Section 8 Review (PC)
Section 8 was nowhere to be found on my holiday release radar four months ago, as I had heard little of it via trade magazines or online media sites. It was not until I showed up at the Southpeak booth at E3 2009, when I finally got a taste of Section 8, and after playing it, I felt it could be a sleeper hit with the right marketing campaign. Fast forward a few months, and after I finished up the single player campaign, and running through a healthy dose of online play, I feel that a solid game is in the retail package.
For the single player storyline, you play as Corde, a soldier outfitted with Section 8, a first in, last out military squadron. The squadron received its Section 8 nickname after the same military statute that classifies a soldier as crazy, as the missions you are sent on could be considered suicidal in nature. Your task through the campaign is to take over objectives as you follow the trail of Soren, the leader of the Arm of Orion, a faction based on causing chaos where order stands.
While Section 8’s story may sound good, the single player mode is really just a warm-up for the capture point based multiplayer mode. I mean there is a cognitive narrative that you are following, but it is nothing that really lives up to the promises of a “deep story” that was mentioned time and time again in press releases.
Turning to multiplayer, Section 8 mixes in a few new, innovative twists that liberate it from the standard control point fare that is on the market today. Entering into the battlefield starts us with our first major gameplay innovation, burning into map. Normally a checkpoint multiplayer title would have you picking a control point to start at, but Section 8 gives you the entire map as a point of entry, because you are dropped into the map. Open points and enemy points are protected by base defenses, so it does protect you from jumping right into a contested point, but it does give you the freedom to pick your best point of attack on the battlefield. The burn in feature became a highly useful game mechanic in Section 8, as it allowed me as a sniper to drop into some secluded sites that made for perfect sniper nests.
As you play through your multiplayer matches, you earn prestige points, which you can allot to bonuses for your team. You can purchase new base defenses, helping protect control points from the other team. If you would rather go on the offensive, you can order up a tank and use that to infiltrate the enemy base with high firepower. The base defenses are a highly rewarding expenditure, as they can dish out a ton of carnage on the other team before they are destroyed. The tank on the other hand was not a great expense, because it is a handful to control. Hopefully a patch will fix the tank controls, but as of now, it seemed to be a completely useless purchase.
One of the bullet points on the package of Section 8 is the ability to customize your warrior, and it is a completely true statement. On the fly, you can change from an Engineer to a Soldier class, or anything in between. Maybe you don’t like the classes that are pre-selected – just build your own load out and save it for future use. Maybe you want more armor and less stealth, or you want to load up on grenades and forget about healing tools. For me, it was all about taking the recon, but adding an assault rifle in place of the pistol. But when the situation called for it, I could go to a resupply point in my base and change class if needed. This is a much appreciated feature, because you can get your team balanced on the fly, without having to wait for a respawn.
Section 8 does play out like a standard FPS with the keyboard and mouse, but it does add in a few new tricks to the controls. For one, you no longer have a jump, but a jetpack to get you places. And it is not a useless feature, as it can get you out of direct line of fire by jetpacking on top of a building to recover. Or you can jump up and deliver death from above while you fire on an unsuspecting enemy below. You can also earn a lock on bonus, which allows you to lock on to a target for about 5-7 seconds, which is very useful if you want to jump and attack, as it takes the aiming out of the equation for that jump. As stated, it is a timed perk, so don’t expect to use it all the time through a match.
Multiplayer support is delivered through Games for Windows Live, and this has been an up and down experience for some. There have been complaints of people not getting into the GFW Live system after they install the product. Others have got in, but had issues connecting to servers via GFW Live. I have had rather good luck so far, with the only issue being that the game refuses to log me into GFW Live automatically. Other than that, it has been giving out achievements and other GFW Live items as well.
There are a few issues pulling back Section 8 from really being great. The first will most likely be fixed via DLC, and that is poor map support. While I do like the maps in the game, there seem to only be about 8-10 main maps, with several others that are just smaller sections of those large maps. It just seems like more maps would have been a nice consideration for a game that is centrally focused on multiplayer. Some weapons also feel a little underpowered. For me the sniper rifle seemed a bit neutered, not being able to take anyone down with one shot, but more like three to four. While the enemy is armored, I miss the ability to take a well lined up head shot on someone, only to find it take out a quarter of their health.
Bigger than all of these issues though, is the lack of stability in the actual multiplayer component of Section 8. Too many times, I have gone to play some multiplayer, only to find that the servers are down, or the multiplayer service is unavailable. I am connected to GFW Live, so I don’t think the problem falls on that end. I think it has more to do with the backend code. Whatever the issue is, you cannot have a multiplayer based game, and then not have the kinks worked out of the backend servers. It ends up killing off the community before it starts, which you can already see, as the user base has dropped significantly from the day of launch.
Section 8 is a fun, well rounded multiplayer first-person shooter. From the thrill of burning into the battle scene to sniping a guy from half way across the map, it really delivers on bringing a new style of play to the genre. However, the stability of the servers kills any sort of momentum that was to be had by Section 8. As it stands right now, Section 8 gets 3.5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.
Check out Section 8 and other PC reviews at Test Freaks.
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