Dream House

Section 8

This is a review of the video game Section 8 that I wrote in December 2009, but was never published.  I think because it was possibly “too negative”.  It’s also just a first draft, so don’t judge.  I decided to Tumbl it because, hey, that’s what Tumblrs for.

When I first started playing Section 8, I got a crazy case of deja vu almost immediately.  It is a first person shooter set on an unspecified alien planet, and your character is a man wrapped in a giant robot costume.  Since I may or may not have spent an entire year of my life playing Halo 2 online instead of going outside, I was pretty excited about finding a new game from a similar vein.  Unfortunately, the best part about Section 8 is it’s ability to trick you into thinking it is like Halo.

I could tell this game sucked almost immediately.  Your character only has two speeds: crawling in the mud or sprinting at mach 7.  I spent about 10 minutes hurtling myself around the map, trying to find bad guys to shoot, but the maps are humungous and barren.  At least you have a cool jet pack, right?  Wrong.  You can only fly for about 20 feet before it has to recharge.  I wish I didn’t know that I even had a jet pack, so I wouldn’t know how disappointed I could truly feel.

I read somewhere that the online game play was pretty awesome, so I decided to quit the most boring campaign of all time and try playing multiplayer.  I was quickly connected to a game that had 3 other people in it.  Who are these people and why are they playing Section 8 instead of Halo 3?  I concluded that I  must be playing against the game developers themselves.  I sprinted around the map until I found someone to shoot, and we proceeded to slowly circle each other, shooting nonstop at point blanc range for about 4 minutes straight.  Eventually they died, and I decided that I was actually playing against the game developers’ mothers, the only people who still feel obligated to play Section 8.

Sorry Section 8, but the next time someone tells me that “we’ve lost contact with our base and we have to go investigate”, I better see Sigourney Weaver.

  1. iamkatygoodman posted this