Section 8 Hands-on Preview

Variety, as they say, is the spice of life. The first-person shooter genre continues to be one of the most over-subscribed when it comes to what’s actually out on the market. If you’re an FPS maker and you want your game to stand out, you need to do something different from what’s come before.

With Section 8, TimeGate studios has taken the approach of mixing a hefty degree of tactics into the familiar explosive gunplay. The futuristic story casts you as a member of the eponymous Section 8 – a heavily armed military squad famed for taking on near-suicidal missions. Each soldier is equipped with an armour-plated combat suit that allows them to be dropped straight into a warzone, jumping straight out of an orbiting transport ship some 15,000 feet above the ground. This process is known as “burning in,” and plays a highly decisive role in battles.

In the single-player game, you’ll find yourself taking on the Arm of Orion – an insurgent group determined to help colonised planets break away from the control of the Earth-bound authorities. However, this narrative-driven campaign is largely designed to prepare you for multiplayer gaming – the true focal point of Section 8. Here you’ll take part in large scraps with a maximum of 16 participants – although this number may increase as development progresses.

At the start of a match you’ll take your pick from one of six pre-set weapon loadouts that form a rough equivalent to the character classes seen in Team Fortress and other similar games. Each loadout provides two primary weapons, a grenade-like armament and a couple of special abilities. If you don’t like the ready-made configurations, you can tailor one by using 10 character points to alter your setup: if you want to go out armed with a sniper weapon and a rocket launcher, that’s your choice. You can also spend points on increasing your armour value and the speed at which you move. As you’ll soon discover, these last two attributes have a fairly significant effect on how you battle – but I’ll explain this in a moment.

Once you’re kitted out, it’s time to choose a burn-in location. Rather than simply spawning on the battlefield, an overhead map of the level allows you to pick the exact place for you to come raining down from above. It’s worth taking the time to think about this: depending on the number of players involved in a match (and the game mode), there’ll be a number of bases available for you and your rivals to capture. Unfortunately these outposts come equipped with a range of automated anti-aircraft guns, so attempting to drop straight in will probably result in you being killed before you even set foot on the ground. At the start of a round you’ll probably want to land somewhere just outside of their range, but if you and a few mates are feeling brave (or nuts) you could all try burning-in to the same base. Who knows? Maybe one of you will survive and secure an early advantage.

Once you’ve picked a spot, you’ll find yourself plummeting towards the ground at an alarming rate, with the entire stage beneath you. As soon as you’ve fallen a certain distance, you’ll be given the option to slow your descent; this makes you an easier target for hostile troops below, but it also gives you a limited amount of control over the direction you move in – allowing you to land into good sniping positions atop high buildings and bits of scenery. Alternatively, if you choose not to slow down you’ll simply crash down to Earth with a violent thud. It’s an unusual way to start a deathmatch, but it’s also a lot of fun – a bit like Pilotwings but with the added risk of being shot in the head. I’m also told that there will be an Achievement/Trophy for killing someone by landing directly on someone’s head. This sounds pretty challenging to me, but I’m certainly going to give it a go.

Once you’re actually on the ground you’ll find yourself in what initially appears to be a fairly familiar FPS – and yet there are lots of little twists on the normal way of doing things. If you sprint for any length of time, you’ll be given the option of going into Overdrive: here the camera pulls back to give a third person view as your soldier tears across the landscape with a mechanically-enhanced run; hit the left shoulder button and you’ll then rocket into the air with an enormous leap. Both of these abilities have cool-down periods to prevent over-use, but when available they allow you to zip across the map and to scale the high walls with ease. A less obvious but arguably more controversial change is the presence of an auto-lock-on feature that kicks in when you fire at an enemy for longer than a few seconds: it makes killing people with a machine gun extremely quick, so this may cause a few grumbles with hardcore shooter fans.

In addition to these suit-based quirks, Section 8 also offers a wide spread of tactical innovations through the form of aerial drops. Every time you achieve something during a match – killing someone, or entering a rival base – you’ll earn requisition points that can then be spent on summoning things – deployable turrets, anti-air guns, powerful mech suits and even a hefty tank. The latter examples clearly give you the edge in direct combat, but the defensive emplacements are almost as important. In the mode I sampled both sides were racing to score 1000 by capturing turf and scoring kills, but I’m told that securing bases will be a major part of most battles. Setting up turrets and the like can help you to control areas of the map even when you’re fighting elsewhere, and any kill from a structure you deployed will contribute towards your personal score.

It’s worth mentioning as well that the automated fixed defences at each base can only be knocked out of commission, rather than destroyed. If you pump one full of lead, it’ll spark and fizz before a little robot will fly over to fix it. This might give you the opportunity you need to run in and capture the base. Or perhaps you’ll disable the AA guns, allowing your mates to drop down and hold the position. There’s potential for strategic variety here, because securing safe airspace is equally as important as capturing turf. When you call in a heavy tank, for example, it has to be dropped in from above – so it’s possible for the enemy to blow it out of the sky, wasting your hard earned points.

The handheld weapons that I’ve seen so far seem slightly less adventurous than the rest of the game – machine guns, shotgun derivatives, rocket launchers – but there’s certainly plenty of new ideas going on elsewhere. In addition to spending points on vehicles and turrets, you’ll also be able to purchase mini-missions that take place mid-match and offer the chance to score big points. You might be halfway through a heated gun-battle when one of your team invokes a convoy mission – requiring your team to protect a valuable vehicle for a set period of time. If you manage to pull this off you’ll get 100 points added your side’s score, but your rivals will steal the bonus if they manage to blow up the truck. There are going to be lots of these sub-missions, from protecting spies to assassinating VIPs, and they all require slightly different kinds of points (they’re split into categories, and awarded for different things). These additional assignments weren’t operational during my recent hands-on, but once they are they could potentially be an unusual riff on the dynamic gameplay of Killzone 2’s multiplayer.

So, that’s Section 8. It sounds pretty varied, doesn’t it? There’s a lot take in, and there’s obviously only so much you can glean from playing against bots. Yes, that”s right – the game will offer AI opponents for you to train against, a welcome feature that’s all-too-rarely included with FPS titles. In the preview code I played these simulated opponents did a pretty solid job of kicking my arse, but the final game should cater to a range of skill levels. Still, I’m looking forward to playing against flesh-and-blood opponents. There are rather a lot of things to take in with this game, but with a good community I could see them leading to some really fresh battles. The burn-in system and the agile suit abilities are both highly enjoyable, while the core gunplay seems pretty solid, if unremarkable. However, it’s the tactics that really hold the potential to make Section 8 an interesting ride.

Section 8 is due for release on PC and Xbox 360.