ExtraMana

Comic book pickups this week.

Examining the discourse surrounding voice actor Vic Mignogna. With reference to the wider cultural influences throught movements such as #comicsgate and #animegate

Insurgency sandstorm came out in beta not long ago and I’ve been wanting to talk about but I feel like it’s important to give proper context first since this is technically the third entry in the insurgency series. Now what is insurgency is hasn’t really changed a lot since its original incarnation as a mod for half-life 2 back in 2007. The idea was to make a first person shooter that felt more realistic than then say call of duty but that was a lot faster paced than a serious tactical military simulation shooter. Insurgency became a full-fledged game of its own in 2014, albeit still running on the source engine.

Now despite the fact that insurgency sandstorm came out in beta not long ago, running on the Unreal 4 engine and obviously looking a fair bit better I’d still argue that both games are worth owning because they have quite a different to them.

The best way I can explain this is to talk about a match, here you can see we have a typical attackers versus defenders style game going. The attackers have to run up a hill, up, under or around a bridge against an entire team of hopefully well-hidden and positioned defenders.The defenders clearly have a huge advantage and winning this as the attackers is pretty damn difficult. There is a set number of respawns and a set number of locations the attacking team needs to take so every life matters. The aim of game is therefore more to do with tactically advancing and denying the enemy team ground then it is getting a high kill count. As you can see there is not reticle so aiming is done with iron sights and scopes, all of which will severely limit your field of view and force you to think carefully about positioning to take a shot, at least that’s what should happen if you’re any good.

Now as a boomer this style of gameplay is perfect for me, I can advance with my teammates, stop to peek around corners or take up suppressing positions and try to think tactically about flanking the enemy. Taking them on head on is a very bad idea in insurgency. Likewise understanding which weapons are most appropriate is also important, I personally tend to favour mid-range combat using a semi-auto rifle like the m1 carbine, or switch an assault rifle like the M4 to single shot fire. It is possible to run in with spraying full auto though, and if you can outmaneuver your enemy putting up suppressive fire at just the right times this is a perfectly well suited playstyle.

Bullets drop over range, and shooting from a standing position especially full auto will make your shots widly inaccurate. Crouching behind cover and advancing under cover of smoke and is the smart way to play this.  What the insurgency series does particularly well is allow you to essentially play as any class with any weapon and attachment you want, meaning you can switch from a support gunner with a reflex scope to a marksman with a 4x optic and a fore-grip provided the slots are free. More than that you can swap out the 4x optic for a 1x red dot and essentially go from a long range marksman to a mid-range one between spawns. The ability to choose any weapon and attachment combination along with prioritizing ammo capacity or armor over say a couple of smoke grenades means that everyone is on an equal playing field. It takes a few hours to get a feel for the weapons and after that what you choose to use is entirely down to personal preference rather than hidden behind an unlock system.

Now as I mentioned earlier Insurgency sandstorm is still in beta. And there is much that still needs to be done for the game to be finalized. But the basic gameplay differences and improvements are noticeable already. For one old mechanics like throwing smoke grenades to hide a team’s advancement have been further complicated by needing to equip gas masks to avoid coughing. Likewise building to building combat has become a lot more tense and important to winning a match. The advances in audio positioning feedback make it possible to determine where in the building an enemy is based on gunshots or footsteps, and it’s now possible to blow the hinges of a door from range to startle an enemy hidden behind it or to just expose a possible attack point.

There’s also the option to call in air reinforcement by pairing a commander and observer class together and it’s too early days for me to give my thoughts on this. I’ve mostly seen it used poorly and I feel like it’s going to be a while before enough people really get the hang of this. Otherwise Insurgency sandstorm is quite a similar game under the hood. The weapon selection is perhaps slightly broadened out from its previous iteration and perhaps most importantly now there is larger selection of scopes, my favourite being the 2x red dot.