You know the developer from past games like X Blades, Velvet Assassin and Two Worlds. There track record hasn't been great but Section 8 seems to be well done.
Playing past Southpeak games, I was really skeptical at how good Section 8 would be. During E3, I had the chance to visit Southpeak's booth to get a preview of how Section 8 is going to be like. I found myself in a meeting room with Robert Siwiak Producer of Section 8 of TimeGate Studios and he'd demo the game (pc version) for us in multiplayer mode.
You play as Alex Corde of the 8th Armor infantry and volunteering to put on a new armor suit. This new suit is a prototype made to enhance all your abilities like in Crysis. Your job is to defend several bases from being blown up by enemy forces and then take it under your command.
The gameplay seemed chaotic and deep in multiplayer where you can spawn from anywhere in the map. When you spawn you can select in the map where you want to do an orbital drop from. As you're dropping you can see where your enemy is located and can position yourself accordingly. At first I thought this feature would not work at all because you would be taking out all the strategy out of the game if you can drop from anywhere. But then I was told that you can setup turrets/vehicles defenses anywhere surrounding the base. It is like mixing a First Person Shooter and a Defense Tower game together which I found intriguing.
You also have your own personal character to level up and raise skill points. Doing certain activities will earn you requisition points which you can upgrade certain aspects of your skill.
The graphics (on the pc) were not too shabby either. I will probably except the 360 version to look a tad bit worst than the pc version since the devs were using a top notch Alienware PC. Robert told me that any differences between the two platforms would be negligible and except the same experiences on both games. As far as the map that was shown, it looked baron. Pretty much a lot of free roaming space with not a lot of environments. I imagine it won't be that way with 32 players to jam pack the area but I hope more unique maps will be available at launch.
Something that I found disappointing was that there won't be a map editor tool available at launch. Robert did say that it could be added later in DLC but for now there is no plan for mod tools to create your own map.
There will also be a available demo to download later in the near future. I had low expectations of Section 8 but now I would highly recommend everyone to at least try the demo. It's definitely a fun game with a new twist to First Person Shooters.
