Customer Reviews

Section 8

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It took me a while to get into this game. I wasn't able to figure things out until I finished two or three missions of the single-player campaign. Once I figure it out, things really got going. The game is heavily weighted for multiplayer, and that's where this game really shines.

The single-player campaign is probably about 3-5 hours in duration. The voice-acting is a bit on the "cheesy" side, and so is the dialog -- so this game certainly wouldn't win any awards for writing. The CGIs seem to be a bit dated, and I'd say they have that "action-figure" look about them. The campaign has you completing certain objectives in a certain order; in other words, it's a campaign on rails. The campaign serves as a good "training course" for the multiplayer side of the game.

You can play the multiplayer version of the game either against bots or against Xbox Live players. The unique aspect of this game is that you select your own spawning location on the map, from orbit, and then you descend through the atmosphere until you reach about 1200 meters, at which point you can activate your air brakes and slow your decent so you can fine-tune your landing location. During descent you need to avoid anti-aircraft missiles and enemy fire. The main objective on any map is usually the same: capture the 2 or 3 control points and maintain control while destroying any enemies that come your way. Capturing a control point is not as easy as just "capturing a flag" as on other games. For Section 8, you have to activate a hacking sequence which takes several seconds to complete, then the "control" can take an additional minute to complete, during which time you can be killed or an enemy can "diffuse" the control point. Likewise, if the enemy captures a control point, you can diffuse their control or win control of it. So control often changes from one side to another. It can be frantic, it requires strategic thinking, and it's REALLY fun.

The game randomly generates DCMs -- dynamic combat missions, which are smaller objectives that require your attention. These may require the activation of a beacon, the protection of an outpost, collection and protection of intelligence, or intercepting a convoy. Depending on which side the DCM is assigned determines the action the other side must take. Although it's random and there's a decent variety of these missions, they do tend to get a bit repetitive at times. However, whether playing on Xbox Live or against bots, it seems many of them are successful and they are fun -- they add to the frantic activity, especially as you try to maintain or gain control of a control point. This game manages to take other games' multiplayer modes and combine them into a single, huge, multi-player map.

I find the AI bots acceptable when playing the multiplayer maps alone. They flank, they take cover, and they rush at you as you would expect live players would. Once in a while, they run around in circles, and sometimes they don't run at all, making easy targets -- but this doesn't happen often. On medium difficulty setting, they prove enough of a challenge, but it's nice to be able to play multiplayer maps and avoid the chaos of online gaming.

Graphically, the game is OK. I've only experienced 2 or 3 minor slow-downs in a week, and they only lasted about 2 seconds each. Zooming with the sniper rifle really doesn't provide much "zoom" or additional detail, for example. Don't get me wrong though, the game runs really fast and looks good, and that helps add to the fun.

Achievements seems to be equally spread between those you can obtain playing single-player and multiplayer bots vs. multiplayer achievements. It will take some time to get them all, but it helps add to the replay value. In fact, in terms of replay value, this is one game that I find myself playing again and again.

If you like first person shooters, multiplayer games with tons of players, and control/conquest type games, I can't recommend this game enough.

I bought this game based on the hype and videos/cutscenes. The game itself fell very very flat.

I set the game to the hardest difficulty and then proceeded to beat it in less then 3 hours. Single player missions were very short easily beatable by the simple fact that you can die, combat drop back into combat and fly directly to the location you need to reach to beat the objective and then land and push a button. Mission after mission was easily beat this way, only on a few did you have to escort or hold a combat point for a set length of time.

In all cases the badguys came across a sterotypical evil is awesome lets do bad things type of characters. The good guys all sounded like cutscenes from famous war movies. The voice overs were terrible, the audio is pathetic for the speak and geared almost 100% towards the sounds of shooting and explosions no ammount of adjustment fixed this.

The in game graphics reminded me of the days of tribes and tribes 2. Big open areas with no scrub brush, trees, plants, just the ocassional big rock. Sure they threw in a few plants but overall the game was barren and devoid of anything that would make it realistic.

The "autoaim" feature took all the fun out of aiming on my own, the "auto lock the target with the cursor" feature made it even worse.

Even on the hardest difficulty the game was exceedingly easy, and obviously geared for massive multiplayer style combat and not for any form of singleplayer campaign.

After beating this game it promptly went onto the backshelf where it will sit until someone takes it off my hands.

