Section 8 [Demo]

[PeteJ]

I knew nothing about the game apart from the name, but decided to give it a go anyway.

This is a multiplayer only demo and seems to be a sci-fi version on Battlefield. Unfortunately the game does a very, very bad job at explaining what the hell you are meant to be doing so it may actually be something completely different.

There are loads of classes, weapons and gadgets to use but it doesn't really explain the objective. I think you are capturing points ala Battlefield but there is nothing on the UI to tell you that you are on the right track. Occasionally another objective would pop up, for example escort a VIP, but it would never show me where to go.
I played a couple of games, and at the end of both I had no idea which team had won.

You move incredibly slowly unless you enter sprint mode (which puts you in third person and cannot shoot) but you also get a jetpack, which is always a good thing (Tribes), but it just isn't fun to shoot people. You get a lockon button which takes all the skill out of engaging the enemy, and each player gets so much health that it takes an age to get a kill.

I remember Quake Wars threw you in the deep end in a similar way to this, but at least that gave enough feedback to let you know you were either doing things right or wrong. Section 8 could potentially be a good shooter, but it looks like you have spend loads of time learning the ropes before you find that out. Unless someone tells me I'm missing out on a new classic, I'm staying well away.

On the basis of this demo, avoid!

[averybluemonkey]

Personally I'm really enjoying it. There is a single player component with bots for those with silver accounts under Instant Action (the full game has a campaign too). To be honest most the time should be spend sprinting or airborne, the jetpack refuels quite quickly. Speed and jet capacity are determined by gear loadouts. The game has lots of depth, enemy health isn't that high, it's just the shields that some guys use practically double their durability. Suits also sustain permanent damage, take too many impacts to one part of your body and it will see reduced capability for the rest of the match. The idea is that like Armoured Core or similar games the player will invest a lot of time in customising their gear setups.

The lock on has to recharge so when assaulting a base you'll normally only get one usage out of it. As long as you keep moving fast you can help break the lock on. It's really there just to make mid flight combat between people with jetpacks doable, otherwise people would just be shooting the air around them. A lot of players haven't learnt this yet and are just standing on the ground shooting each other with lock on engaged, makes them easy targets because they have massively restricted visibility of their surroundings and you can clear up whole groups of them with ease.

The extra objectives are highlighted on the HUD. You'll see next to the objective and it's timer a little symbol which will be marked on the map in the corner. I may be incorrect here but I seem to remember it getting overlaid on the screen in the direction of the objective. I felt these objectives add a lot more variety than the bog standard fight over control points, the ones I saw included stealing intel, defending a VIP drop point and escorting him across the map and trying to take out a heavily armoured enemy convoy. You can see the winning team at the top of the screen where there's two bars, one for Section 8 and one for the Arm of Orion.

I also loved the drop in, similar to MOH: Airborne you have an aerial view of the map and can drop in anywhere. The screen whizzes past and the warning beacon kicks in when you should start your boosters to slow your descent. I love firing into a hot zone, leaving the boosters right till the last moment to try not to leave myself open to much to the anti-air defenses in the area. There's also the ability to air drop as a whole squad though I haven't tried that yet, which must be devastating.

[hudson]

Sorry fellas, but what format? DS or Megadrive?

[PeteJ]

360, ps3 and pc.

I get what you are saying avery however the demo does itself no favours despite you making it sound rather cool. I will try it again vs bots before deleting.

[ezee ryder]

Played this last night and after 10 minutes of play I deleted the demo. What I really wanted to do though was somehow get those 10 minutes back.

Pete got in 100% correct in his impressions, avoid this like the plague.

[mr_woo]

Am I the only one who really quite liked it ? It's very different from other multiplayer FPS but I found it to be a lot of fun. I'm glad that you don't get killed straight away with a few shots and I liked the dynamic combat system.

What it desperately needs is a tutorial system though to teach you the ropes but then I've enjoyed playing the Instant Action mode for that.

[SuperBeatBoy]

south peak games, nuff said....

[averybluemonkey]

Having played a load more of this the lock on ability is definitely not overpowered. You can easily tweak the passive modules setup to out gun people overly reliant on it. I only ever use it anymore when about to die under heavy fire as a means of compensating for my loss in accuracy due to nerves. To further clarrify the scoring points are awarded periodically for ownership of the two objectives and then larger awards are gained or lost by fighting over the missions. So the main focus should be missions, grabbing side objectives when possible. And there definitely is skill involved in the game, just played 3 matches with the same teams and we won all three 1000 points versus 500 points.

[MisterBubbles]

i tried it and have to say i rather enjoyed it , but i do love online MP games and this 1 is good, taken ideas from UT and put them in and most work , may have to pick up my 1st 360 game in a while.

[Synthesthesia]

I hated it from what I played of it. The sniper rifle seemed to take 4 shots to the head to kill someone? What's the point of that...

[Neon Ignition]

Had a quick go yesterday and... well, its rubbish. I think visually, the audio, design, controls... it's like everything scrapes the minimum expected and nothing more. This'll hit the bargain section so hard and I wouldn't be surprised if the servers end up being largely empty.

[ExtremePabs]

Played the demo over the weekend and although the graphics are a little below par I thought this was excellent an instant pre order for me great fun and like someone said in the Quake wars mould. Its only £18 pre order on Zavvi at the mo too.

[space_crab_6000]

I hated it from what I played of it. The sniper rifle seemed to take 4 shots to the head to kill someone? What's the point of that...

Ok, firstly, I work for SouthPeak, so I'm bound to be a little bit biased. Don't hate me for X-Blades though please...

Anyway, I've read this kind of criticism on a few forums now and it's worth pointing out that you can tweak this kind of thing in the Passive Modules... admittedly the demo doesn't do a great job of explaining this, so that's why I'm stepping bravely into the breach.

If you increase the Anvil Rounds in the custom loadouts section, you can atually get the sniper rifle down to two hits - or one hit if the enemy has lost their shield. Yes, it's not the same as most shooters but then again, there's a lot of stuff in Section 8 that isn't the same as most shooters.

Also, I saw something about the lock-on and it's possible to avoid that too... once again with the Passive Modules. If you increase your Stealth Matrix, it's a lot harder for the enemy to lock-on to you during combat, so they'll often waste their opportunity to lock-on.

Basically, I'm trying to say that experimenting with the Passive Modules plays a big part in the game and you can tell when playing the demo who has been messing with the custom loadouts and who has just selected a pre-set class (they're normally the ones getting killed )

I'm not coming in here to big-up the game or anything, just addressing a few of the criticisms that can actually be fixed in the demo. I'll get back in my box now...

[mr_woo]

I really liked the demo but it did such a poor job of explaining anything a lot of people I know were really put off by the demo, and as you can see a lot of people here too.

Does the full game at least have some sort of tutorial mode to explain things a bit clearer ?

[NoelEdwards]

I've played some bad games in my time and I even own a few but this is down right nasty no wonder it's £17.95 for the 360 version & £14.90 for the pc version in the zavvi sale and it's not even out yet.