Section 8

2011-07-05

... almost perfect.

Section 8: Prejudice is a real breath of fresh air in the shooter scene. The game is a SciFi shooter where you are playing as a space marine in the distant future. The game is intended as a multiplayer game but has a 6 hour "tutorial" campaign. The campaign is fun an the narrative makes sense but still keeps to the core of the multiplayer gameplay.

You are playing as a space marine, with a cool combat armor and futuristic but still believable weapons and tech. What really made my day was, that this is the first game that has believable health regeneration. It's not your health, it's your personal shield and armor damage. And if the shield energy is depleted you need to wait a short while until it rebuilds. You really know you are in trouble when a female voice whispers in your ear "Shield Down". Your armor can also get damaged, even though it repairs it's self, that is quite slow and you might want to either repair it yourself (you have a tool equipped) or get repaired by your fellow team mate.

What also really is a nice feature is the fact that there are no classes. You have 6 different preconfigured loadouts that you can change to your harts desire. That means you can have an "engineer" with a sniper rifle if you like.

The environments are actually quite nice to look at and really make a difference from the gritty dirt heaps you seem to play in recently. Even though it is set in a SciFi environment, it is the type that feels believable. The look and feel of the technology and locales really feels like it belongs there, without loosing the awe and excitement of the exotic setting.

As I said in the very first sentence: "Almost perfect". The biggest flaw in the game is the set of the features those users that are incapable to use a mouse. Although you have a hi-tech armor suit, that actually has a neat sprint function, your normal movement is slow like hell. You can basically forget strafing, it really does not make a difference. They tried to add some dynamic, with the nifty jet pack (rather jump jet), but that adds little to the overall feeling or immobility. If slow targets are hard to aim at you have a built in auto aim. Although it has a cooldown, it really means that you can basically ditch the idea of dodging out of harms way. So unless you push a buddy into the targeting radical of the other player, your only option is to shoot first. Finally even when the cooldown of the auto aim is recharging you have the built in aim assist feature; bring the center of the screen close any player and you score a nice head shot.

The game really shows allot of potential and for an independent studio is a real achievement in a sea of meritocracy.

The game is based on the Ureal 3 engine; maybe creating a mod that tweaks the flaws out might be an idea...