The campaign may not be very long, but the 16 player bot matches with adjustable difficulty, awesome 32 player online matches, fully customizable loadouts, deployables, and general awesomeness of this game make up for it.

This game was mostly meant for online play. If your someone who likes to play a solo campaign, look elsewhere.

Section 8 is best described as a combination of Halo and a bad rendition of Battlefield 2142 (I used to say Bioshock, due to the immortal main character, but not many people could easily spot that). You and your squadmates are members of a galactic military recon unit, sent to pacify and reclaim a far flung colony from the tyrannical ARM. In the single player campaign, you play as Sergeant Corde, who watches his squad butchered by an enemy defector.

The graphics in Section 8 are surprisingly bad given its predecessors and contemporaries. Wide open spaces don't flow well, and urban structures make it difficult to pick out fine details, like enemy soldiers, until they begin firing on you, and you're forced to follow their energy lines back to where they are. All the text is rendered in incredibly small, blurry bright white, and the HUD emblems are barely distinguishable from one another, and there's no zoom function on the map you get a better look.

Audio is horrific. The general can't speak in anything other than a patriotic baritone, and you can almost hear a fanfare playing in the background whenever he speaks. Enemies are stereotypical nazi-esque villians, and in the few scenes they're featured in, they're speaking in tones and inflections more reserved for discussing the finer points of live puppy roasting. You're almost expecting them to charge into combat to the battle cry of "Evil rocks!"

Gameplay is where the game falls completely flat. You are immortal, so the single player campaign is an exercise in how long it takes you to die, respawn, and run across the stage back to the engagement zone, and its really a trial against how long you're willing to put up with that. The multiplayer is genuinely well balanced, outside of certain stages making certain classes worthless. Being able to customize armor is a neat feature, though options are not explored enough. Ordering in support is bizarrely delivered, and while you can deploy turrets and supply points, you can't call in artillery. What makes it difficult is the setup of the run and jump features, which will have to crashing into walls in a vain attempt to stop, and the jetpack is barely strong enough to get over 6' walls, and with all the technology of the future, we've apparently forgotten how to throw a punch, as theirs no viable melee attack.

All told, this does not hold up to expectations. Rent first, and if its your bag, its your bag. But it'll be a tough sell, even with Halo MP diehards.

