➤ Launch, land and fight! 🎮

Version tested: PC

Alex Corde is a prominent member of the Eighth Armored Infantry, and with his companions he is used to throwing himself where the danger is greatest, in the heart of any war conflict, to make a difference. His armor is equipped with a deflector shield capable of withstanding a good number of hits and regenerating when not under attack, and the weapons supplied to his team range from the service submachine gun to the sniper rifle, passing through rocket launchers, pulse rifles and grenades of various kinds. Corde's missions always begin with a launch from fifteen thousand feet: the critical altitude is reached, the

airbrakes and attempts are made not to enter the anti-aircraft range of action. If you land all whole, you can dedicate yourself to the objectives that are reported from time to time by the headquarters and eliminate all the enemy soldiers in your path. A classic formula, which in Section 8 repeats for each of the eight stages available in story mode and multiplayer. In the metallic role of Alex Corde, we will therefore find ourselves exploring more or less large scenarios, activating switches and fighting anyone who demonstrates hostile intentions. The launch from the army aircraft (which we must perform not only every time we start a mission, but also when we continue after a defeat) constitutes one of the two innovative elements of the game: we can decide where to land and manage the last phase of the launch as better we believe, moving slightly on the map to find ourselves in the best position with respect to the enemy troops. The second novelty is represented by the management of support devices, intended both as radars and charging stations and as assault turrets and vehicles: as we eliminate our opponents, we earn credits that can then be spent to request the launch of one of these objects.

The war of armor

Our character has two main and two secondary weapons at his disposal (grenades, vibrating daggers, repair equipment), he can run fast (the "boost" is activated after a few seconds) and has a jetpack that allows him to take jumps tens of meters and to "soften" any falls from a height. The interface shows us at any time the number of ammunition left, the level of the shields and any damage suffered by the armor, as well as the energy bar needed to

run and jump. It is therefore strong of a good repertoire, no doubt about it, but it is anything but invincible: the deflector shields are easily annihilated by the bursts of machine guns, so it is never wise to face enemies openly and without staying in movement. Each of our weapons is equipped with a minimum level of zoom and on certain occasions we can resort to a "lock-on" on the targets, especially useful when they jump trying to escape our attacks (they can do it too, yeah). Our equipment can be changed at the appropriate charging stations, but from the options it is possible to customize the "classes" to create the combination that best suits us. In singleplayer, the variants of enemies we are dealing with are not very many, but the differences between ordinary soldiers and commandos are immediately noticeable. Sometimes we will also find on our path opponents equipped with enormous power armor, lethal in close combat (it is enough to end up in their grip to die) but devastating even from a distance. Our teammates offer effective support, in the sense that they generally don't die and inflict a lot of damage on opponents, but often they get in our way and place themselves in our line of fire.

Alone or in a group

Eight stages are not many, unfortunately, and in fact we have finished the story mode in only two game sessions at medium difficulty. The general impression is that Section 8 do nothing to get out of the "already seen" and the custom of the FPS genre: the missions are very simple and repetitive, sometimes quite short, and the only interesting moments (for example when we drive a vehicle or power armor) are little and badly exploited. Online multiplayer allows up to forty players of

challenge each other within eighteen maps, and the modalities are certainly not lacking: some are based on the control of the territory, others on the escort, others on the simple deathmatch. The management of extra devices during group games takes on a much greater strategic value than in story mode, for example, you can organize anti-aircraft to prevent enemies from regenerating in certain points of the map - since the regeneration implies a launch from above : there is no need to land corpses already. We did notice some lag during some phases, but in general the service seems to be working well. If you have an Xbox Live gamertag, Section 8 it will interface transparently with the scoring system of your account, and in the same way you will be able to manage messages and the friends list. Moving on to a quick technical analysis, unfortunately there is not much to rejoice: the Southpeak Games product stands out for the heaviness of the engine, slow and badly optimized, together with a cosmetics that is anything but exciting as regards the scenarios ( simple, "aseptic" and bare) and visual effects (the explosions are horrible). With an ATI Radeon 4870 we had to give up v-sync and some shadow detail to play smoothly at the 1680 x 1050-dot resolution. The music is discreet, the effects quite "pumped" and present. Too bad for the dialogues only in English, since the textual translation into Spanish on the right of the screen is hardly legible during the action.

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6.3

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Section 8 it is a fairly traditional FPS, characterized by a couple of interesting elements (the launch phase and the management of support devices) which, however, had to be exploited better; in particular as regards the story mode, really too short and lacking in ambitions. After the eight stages without too many problems and without too many emotions, it remains an online multiplayer with good numbers (forty players, eighteen maps, various modes) but little soul. Technically, much more could have been done: the scenarios are bare and simplistic, the interaction with the environment is almost zero and at the same time the hardware requirements are unnecessarily high. If you like first person shooters there is certainly better around: Section 8 unfortunately it fails to offer the quality and spectacle that are now a must when competing with the best exponents of the genre.