Section 8 Review [PC/360]

14 Sep 2009 at 17:43:08 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (360, PC)

I've been labouring under the misconception that Section 8 is “sort of like Tribes” for awhile. To be fair, an initial play gives this impression – you've got a reasonably open environment, a few bases, the ability to build things, and jetpacks. Not enough games have jetpacks.

So far, so Tribes, but the Tribes series had a variety of other tools that made it stand out. Plenty of levels were fast. Jetpacks recharged quickly, unlike here.  A host of vehicles allowed different tactics. There were a huge variety of different game modes catering for all manner of players. Almost all weapons needed you to compensate for enemy movement, requiring you to work out lead time in a very vertical environment.

If you wanted a quick summary, I could say Section 8 is like Tribes meets Halo, but that does a great disservice to a surprisingly unique little game, so let's pretend this sentence doesn't exist.

Make no mistake: Section 8 s a multiplayer game. The single-player campaign, titled Corde's Story, is little more than a glorified tutorial which will do nothing but put prospective players off the title. Crap AI, dull mission objectives, and small linear areas do not show off the best of a multiplayer game based around wide-open maps. The use of the game's trademark respawn system means that death is a minor setback, which is both a blessing and a curse. The campaign's block-headed AI makes co-ordination and teamwork extremely difficult in this mode, so you'll die regularly, but it also means there's rarely a penalty for death. Failure only comes through, say, failing to protect a friendly convoy, or losing a point you were assigned to protect. Combine this with a very average plot and some sub-par dialogue and you have a single-player mode that is very little fun whatsoever.

On the plus side, it'll teach you everything relevant, but then the two “real” modes – the botmatch Instant Action and the multiplayer itself – have plenty of voiceovers to assist new players, and as such do a better job of entertaining you while you learn the ropes. Let us not speak of the campaign again.

Surprisingly, neither of the other modes really suffer from any of the problems highlighted in the campaign. In wider areas, the AI performs reasonably well. It does its own thing but generally with a degree of intelligence and yet without the omniscience that mars a lot of computer opponents; sneaking up on a computer player to backstab them with a lethal knife attack is a whole lot easier than it is on players.

Section 8's focus is on both constantly shifting battlefronts, and teamwork. The former is created through the drop-in system. On death, you choose a spawn point on the map and your suitably butch space marine is fired out of a spaceship towards that point; hitting the brakes slows you so that you can act as soon as you land, but makes you more susceptible to fire from the ground. You can't simply drop in anywhere, mind, as anti-air turrets will happily destroy any group of players that jets towards an enemy base, unless they're in a large group.

The latter is created through both the customisation system and the weapon variety. There are no restrictions on the classes you can play as, save that you're allowed two weapons, two support items, and a variety of “passive modules” which affect little things like your speed, armour, weapon damage, and recharge times. If you want to create an assault class by taking an assault rifle, a missile launcher, some grenades, and a repair kit, you can. If you want to pump your passive modules into both your repair ability and your armour, and take a shotgun so that you can stay alive and heal your cohorts in a close-range battle, you can. If you'd rather take a sensor dampener so that you're harder to spot and hit, along with a sniper rifle and a knife, you can. It's skilfully handled and fairly well balanced, although – as ever – there are favourites, with most players I've seen taking a repair kit and mortars.

All ...

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