Once again, time for another fabulous review. By me. Again. Yes. Thats right.
This time I shall be going over my impressions of the new/up and coming shooter Section 8
My first impressions of Section 8 ( even before I played it) were of a game attempting to mesh console and PC gaming into one with minimal effort on the developers part.
The first time I played it I decided to jump straight into the singleplayer as I had been told it was like an extended tutorial. This is completely untrue. Any “tutorial” element is left blank for the most part.
The storyline seems bland and the singleplayer lacking.
I played through the first few levels up to the convoy level at which point I gave up. Its not that the AI is a challenging enemy, just that the game quickly overpowers you with LOTS of the wee bastards. There are posts on the official S8 forum of “wtf” at this particular level as many people gave up, some demanding a developers video to see if its actually possible.
The problem is that the enemyAI quickly overpower the average player as well as your own friendly AI being about as useful as Mr Miyagi after he has had his legs broken then the rest of his body fed into a meat grinder. Theres just no fucking chance. This is on normal mode for the love of jebus!
Anyway. Lets brush the singleplayer under the rug and forget about it along with Miyagi’s minced torso. It is definately not what the game is made for.
In multiplayer I have been fortunte enough to be accompanied by one of my good friends as a useful team mate/meatshield. This is rather fortunate.
The multiplayer has been vastly superior to the singleplayer. In my experience it plays like a mesh of Tribes, Halo and Battlefield.
In terms of comparison, your basic movement feels like Halo along with having shields. All the classes are fully customisable like Tribes. Also jetpack, which is awesome. And… the maps feel a lot like Battlefield but with less cover.
Unlike the above though, instead of spawning in preset locations you can spawn where you feel like. Want to drop down and land on the head of that sniper that just fragged you? Go for it. This gives the game a very dynamic edge, with a properly organised team it is easy to capture points that would otherwise be heavily defended.
This does however represent the problem of people simply dropping in behind you, using lock-on and making an extremely lame frag. This brings me onto my next point. Lock-on.
At its basics the lock-on function is auto-aim. I feel primarily it was put into the game for two reasons. When people start jet packing around its a real bugger to hit them, especially with any lag that shows up. This is a pro as it means people can’t just bounce around like morons.
Reason number 2 is that console aiming in this case is even harder when console aiming is generally a bit…. crap. I don’t play this on a console so I will be skipping details of this specific point.
My main annoyance with the lock-on function is its removal of the classic skill of aiming. Anyone can now press the “I win” button and get a free frag if they have the right build setup. This is not entirely a downside however. There are ways to counter this entirely and balance the game. Its already there but I’m not going to tell you what it is 
Now… the weapons. The weapons seem… ok. They could do with a bit of rebalancing I feel but for the most part they are pretty solid. The assault rifle is an all over “shoot anything that moves” weapon and is the bread and butter of most peoples build. The machinegun sadly feels… more like a sub-machinegun. It doesn’t have the firepower/range etc. that it deserves but it does have a higher shield pierce range making it useful to some extent.
The shotgun is… ok. It definately does the business up close but with any lag/aim failures it becomes utterly crap. I mean… really… just… useless.
The pistol seems like it does damage, but its still a pistol.
The rocketlauncher is…. my major annoyance. It needs to track tanks in lock-on mode which it does not do currently. Does plenty of damage vs placeables though.
The sniper rifle is… well its a sniper rifle isnt it? It does good damage at range and doesnt work if you fire from the hip. It has significant recoil which limits its firing time and its also not 100% accurate. Its a nice support weapon and is great at pulling less sensible defenders away from their posts.
There are also the matter of passive modules and items but they are all fairly useful and self explanitory. Except the nades. They are piss poor, mortar instead. You can use them to make yourself an utter killing machine who can heal himself. It works well, because everyone can do it. Balanced.
I can’t tell if I am rambling now or not but I’m now going to talk about the vehicles.
The basic vehicles are… well theres only two. The heavy armour is basically a walking suit of… well… hitpoints. It has a pretty sweet melee attack vs infantry often resulting in instant kills but its more or less useless against tanks and anything at range. It sports some sort of pea-shooter minigun which does utterly feck all. Its like throwing pebbles at Saturn unless you are at stupidly close range. Even then its massive innacuracy makes it basically useless.
The tank is a slightly different story. It can house 4 players at different weapon stations. The first station is the driver/main gun position. The main gun is pretty sweet. It seems to be hitscan and does the business. The second gun is very similar to the piss poor excuse of a gun that the heavy armour has. Total crap. The third would be the missile launcher which isnt too bad. Its very spammable especially vs vehicles and closeby infantry. The fourth gun is the mortar. I love the mortar. Its so much fun. It does the business. Its a little harder to aim but pays off. My main gripe of the tank is that you can barely tell which way you are facing by its actual body leading to mass confusion. Gotta follow that yellow arrow…
Otherwise my only gripe at the game is that its on Games For Windows Live. Which is poor at best. My computer crashes because of that rather than the actual game (which seems pretty rock stable). Also, the in game server browser is awful. Despite changing the settings/filters I can’t seem to find any good servers for the most part. It only shows empty ones. No idea why this is, but they are updating soon so hopefully it will improve.
Overall the game is fast paced and pretty fun. With a good squad a lot can be accomplished. Having people cover your back is essential and its very easy to aid your team mates unless you are a complete moron who enjoys eating lead acetate. Tactics are key and you need to adapt dynamically for a lot of different changes. Personally I have a solid bread and butter build, but its mine and I’m not telling you what it is
Overall opinion: Pretty solid/good game, needs some balancing and a few fixes. Stick to multiplayer and find yourself some reliable squad mates.
