DoctorFinger
04-20-2011, 07:50 AM
Section 8 Prejudice Review
Title - Section 8 Prejudice
Platform - Xbox Live Arcade. Coming soon to PC and Playstation Network
Developer - TimeGate Studios
Publisher - TimeGate Studios
ESRB Rating - M (Mature)
MSRP - 1200 Microsoft Points/$15
Editor - Michael "DoctorFinger" Chauvet
What's Hot: Top notch online play. Surprisingly strategic gameplay for a shooter. Engrossing co-op Swarm mode. Low price point.
What's Not: Lackluster offline play. Occasionally indecipherable HUD.
One of the great things about this current generation of gaming are the downloadable games. Developers and publishers have realized they can make a quality, engrossing game without gut busting budgets and get it to the consumer at a low price point. This is the lesson learned by TimeGate Studios in their new shooter Section 8: Prejudice. The original Section 8 from 2009 was a good shooter which simply couldn’t hang with the big boys as a $60 retail title. Instead of packing it in or trying to bloat their next product to death they went in the downloadable direction, and the result is a tremendously fun multiplayer shooter.
Section 8: Prejudice takes what worked from the original, dumped what didn’t, and in the process made some nice additions to the gameplay. At the beginning of each match you choose your loadout from 6 customizable presets and jump onto the battlefield. And I mean jump in the most literal sense; you enter the fight by leaping from orbit right onto the fray. You select a drop point from a map, but while in the air you can adjust your flightpath and land in a more advantageous spot. Of course you could also land in a bad place, but I’ll get back to that in a moment. You have a number of choices to make when setting your loadout, with more destructive goodies unlocked as you progress up the XP ladder and earn Achievements.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5103/5637162379_51577c193a_z.jpg
You begin every life by jumping into the battlefield from orbit. And no, you don’t have a parachute.
Once you land you things stay interesting. You have a jetpack which lets you maneuver around the battlefield and insure that no position is unassailable. You also have an Overdrive spring mode, which lets you dash quickly, but with less control than a normal run. By default you’ll automatically shift into Overdrive after sprinting for a couple of seconds, but I found it better to map that function to the right analog stick. Once you start racking up kills and completing goals you earn money, which can be spent on deployables. Things like supply depots, anti-air guns, sensor grids and even vehicles can be dropped right onto the battlefield for your destructive enjoyment. Early on these just seem like cool bonuses, but they become really important as the game’s difficulty increases. For example placing an AA gun in the right spot makes it almost impossible for the enemy to deploy in an area around it, making them head overland to get to the gun. These deployables really change the game from a basic shooter into something much more tactical. You need to use these properly to be effective, but it takes some time to learn the nuances of the deployables.
The single player campaign is pretty much a glorified, 4 hour tutorial. But since the game is at heart an online shooter - and the tutorial is both fun and informative - I don’t see this as much of a problem. Multiplayer is divided into 2 sections. Conquest has up to 32 players (upped to 40 on the PC version) split into 2 teams battling for control points spread across a fairly large map. For every second you hold a point, your team’s score goes up, and the first side to 1000 wins. This is the core of the game and it’s very effective. The press review events I played in didn’t have a ton of human players, but they were still a ton of chaotic fun.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5142/5637739114_da8eddf965_z.jpg
Boom! Headshot!
Next up is the cooperative Swarm mode. You and up to 3 friends team up to fight off wave after wave of enemies. With all of the emplacements you can buy Swarm mode plays almost like a tower defense/DotA type shooter as opposed to Conquest mode’s Halo/Battlefield feel. I didn’t get too deep into this mode in my time with the game, so I can’t say how hairy it gets in the later waves, but even the early waves are no pushover.
The story is...well no one is buying this game for the story. You’re a member of the baddest of the badass squads of space marines, and you’re fighting the bad guys. There are no moral ambiguities or philosophizing. Which is fine in a multiplayer shooter. Had the single player campaign been a bit more extensive I would have found the lack of a story annoying, but for the amount of campaign it’s the right amount of exposition. But it’s still some very cliched exposition, nonetheless.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5304/5637162039_34e0c01958_z.jpg
”Let me show you something!”
Visually S8P is competent but rarely spectacular. There’s a good visual variety among the levels, but the character models are mostly generic. At times the game actually looks a lot like Halo, and in a good way. I do wish the HUD was a little less chaotic. It can be tough at times to identify objectives and equipment when the fighting gets heavy. But the framerate is rock solid and everything is smooth and clean. The voice acting is uneven, with some nice work and a few glaringly lackluster efforts. Were this a full retail title I’d say the presentation was below average, but for a DLG it’s pretty good.
Score: (4 out of 5 Cogs)
http://www.colonyofgamers.com/images/CoG4.png
Michael says, “While Section 8 Prejudice never quite crosses the line into greatness, it gets close while managing to be a hell of a fun ride. And it’s fun factor is multiplied by it’s $15 price point. It loses a bit of it’s charm when played single player, but go online with real people and it’s a blast.”
