This is a much more grounded military shooter, and it’s as refreshing as it is difficult. No over-the-top Hollywood set-pieces and dastardly villains threatening to launch nukes at the rest of the world. There are no Kevin Spaceys or Kit Harringtons in the cast. For a start, Insurgency: Sandstorm is not a glitzy action shooter built on an insanely high budget. However, dive a little deeper and you’ll see the glaring differences. This is a game built from the ground up to deliver a more realistic and hardcore experience.Īt surface level, you’d be forgiven for drawing such similarities. Those arcade-style run and gun shooters are a different breed to Insurgency. Add to that the AI’s horrendous capability to pull snap shots and kill you even when rotating 180 degrees or when their weapons are lowered and not aimed at you, the absolute unfailing accuracy of technical’s gunners, and the lack of proper warning and feedback with RPGs or grenades, and the end result is an unbelievably frustrating experience where players explode out of nowhere and feel cheated by perfect-aim one-shot, one-kill AI.The first mistake new players are going to make with Insurgency: Sandstorm is treating like Call of Duty or Battlefield. Every single time I called in gunship support, I died to its missiles through walls while the rest of my team sat untouched a feet away from me. Enemy mortars can wipe out your whole team even if you’re on the ground floor of a three-storey structure. RPGs and grenades can’t be used on windows, as the hit detection makes them bounce back and explode on you. Pistols feel stronger than primary guns, maps have invisible walls preventing sniping positions of any kind, and weapons without foregrips are incapable of putting rounds reliably downrange, but none of those comes close to the absurdly bad hit detection in explosives and the AI’s aimbot capabilities. In fact, the loadout system is just part of the game’s greatest issue: Insurgency: Sandstorm is in dire need of a balancing pass. Even worse, the higher caliber of the FAL actually downs enemies quicker and more reliably than the 5.56 rounds of the M4A1, which means the FAL does more damage, weights less, and carries more attachments - making it effectively a better weapon in every single aspect. The system still needs a lot of adjustment – on assault rifles alone, the highly versatile and relatively light M4A1 weights more in-game than the bulkier and heavier FN FAL, which means you get a lesser choice of attachments in the weapon that is famously known as a very versatile platform. Players get full access to all attachments and weapons available to a class since the beginning – each with their own weight – and must choose their equipment based on how much they can carry. The loadout system, however, is more sensible. It’s all made worse by the senseless decision to only rewards players a small amount of credits on level up and nowhere else, resulting is a grindy and unsatisfying progression system that feels akin to a free to play mobile title. The game’s current customisation system is workable, but very limited in both variety and gear options. In fact, player retention may be one of Insurgency’s biggest challenges. It’s a brilliant small detail that adds an immeasurable amount of authenticity to proceedings. The whole exchange is voiced, and if either party takes fire or gets interrupted, the request does not go through to command – station will literally ask the observer to repeat the request if it can’t be understood, which is done automatically and obviously prolongs the time until support arrives. Working alongside another player running the Observer class, the Commander calls out air support markers to observers, who then relay them to the station. My favourite part of Insurgency, without a doubt, is the Commander role. There are constant automatic call outs on enemy position, warning shouts from spotting threats, and reaction comments when taking fire, alongside a manual order wheel to alert teammates or request support. Weapons are weighty, explosions are deafening, and bullets ping and pop as they hit the environment around you, but it’s the soldiers that elevate the experience to a new level. That would be fine on it’s own, but what really brings battles to life is the sound design.
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