Section 8

In campaign you follow the story of Alex Corde routing out the Orion space colony to space colony dropping in quick to battle and completing objectives along the way.  The story is quite cliché but the action is intense with many different weapon loadouts and a few vehicles to drive around in.  One issue you may notice is what the game boasted the most has a small problem.  When you drop into battle quickly and begin to fight you notice that the textures are washed and have not been fully loaded yet until a couple seconds of running into battle.  It’s not that big of an issue but it makes the game seem less polished.  The campaign is very short and works more as a tutorial for multiplayer showcasing the weapons and class system. 

Dropping into battle anywhere is a great way to get the drop on the enemy

Multiplayer plays a lot like the Battlefield series having certain classes from assault, recon, sniper or engineer all with customizable traits and weapons.  To win, each team must complete objectives during the match that raises the team’s ticker points until one team reaches 1000 points, the objectives are temporary and optional both teams can go back and forth capturing each others base and still accumulate points.  Completing objectives keeps the game fresh and it’s not necessarily based on the number of kills each team obtains. Objectives range from escorting people, defending an outpost, sneaking into the enemy base for intel or bringing in a bomb to detonate on the enemy base.  Objectives like these force teamwork if your team wants to succeed faster.  Each base comes equipped with turrets and supply drops to help defend your outpost from invading forces.  As you help complete objectives or rack up kills you get points to use toward getting more turrets surrounding your base, anti-air turrets help against other players trying to drop directly into your base.  The spawn anywhere system works great being able to drop down from the air in any location on the map and works great for snipers trying to get onto a high ridge or taking an enemy by surprise.  Vehicles are available in multiplayer as well including a tank and a mech-like unit that seem like a good idea at the start but are a little slow and hard to maneuver. When your player is already equipped with a jetpack, the ability to sprint (switching to a third-person camera angle for easier maneuverability) and locking on to an enemy target for a short amount of time it becomes apparent you are better than any vehicle, being able to be so athletic you feel like a giant target when you hop into a vehicle even if they are loaded with weapons. 

The Mech vehicle is fun but when your player alone can jetpack and run faster than anything it's almost best to stay on foot

The main problem with multiplayer is that there just isn’t much in Section 8 that makes it stand out amongst other titles.  Sure there’s the spawn anywhere ability dropping into battle is really cool but it doesn’t make up for the poor weapon balance and the lackluster vehicles.  You are given the basic loadout for weapons; shotgun, SMG, automatic rifle, sniper rifle or light machine gun but when it all comes down to it most players will choose the auto-rifle or the machine gun because both can seem to out-snipe a sniper rifle easily and especially with the ability to lock onto enemies for a short amount of time.  Each class can be customized with different traits but none of which really makes your class standout amongst others and because the repair tool can both heal and repair vehicles it’s really hard to not have that in your loadout over other equipment.   

Section 8 is enjoyable but it’s lacking anything really new that distinguishes it from other titles and it generally has that feeling that it hasn’t been polished especially with the short campaign and multiplayer balance issues.  Anyone looking for a futuristic shooter with Battlefield like gameplay be sure to pick this one up but for the rest of us it’s best to turn the other cheek.