Well call me crazy but I thought this game was going to be good, well until I played it that is. My first impressions were of disappointment of the wanting of a different style of game play for the single player. It tries to pull off the original star wars battlefront thing and doesn't do it very good. There is a story but it is slightly ruined by the game play which could have been better.
Though the game does bring some new aspects which are pretty good and which I wouldn't mind seeing in a another game, just not a sequel of this one. First you have burn in which pretty much works by dropping you from an extremely high altitude and have you impact onto the ground and this is about the high point of the game.
Another new thing is that when you run for long enough, which is done by holding down the left Joystick you enter a super fast run, which if you run into something (note this would have been a good time to add a damage thing to the game where you could take someone out by running into them at high speeds or at least deal some heavy damage to the person but they decided not to do something awesome) it gives off a good bump, making you feel like you had some good velocity. This helps you cross vast distances pretty fast and lets you get to the action faster which is good, but there is a problem. This problem is stopping, the mechanic is clumsy and annoying at close distances which kills the running mechanic and you will find that you will sometimes stop short or over shoot what you wanted making killing your opponent all the more difficult.
Multiplayer is half way suck. What does that mean well basically it is good in a sense but pretty much sucks. You see balance is about finding a state of co-existence of all the parts which if done correctly makes a game fun and a person's life great. If done in the sense of Section 8 it will just frankly suck. What the developers failed to get or maybe it was South Peaks intervention who knows, is that making everything the same literally is not fun. I expect a sniper to have some kick to it, a shotgun to well not suck as this one did. It is the future and the shotgun has a slow shooting time and piss poor impact. That's right they screwed up the shotgun. The assault rifle good at close range and performs just like every other weapon, and then you have the machine gun which is a good weapon for it dishes out bullets fast. If only the game didn't screw up aiming. This is one of the few if not only occasions I have had to turn up the sensitivity to be able to aim well from the default setting.
The game play for multiplayer is well passable and bland, which is kind of sad considering that it appears to be the main selling point. That's right; the games main selling point which is made obvious by the fact that multiplayer goes first in the manual, which to the games credit is pretty good, and in the game menu.
The game uses a system where you can tweak your abilities called passive modules. The problem is they balanced these to death. Where they could have made a very unique experience they come out being, well bland. They make some difference in the game, but that is to be expected or it would eliminate the whole point of them.
The game uses and boast a buy system where you can drop turrets, sensors, vehicles and supply stations anywhere there isn't anti air when you have accumulated enough money (should have used tactical command points or something else as money on a future battlefield where you are not a merc just seems rather ridiculous and unrealistic). The good news is that you can actually get enough money to drop things and again Mr. Balancing comes in to kill the fun. Anti Personal turrets shoot to slow and don't make a much of a difference in small numbers but in larger numbers I have seen them hold checkpoints. They can't pierce your armor very faster or shields which is good but come on with that slow a reaction time and damage rate for future crap none the less is unfun. Sure they aren't over strong but now they are under achieving, same goes for the Rocket turrets. I was dancing around those things taking my time to take them out which was easy to do even at point blank range. They don't have killing power or staying power.
Though what I finally found to be enough was when a tank which is the most expencive thing you can buy mind you, shield was taken out in literally seconds by a rifle. The tank drover poorly, but it had one hell of a killing potential. If you can get four people in that thing it would be unstoppable even if it is one of the worst driving experiences I ever had. Seriously that thing is a pain in the arse to turn.
The walker unit was weak and crap. I opened fire on some people with it and you would think it would have given me the upper hand but no, It would have been more pointful if I would have just used a pistol which in this game has one hell of a lot of killing power. This is kind of funny considering that the shotgun sucks. The only thing the walker is good for is extra health. It was balanced to pointlessness.
In the end the game is over balanced and has major design issues, but there is some fun to be had. Okay I personally don't care much for the game as I kept uttering this game is crap but if you have friends and they will play with you can have some fun with this, but for 60 dollars it is overpriced for what it delivers. Find a good deal on it or buy it used. And who knows maybe they will patch the game and make it fun. That is my opinion. I give the game a 3 out of 5.
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For those looking at this game. In my opinion this was a waste of my time and money. From the trailer previews and the way the cover is made. It is very deceiving. This game took all but 3 hours to conquer. There is only about 5 short levels. Not much realizism, or control. You can respam at anytime, and as much as you want. If you are in trouble or run out of ammo, just wait to be killed and you will be right back in the fight with full ammo and life. For a fifty something dollar game, knowing what I do. I wouldn't have spent 20 for it.

Very Dissapointed with such a boring game.

I downloaded the demo on xbox live first to try this game out, and it turned out to be a great multiplayer shooter. My friends and I played the demo for hours, so of course we had to buy the game. In the game whenever you kill other players you receive points, and these points can be used to call in different equipment. Players can call in tanks, mech-units, gun turrets, AA guns, etc. There is so much to this game I would have to write a couple of pages on it. A great buy, and lots of fun to play with friends.

I only recently started using my Xbox 360 for multiplayer games instead of single player games and streaming vids. This game is perfect as a starter for prople like me who are just getting into the multiplayer arena. The single campaign is mission based and you do respawn with a full compliment of loadout after you are killed. Some have complained about this feature but would anyone really want to start a mission from scratch with no ammo after every death?

The single player campaign is a must before attempting multiplayer. You will need to tweak your skills before going up against the online players. The bots are pretty smart in the game as well. They do track you and do not blindy run into your line of fire. Self preservation is high on their list.

The multiplayer feature of the game is good. The servers always seem to be full when I go on. I am only renting the game but I may buy it thru Amazon which is why I came on to the review section of the game today. There are tweaks that I have not yet explored and I plan to buy the full game and actually read the manual :>

The graphics are good in this game. You do get the scale of the massive complexes and buildings in the game environment. The sound is mostly geared towards weapons and explosions. The voices from Command do carry thru though since your objective is given at the beginning of the mission.

I like this game a lot. So much so that I plan to buy it. Most hardcore gamers may find it too easy in single campaign mode but for the rest of us regular players it will be fun. Not to mention, it is now reduced in price. That is one of the positives in being a late-adopter.

A solid game that deserves more attention than it got. Really diverse and immersive multiplayer FPS. Unique "DCM" Dynamic Combat Missions in MP which make for a high replay value for this game. Graphic Top Notch. Overall 4/5. Get it, love it.