Brink – From Wow To Meh

W:ET and ET:QW are one of the best FPS games out there. Their focus on team- and skill-play, as well as varying objectives and fair base (class-load-outs, skill-up from beginning of round) make it unique and superb (although ET:QW did weapon spread wrong). In a few days, the developers of both, Splash Damage, will release BRINK, their new FPS in similar style (although different graphics style). And I got from wow to meh. How?

Brink has the same mechanics; classes, objectives; and gameplay mechanics. For some time now SD released the Get Smart video series, introducing the game. They’re well made and increased my appetite. But they also showed heavy console-focus. So – how good is it on PC? Is there still scripting and modding support? Customizability?

At least Linux support was dropped (compared to the earlier games). And not only for clients, but also the dedicated servers seem to be windows only. Way to go SD. Bad choice. The engine is still id tech and thus OpenGL. So at least restrictive Direct X would not be a problem.

But most of all I really fear a bad port from consoles. I have only seen console so far. And we know; expect the worst from multi-platform titles. And as the marketing seems to only focus on consoles, we know where the development focus probably was.

Today, I found another highlight. Steam lists Brink for 50 € (pre-purchase) for me (DE). Expensive. So I checked Amazon; 45 €. Better. But we know, region-policy can be really fucked up. So, what is the Steam price in the UK?

Only 30 Pounds! (Reduced as pre-release I think, from 35 pounds.) That is just 34 €. That means 50 % more expensive for me? A 150 % price? Way to go, again!

I wrote to SD. Let us see what they say. I hope they will answer at least …

For that over-price, I’ll definitely not buy it. And thus, I will now at least wait until I know how they ported to PC.

Update: I surfed the brink forums a bit. Every YouTube video linked I clicked until now had a Zenimax copyright claim. Can’t watch anything. Fuck off.