I’ve been interested in Section 8 since I first saw this trailer during E3. The game play looks a little like Tribes 2 which I loved in college, but with updated graphics. I played 6 or 7 games this afternoon and had a good time with it.  The demo is multiplayer focused and they give you an instant action button to jump strait into the action.  However, if you do you’re really hurting yourself because there is a ton of character customization options to choose from.  I’d recommend going through each of the pre-configured loadouts and see how they are different.  Then, after playing around with them for a few matches you can setup your own custom loadout with whichever 2 weapons, 2 equipment, and passive abilities you want. You are not stuck with what you choose though because each time you die, or at any Resupply Points you team has captured, you can change any part of your loadout.  There are six or seven weapons in the demo (assault rifle, machine gun, sniper, pistol, shotgun, and rockets).  The equipment includes grenades, knife, repair tool, and motion sensor.  For your passive abilities you have 10 stat points you can assign to categories to improve accuracy, shield strength, boost power, etc.  Between all of these option you can really customize your character to suit your play style and the game type.  It looks like in addition to these ones that are available in the demo the full version will add even more.

Your character also wears an armor suit that provides both shielding and armor.  When the shields do down from enemy fire they will automatically recharge over time if you stay out of the fighting.  Once your armor has taken damage you will need to have it repaired or repair it yourself with the repair tool equipment. Your armor also lets you sprint very quickly to get around the battlefield but the trade off is that you put your gun away to do so.  The armor also has a thrust pack that will propel you a couple stories into the air. Unlike games like Tribes 2 it is not a jetpack.  I’ve seen some people in the PC beta saying they wish it was a jetpack instead, but I personally like the thrust pack.  You can still use it to get pretty high but only in limited bursts.  However, combining the thrust with the sprint and you can get to some really high and hard to reach areas.

As you play you earn points for killing enemies, meeting objectives, and repairing.  These points are then used to call in airdrops of turrets, heavy armor, tanks, and remote support depots.  I found that I could single handedly defend a base area as an Engineer by repairing anything that got damaged and using the points I earned to call in a remote supply depot to keep me stocked and a couple turrets clustered together to watch my back.  This freed up my squad mates to go on the offensive and try to beat the bonus objectives as well as take over the opposing base.

I really like the burn in feature that occurs after you die.  There is no respawn delay because you drop from an orbiting ship down to the planet.  You can choose land with your squad or pick the exact location to land.  I have not done it yet, but I’m really looking forward to burning in and landing on an enemy.

The graphics look pretty good. Not super outstanding but still very nice.  The work well for the style of first person shooter the developer seem to be going for.  Besides the graphics, the AI for the bots seems pretty good.  I saw AI repairing teammates and turrets as well as working together to attack the same target as their human teammates.  Sure, humans you can communicate with are better but the bots were not dumb like in a lot of shooters.

Overall, I’ve enjoyed the demo so far.  I noticed an option in the menu to invite friends to the match so hopefully this weekend I can get a large room going. I’ve not 100% decided to but it yet but I will rent it for sure. What is going to make that decision for me is the community of gamers who play it.  Since this is not one of the big three (Halo, Call of Duty, Gears of War) it is likely that I would see a lot of the same gamers playing pretty regularly. For some games, like Red Faction Guerrilla, it is the great community of gamers that makes it so much fun to play.  However, if the gamers playing Section 8 are not good at working as a team and communicating the multiplayer will not be as fun.  So, I plan to rent it when it releases and if everyone playing seems cool I’ll buy it.