Title - Section 8 Prejudice
Platform - Xbox Live Arcade. Coming soon to PC and Playstation Network
Developer - TimeGate Studios
Publisher - TimeGate Studios
ESRB Rating - M (Mature)
MSRP - 1200 Microsoft Points/$15
Editor - Michael "DoctorFinger" Chauvet
What's Hot: Top notch online play. Surprisingly strategic gameplay for a shooter. Engrossing co-op Swarm mode. Low price point.
What's Not: Lackluster offline play. Occasionally indecipherable HUD.
One of the great things about this current generation of gaming are the downloadable games. Developers and publishers have realized they can make a quality, engrossing game without gut busting budgets and get it to the consumer at a low price point. This is the lesson learned by TimeGate Studios in their new shooter Section 8: Prejudice. The original Section 8 from 2009 was a good shooter which simply couldn’t hang with the big boys as a $60 retail title. Instead of packing it in or trying to bloat their next product to death they went in the downloadable direction, and the result is a tremendously fun multiplayer shooter.
Section 8: Prejudice takes what worked from the original, dumped what didn’t, and in the process made some nice additions to the gameplay. At the beginning of each match you choose your loadout from 6 customizable presets and jump onto the battlefield. And I mean jump in the most literal sense; you enter the fight by leaping from orbit right onto the fray. You select a drop point from a map, but while in the air you can adjust your flightpath and land in a more advantageous spot. Of course you could also land in a bad place, but I’ll get back to that in a moment. You have a number of choices to make when setting your loadout, with more destructive goodies unlocked as you progress up the XP ladder and earn Achievements.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5103/5637162379_51577c193a_z.jpg
You begin every life by jumping into the battlefield from orbit. And no, you don’t have a parachute.
Once you land you things stay interesting. You have a jetpack which lets you maneuver around the battlefield and insure that no position is unassailable. You also have an Overdrive spring mode, which lets you dash quickly, but with less control than a normal run. By default you’ll automatically shift into Overdrive after sprinting for a couple of seconds, but I found it better to map that function to the right analog stick. Once you start racking up kills and completing goals you earn money, which can be spent on deployables. Things like supply depots, anti-air guns, sensor grids and even vehicles can be dropped right onto the battlefield for your destructive enjoyment. Early on these just seem like cool bonuses, but they become really important as the game’s difficulty increases. For example placing an AA gun in the right spot makes it almost impossible for the enemy to deploy in an area around it, making them head overland to get to the gun. These deployables really change the game from a basic shooter into something much more tactical. You need to use these properly to be effective, but it takes some time to learn the nuances of the deployables.
The single player campaign is pretty much a glorified, 4 hour tutorial. But since the game is at heart an online shooter - and the tutorial is both fun and informative - I don’t see this as much of a problem. Multiplayer is divided into 2 sections. Conquest has up to 32 players (upped to 40 on the PC version) split into 2 teams battling for control points spread across a fairly large map. For every second you hold a point, your team’s score goes up, and the first side to 1000 wins. This is the core of the game and it’s very effective. The press review events I played in didn’t have a ton of human players, but they were still a ton of chaotic fun.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5142/5637739114_da8eddf965_z.jpg
Boom! Headshot!
Next up is the cooperative Swarm mode. You and up to 3 friends team up to fight off wave after wave of enemies. With all of the emplacements you can buy Swarm mode plays almost like a tower defense/DotA type shooter as opposed to Conquest mode’s Halo/Battlefield feel. I didn’t get too deep into this mode in my time with the game, so I can’t say how hairy it gets in the later waves, but even the early waves are no pushover.
The story is...well no one is buying this game for the story. You’re a member of the baddest of the badass squads of space marines, and you’re fighting the bad guys. There are no moral ambiguities or philosophizing. Which is fine in a multiplayer shooter. Had the single player campaign been a bit more extensive I would have found the lack of a story annoying, but for the amount of campaign it’s the right amount of exposition. But it’s still some very cliched exposition, nonetheless.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5304/5637162039_34e0c01958_z.jpg
”Let me show you something!”
Visually S8P is competent but rarely spectacular. There’s a good visual variety among the levels, but the character models are mostly generic. At times the game actually looks a lot like Halo, and in a good way. I do wish the HUD was a little less chaotic. It can be tough at times to identify objectives and equipment when the fighting gets heavy. But the framerate is rock solid and everything is smooth and clean. The voice acting is uneven, with some nice work and a few glaringly lackluster efforts. Were this a full retail title I’d say the presentation was below average, but for a DLG it’s pretty good.
Score: (4 out of 5 Cogs)
http://www.colonyofgamers.com/images/CoG4.png
Michael says, “While Section 8 Prejudice never quite crosses the line into greatness, it gets close while managing to be a hell of a fun ride. And it’s fun factor is multiplied by it’s $15 price point. It loses a bit of it’s charm when played single player, but go online with real people and it’s a blast.”