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Section 8 Preview
Low-Income Gaming
How to Invade a Planet in 3 Easy Steps 1. Get a platoon of Heinlein's General Infantry from Starship Troopers 2. Breed them with Gears from Heavy Gear 3. Feed them nothing but Starsiege fiction Invade!   I'm having a hard time trying to find something original in Section 8. And it matters not. Even the engine is used - it's based on the multi-platform Unreal Engine 3, which irritates me since I can't get anti-aliasing to work; but fine, it doesn't seem to disrupt my ability to womp the shite out of 16 of my temporary nemeses, bot or human, and try as I might, I can't stay away from this title for very long. Oh, and I've been playing the beta, the demo version. It's free. It's kinda buggy. So what is the thing that makes this incomplete game so damn appealing? It's everything Team Fortress 2, or Left 4 Dead, and so many others, aren't. Starting with scale; you literally begin each round a mile off the ground, screaming and on fire like the codpiece of God. Your nearest base is half a click away and your current objective is twice that, and there're three walkers between you and the VIP. So what do you do? Lock your suit into sprint mode, just before the armor closes in on your delicious red triangle, hit your jets and sail over them. If your aim is right, you land on that enemy general feet-first before teabagging him with your grenades. Of course, you'd better hope a few of your squadmates are there, too, 'cause that son of a bitch has retard strength and will kill you dead three times over without help. Section 8 will make your hippocampus tingle. Its use of the third dimension forces you to pay attention to more than just your reticule, and the HUD smothers you with important distractions. But if you forget to keep one eyeball trained on that minimap, you're going to eat a cockmeat sammy. You see, it's a coin toss between you and your enemy, and if you're both on even footing, your combat skills don't determine the outcome of who'll live.     In Section 8, your suit shoots for you. Everyone has the ability to lock on to a target, and while you're locked in, you will not miss. You can control your view, you can move and jump, but your crosshairs will stick to the other guy until he dies, you die, or something comes between you. Or the timer runs out. In order to succeed, you need to use the environment to your advantage, and all the information you can get your hands on. And you need to use your suit. You have four major tools: sprint mode, shields, jump jets, and lock on. Lock on is the easiest to misuse, because you have to use it so much. Time it wrong and it's wasted, and like almost everything in this game, it has a refractory period. Then you've dropped your silver bullet and the other guy is going to jump over your head and not ever miss. Jumping adds so much to an attack or retreat, because it's fast and puts good distance between you and your enemy. Which means your shields will take all the hits, and shields grow back. Up close, bullets slip right past them. And finally, sprinting at 80 miles an hour is pretty badass no matter how you look at it. Using these tools right is more important than your loadout, your location, and your aim. In the right combination, you're a superhero; without 'em you're a plodding victim. So Section 8 fighting is nuanced.    
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