After nearly a month of playing and posting to the Splash Damage forums I have some updates and, thanks to our bartender coming into work sick, Throbble and I have been sick for the past week so we've had a lot of time to spend playing Brink.
First a rant about computer hardware:
The patches are coming fast and furious, almost daily, and it's making a big improvement. I bought a nVidia GeForce 460 GTX only to find out that my pre-Alienware Dell computer has a 150w power supply (wtf!?!?) which can't support the new card. Frankly, I'm surprised it runs the 8600 GT and Sound Blaster XF-i cards that I bought for it. Throbble's Alienware case Dell has a 750w but I doubt her 9800 GTX will run in my computer. And that's not to mention the fucking proprietary power supply and hardware connections that means I need to go out and buy a bunch of splitters even if it could run it.
So, after years of speaking highly of Dell. Fuck them.
With my current card I get about 20 fps, which isn't too bad when I got a team of real people going up against a team of bots (the bots tend to use the same appearance). The problem crops up when we get into a full 8 humans vs. 8 humans match. The customization for your avatar's look is extremely diverse (I'll post some pics later) and rendering all those unique looks bogs down my computer.
Now to the gameplay!
I find the character customization to be pretty amazing. Not only for the look of your character (each character you create has a unique look depending on if they are on the Security team or the Resistance team) but also for the weapon loadout and weapon mods available. Also, the body type (light, medium, or heavy) makes a huge difference in appearance, movement, and weapon options.
Currently I have 4 max level (20) characters:
Engineer Build: Medium, Primary Weapon: Fallout pre-order sub-machine gun, Secondary: machine pistol
Operative Build: Light, Primary Weapon: Fallout pre-order sub-machine gun, Secondary: machine pistol
Soldier Build: Heavy, Primary Weapon: minigun, Secondary: Fallout pre-order sub-machine gun
Medic Build: Medium, Primary Weapon: Fallout pre-order sub-machine gun, Secondary: machine pistol
Splash Damage came up with a pretty interesting use for the secondary weapon, at max level you can choose a skill that allows you to fire your secondary weapon while you are down (incapacitated but not dead) so you can dish out some damage while you wait for a medic to revive you.
I thought Engineer would be my favorite class because it was most similar to the Field Ops class from ET and ET:QW in that they hand out ammo. But without the artillery and air strikes (which don't exist at all in the game) it's just not the same.
I find Operative to be extremely fun to play however, as there is always something for them to do, Firewall the com station our team just captured, throw down some caltrops near the objective you are trying to protect, spot enemies so they have a red outline that teammates can see through walls, incapacitate an enemy then "Coms Hack" him so his entire team shows up on your team's radar then, since Coms Hack kills him, hack his corpse to disguise yourself as the enemy. I consistently get the highest XP on a map with this build, though it's more for gauging effectiveness since he's already max level.
The Soldier is my second favorite, I tend to laugh maniacally as my burly dude mows down the entire enemy team with his minigun. Other than that he is only good for blowing up objectives so he is sort of a 2-trick pony.
Though I've maxed the Medic, it's probably my least favorite class due to the fact that it is designed for a support role (reviving teammates) instead of combat. I just use it if Throbble and I are in a map and we don't have enough (or any) medics. The medics can boost teammate's max life but the boost is pretty minor, even if they invest the extra skill point for "double health boost". Meh.
Of the maps provided there seems to only be one that's imbalanced but it's pretty minor and could probably be fixed in a patch. The maps themselves are laid out well, at first I thought some were kind of small until I realize there is a very "vertical" aspect to the game and there are lots of ways to climb around and get the drop on the enemy.
So, those are my impressions for now. I'll post pics of my characters later.
-420
