3 months ago
It's tough taking on the king. Xbox was the system that brought us Halo: the game that changed the way people play online and change the first person shooter game forever. So bringing in a new first person shooter franchise that looks similiar, and occupies the same genre, it's going to be tough to stand out. While Section 8 does have some great elements, there isn't enough to make this game a must buy, or even a must rent.
I first got my hands on Section 8 as a demo a few weeks ago. It was a single multiplayer map and I liked what I saw. The first moments are some of the coolest when you set your spawn point and speed down into the map. You can choose to apply your air breaks and drift down to the map slightly adjusting your landing point, or you can ignore the breaks and speed to earth landing without shields in a lot less time. This ends cheap deaths, with people camping out at spawn sites. You can spawn anywhere on the map, which is a great, when you are trying to complete a mission which I'll talk about in a minute.
Some have griped that this doubles your spawn time, and it does. However the landing is a tatical move. Landing without your breaks on top of an enemy tank will do some major damage. Landing near a squad can provide back up if they run into hositles. And did I mention no more camping out near spawn sites for cheap kills?
The elements that make this game unique continue once you hit the ground. First the multiplayer is huge 16-on-16 battles. They really turn into huge shootouts, but after a few rounds you will realize that this game is a lot more than just kill to death ratio.
The multiplayer game is decided by which ever team can rack up 1000 points first. That's pretty standard.
There are bases that can be captured, which scores you points, kills score you points, but what really changes the dynamic are the missions.
Missions are the best part of the game, they are unique elements which make players work as a team, to complete or prevent an objective.
Some of them are protect missions, like protect a convoy, or a AI general, and escort them from point-A to point-B. Called Dynamic Combat Missions, trying one of these solo is a death sentence. You need to gather your commrades to pull one of these off, and it really makes the game different from your typical death match.
Others missions have you destroying enemy outposts, or picking up enemy intel and running it safely back to your base.
They really change the tone of a game. You could be in the middle of laying seige to an enemy base only to have everyone split off to go take out (or protect) an enemy convoy, these DCM's are raise victory points, and really need to be completed to win the round.
The other unique element in the multiplayer game is the purchasing element. For everything you do in the round (capture bases, kills, complete missions) you get a cash reward. That cash then can be used to buy robots. The first tier of purchasing gives you anti-air guns, which shoot down incoming players, mini-guns and rockets, which shoot at players on the ground, or first aid stations which heal players, or change their weapon class. There is also a sensor array which expands your map to show incoming enemies.
These can be game changers. You load up your base with several mini-guns, and anti-air guns and it's protected. No need to sit home and babysit, though there are class types that do a great job of taking them out. Still I've seen people drop a rocket turret on an enemy base to really wreck havock.
The second tier is the big guns, a giant armored mech, and a tank. These are huge hard to take down weapons, unfortunatly they are also tough to control. Aiming with the tank is almost a useless endeavour and while firing blindly will score kills, they are almost not worth wasting cash on. The Armor handles better, and also features a powerful one hit melee kill that's great fun.
The maps are huge, and the only way to travel across them is with a hyper speed boost, which kicks in by holding down sprint for a few seconds. The only problem to sprint you need to drop your weapon and it leaves you vulnerable. The game also gives you a short term lock on function, which you apply to a guy running across your screen who can't fire back, and you have some easy kills. If you do get locked on, you can also use a jetback to break away -- and also get over enemy fences, and land on enemies.
So Multiplayer manges to mash up death match, capture the flag, protect, assault, all in one giant 16-on-16 battle. Each round lasts about 25 minutes, so you will have plenty of time, to rack up the cash to get those special purchases, and really complete five or six missions each round.
You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned anything about the single player campaign. There is one but it isn't much. The campaign is a toned down AI filled edition of the multiplayer. You have a main character, Alex Corde, and a brief story that ties events together, but when the real differnce is red vs. blue, the story dosen't really matter. However the single player campaign does take you through the different weapon load outs - whats guns are strong against infantry, or robots, and how to heal with the engineer load out. Really all it does is get you prepped for multiplayer. The animation is clean, but the voice acting is lame. If you want the gamer points you can speed through the solo campaign, but all you really want to do is play the multiplayer.
The look of the game uses the Unreal 3 engine, and there are times when the game really shines. I also found the occasional game glitch while sprinting, stuck in a quick sand like trap with a shaking screen. It was minor, but it did happen a few times.
So, everything sounds great right? Well here's my big gripe. Everything you could ever want was in the demo. The demo featured almost all the load outs, some of the purchasing items, and a good chunk of the missions. It's a good game, with some interesting features, but it may not be worth your 60 bucks. So your not really getting a lot for your money. If your interested give it a rent before dropping your hard earned cash on the game. We are just weeks away from Halo ODST, and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, both of which promise a great solo and multi-player campaigns. And while the multiplayer will be enough to get some in the door, it's not likely to be a keeper for many. I fear this could hurt the multiplayer experience in the future. I played a few rounds that weren't full, and as intrest drops off, I wonder how packed the servers will be in the coming weeks.
Final Game Guy Review: B-
News10/KXTV
