Droppings
I’ve come to the conclusion that I do a lot of writing. Last week I wrote a 2500 word essay on a subject I knew next to nothing about 24 hours previously. This weeks, I’m looking at writing 3000 words for Tuesday so I have the opportunity to get it reviewed before I go on and write 10000 words for the end of the month... I’ve also come to the conclusion that I take these things very close to the wire. So in the grand tradition of procrastinating, I decided that instead of using the dregs of this evening to construct something meaningful, I’d write 800 words on something completely meaningless and give you another Hardly a Review! I know what you’re thinking, and yes, you are a lucky bunch.
Last time I wrote a review I decided to deliberately seek out something I’d probably dislike, so I could rant about it (I always find my anger to be far more entertaining than my unyielding praise). However, this time around, mainly because I haven’t prepared for this at all, I decided just to pick a game I’ve been playing a lot over the past couple of days. So here is my review on Section 8: Prejudice.
Now Section 8 has been on my radar for some time, about a year actually, long before it came out... however I only took the chance to grab it during the steam sales over Christmas. Even out of the sale though, the price of under a tenner is totally worth it for a solid FPS. If you’re one of those people who are debating whether to get Battlefield 3 or Modern Warfare 3... I’d say just get Section 8, and spend the rest on beer.... beer and drugs. I make this comparison not because I’m trying to paint this game as a well polished, cutting edge, top budget game... I say it because the fundamentals are, basically, identical. Let me go into detail on that, because it’s an important point.
The single-player, just like Battlefield and Modern Warfare, isn’t much to scream about, it’s essentially an extended tutorial just to familiarise you with the game’s engine. Aside from the fact it’s a few hours worth of action, and a good time waster, it’s hardly the main selling point of the game. The thing that impresses me however is that for an indie game, sold at under a tenner, the presence of a single-player at all shows how fleshed out this game is, and how much you get for your money. This basically sums up the game, for what you pay, you get so much, and so much detail has been given to each aspect of the game. It’s like some one's taken a tin of Heinz baked beans, and replaced the label from a tin of Asda smart price beans.
The multi-player is where the game really comes into it’s own, again much like Battlefield and Modern Warfare, this is where the game really has it’s replay value. The maps are large and open, and the spawning mechanism lets you spawn almost anywhere on the map. This makes map control very important. If you lay out anti-air guns in the right place, you can shut down entire sections of the map, and essentially corner the other team. The spawning itself is extremely unique, and far better than the spawning in Battlefield or Modern Warfare. Essentially when you’re killed, you’re sent to a screen with a mini-map, where you can look at your loadouts, adjust them if necessary, and then pick a spot on the map, and you’ll freefall back into the game. This makes the game feel extremely fast paced. Instead of simply waiting to respawn, or having to endure an instant replay of some dude knifing you in the dick, you actually feel like you’re doing something. There’s still a time penalty for dying, but instead of spending it on a redundant screen, and out of the action, you serve your sentence in freefall, essentially waiting to hit the ground and get back into the action. This basically gives you the same penalties for dying, but doesn’t break the game up, and it doesn’t make death feel like an absolute punishment, since you can reassess your strategy, and quite literally jump straight back in.
In terms of the weapons in the game, there doesn’t seem to be a great variety at first, two machine guns, a pistol, a rocket launcher, a sniper and so on. However each weapon can be equipped with one of four ammo types, essentially giving the game 28 varieties of weapon instead of 7. Some of these combo’s are more entertaining than others, such as having a shotgun that’s sets people on fire... this, I think you’ll agree, should be the standard of shotguns from now on. On top of the weapons, each loadout lets you carry two additional items, grenades, mines, repair tools etc. This is actually, in my opinion a downside to the game. Not because of the amount of choice, and not because of how fun some of the items are, but because if you want to have a melee option in the game, you can only do so by equipping a combat knife to one of your equipment slots. This makes melee a really small part of the game, to the point where I wouldn’t bother, since that slot would be much better filled with a mortar strike. It also means that if you’re intelligent, and have your grenades on call at all times, if you want to shank some bitch, you have to press the toggle button to switch from grenades to your knife, and THEN press the same button that would throw a grenade. Long story short, don’t bother with melee... seriously. I don’t think it breaks the game, but it is a serious flaw that really annoys me.
On top of customising the weapons and equipment you take into battle, you can also manage your skill sets. This basically adds an RPG element into the game which I think is a nifty touch. You get 10 points, and you can put these points into a number of different skill categories, from increased damage, to increased accuracy and increased shielding and armour. This allows you to give yourself advantages to the role you want to play, while not creating any balance issue in the game itself. So say you have a sniper loadout, you’d want to put all your points into stealth and damage. Maybe you wanted to eat bullets like breakfast while dishing out a reasonable amount of damage, then you’d max out armour, and shields, and then put what’s left in damage. It makes only very small changes to your loadout, but you can feel them when you’re in the game. They help you to play the game on your terms, the way you want to play, and I think that’s a really neat touch.
Modern Warfare basically set a standard when they introduced killstreak rewards. Even I, someone who very rarely plays Modern Warfare, found myself asking if killstreaks existed. Section 8, in my opinion, operates a system far better than killstreaks, and because of it makes the game more about team play. Like Counter Strike, it has a shop where you can buy anything from a supply drop to a robot to a mother fucking tank. To earn money for said shop, you can kill a bunch of people, but you can also complete objectives for your team. This rewards people who aren’t necessarily big of kills, but would rather see the team take the match, or win a dynamic objective. Once you’ve got enough money, pick what you want, and like everything else in this fucking game it falls from the sky so you can rain bloody retribution on those who once mocked you.
I’ve not really spoke much about the objectives in the game, so I’ll touch on that. Basically every map contained a series of bases, or rally points, or what not, and the aim of the game is to hold as many as possible to gain points from them. However whilst you’re doing that there will be dynamic objectives that show up from time to time. Things in the vein of: kill this guy, protect that guy, retrieve this intel, blow this up, and so on. These smaller objectives also earn your team points, and other perks, and can create small localised firefights in a map that is so big it risks being just a series of small skirmishes, if you meet anyone at all. I’ve not had much experience with these objectives, mainly because they become an absolute cluster fuck and I can’t survive more than 10 seconds, but they do seem to tie the game together, and can serve to regroup a team and even change the tide of the battle. It also means that you are not just running around the same area doing the same thing, or ferrying a flag back and forth the same path you’ve walked several times. These big open maps really benefit from battles that wander, and move through the level, dynamic objectives help that to happen, and also help stop you from getting lost in such a big map.
Overall the game is fucking immense for the amount you pay. You can see that just by looking at how much I’ve written, and I really wish I could write this much on something I’m actually marked on... Anyways, the game does feel like a full retail game I’d probably pay 35 quid for, not a digitally distributed indie game that cost me under a tenner, it looks fantastic, plays fantastic, and I can see me making quite a few video’s in this game. Now all I need to do is find some people to actually play with, which is the only downside to this game. It’s like a well kept secret, it’s so good, yet all the servers are empty. I fear maybe the price drove people away from it, I know when I see a cheap Indie game I instantly thing of something that’ll take me 3 hours to finish and then I’ll never play it again. Thankfully I was proved wrong with this one, and hopefully the message starts to spread, and servers start getting a bit more populated.
TL;DR: “Good enough to spend £35 on... but they don't want £35, they want £9.99... so fucking buy it you simpleton!"
Anyways, it gets 10 stars out of 13.5... I don't think they make a graphic for that.
Jamie Out
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