problem is that it's too hard to figure out what's going on. In campaign mode if you are at the mission select screen you can see little dots next to each mission. If they are filled in it means you completed the mission. That's great but there is nothing to tell you what difficulty they have been completed on, which is important since they put an achievement in the game where you have to beat every level on hard or in adversarial. The challenge menu doesn't even tell you which challenges you have beaten.
2. Speaking of challenges:
In order to unlock any weapon or weapon related attachment you have to complete challenges. Each challenge has three difficulty levels. Levels one and two unlock weapons and attachments while level three will unlock the privilege of being on the leaderboard. Wow, I get to be on another leaderboard where I can be 349745th? Sweet. That's a great incentive to sit through this frustration. The challenges are punishingly hard. You really have to level up your guy a lot before you can do well in them. That's not the stupid part though. Brink is a game designed to be multiplayer co-op. The challenges can be played with friends and are much easier if you do so. But you don't unlock anything unless you play solo! What the hell.
3. Multiplayer implementation:
Playing the game with other people is actually fun. But getting the game set up right can be tricky.
Here is how the rest of the world does it: Start a multilayer lobby, invite your friends, pick a map/game mode, the game then matches you with other parties and individuals, play the game.
Here is how Brink does it: Pick a map/game mode, load into a match, bring up the lobby menu, hit the "invite party" button, realize that you are already in a full game and your friends can't get in, back out to the main menu and try again.
4: Bots. Oh sweet Jesus the stupid, stupid bots:
This isn't a problem with just Brink. A lot of team based multiplayer games have this problem. You need bots to fill in when you don't have other people. Bot's are great at doing exactly what they are programed to do, which never includes strategy or thinking intuitively. This is a problem in a "thinking man's FPS" as Brink likes to style itself. FYI bots, if I'm sprinting towards an objective to get there before the enemy does and you are supposed to be escorting me, it might be a good idea if you sprinted too! And I don't know, maybe get BETWEEN me and the enemy while I hack the door or whatever, you know, so I don't get shot?
Brink isn't a bad game necessarily but it's designers made some decisions that were questionable at best. I do enjoy and applaud the character creation. It's deep an well executed. I was running into a bug though were my friends an I were seeing default models instead of our own for about half the match. Even so, well done on the characters.
