INSURGENCY SANDSTORM SERIES

Insurgency: Sandstorm is a fairly dull game, with very little style or pizzazz in the environments or character design. Unfortunately the lower budget here shows through with the visuals. You can play against bots for practice, which is actually useful just to get a feel for the rhythm of firefights. One-shot-kills are great when you’re on the giving end, but constantly getting a third-eye hammered into your forehead isn’t a lot of fun. It takes some time to get used to, as do the weapons and gear you’re using. Flanking is a must, just as defending your position with choke-points and spotters is not only a viable tactic but a necessary one.įor me, the change from running around popping heads and hitting the D-Pad for a killstreak reward to creeping around using cover and communicating with my team was somewhat jarring. Coordinating around your opponent is essential. Here there’s real-world military tactics and you’ll need to work as a team to survive. There are no K-9 units or guns that see through walls. Yes, you can call down tactical strikes on the enemy, but these aren’t earned through glorifying kill streaks. It’s you versus the enemy in a much more clean and level contest than you usually see in military shooters.

There are no magical bullet vests or healing syringes here, no perks or intrinsic abilities to protect you. One-shot, one-kill is the order of the day here, and running in recklessly will simply get you killed. The guns not only look and sound incredibly authentic, but bullets in Insurgency do what bullets should do. When you sprint and climb it feels like a person doing it, not some technologically-advanced super soldier. Guns feel heavy and slow to fire and reload. One of Insurgencies most important selling points is it’s realistic combat. A nice selection of maps offers plenty of vantage points to scope out and learn as you play, but lone wolves will struggle far more here than in games like CoD. This allows Insurgency to neatly sidestep too many awkward questions about socio-political commentary and instead present its war as nought but an arena.īoth sides tangle over the standard FPS objectives such as capturing territory and good old-fashioned kill counts. There are two opposing factions, Security and Insurgents, both of which have a spread of ethnicities and cosmetics. Set in a nondescript Middle Eastern warzone, New World Interactive’s shooter doesn’t bother with backstory or even context outside of its objectives.

INSURGENCY SANDSTORM SERIES

Insurgency has no campaign, and offers a series of familiar multiplayer modes across maps that look immediately similar to dozens you’ve seen before. 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. The first mistake new players are going to make with Insurgency: Sandstorm is treating like Call of Duty or Battlefield.

Insurgency sandstorm