If you’re an FPS fan, you’ve most certainly come across the so-called “spawn camping” in one of the many battles you’ve fought online. You know, when the enemy bunkers down in your base (or somewhere close enough) and blows your head off as soon as you arrive on the map. And regardless of how many excuses you can come up with for it, spawn camping isn’t exactly the most glorious job a gamer can have, so various producers have come up with different solutions.

Some games allow you to respawn next to an ally, with the obvious advantage of spawning somewhere else if you’re being hunted in your own base. The problem is that if you’re ally is a moron, you’ll probably face one or more enemies as soon as you reenter combat, before you even know what’s happening. Others, like Team Fortress 2, have limited themselves to just better protecting the spawn point.

TimeGate Studios, known to RTS fans for their Kohan series and FPS lovers for two FEAR expansions, came up with a different idea: burn-in spawn, or better said, the ability to start the fight almost anywhere on the battlefield. This possible due to the fact that the action takes place in a more distant future, when mankind has conquered the starts, founded colonies throughout the galaxy and has a military force that includes the 8th Armored Infantry Division, affectionately called Section 8, because its soldiers are always sent first into a warzone, usually on suicide missions.

One thing that I never quite understood about game developers is their desire to please everyone, even though it’s not the case. Section 8 for instance is a multiplayer-oriented game. No doubt about that, the main menu reflects that and the online component is by far its biggest upside. As a result, the single-player can be seen at most as a short tutorial for the real action, but despite this, the TimeGate designers took great pains to pencil a story about revenge, intergalactic conflicts, the fate of mankind and all that jazz.

Why is that, exactly? Because I really don’t know. Why bother creating an elaborate intro, where the protagonist, Alex Corde, explains how the burn-ins make him feel like a kid again and the in-flight stims do nothing but help him remember, if you’re not going to elaborate? Remember what? Did he suffer some sort of trauma when he was young? Did his dog die? What gives?

Same goes for the rest of the “emotional” elements thrown in just for the sake of it. In the first mission for instance, the commander of your squad is killed by the Arm of Orion forces, about which you don’t know that much. Oh dear, what a tragedy, they killed Hawthorne, NOOOOOOO. Ok… so? I should care because… what? I met the guy like 5 minutes ago, time during which he just told me to follow him around; do you really think his death at the hands of a scripted scene will move me in some meaningful way?

The main antagonist falls into the same category, a former member of Section 8 who now works “for those guys”. You don’t know why, but that’s what the script says. The man enters the scene, blabbers something about his great plan and how there’s nothing you can do to stop it, only to bite 2 bullets some time later and end the single-player. Total time, some 4 hours, even less. Maybe a bit more if you replay it on Hard to obtain all the Achievements.

The “tacked on” feeling is further strengthened by the fact that during the missions you’re accompanied by 3 squad mates who you can’t control. And in some missions, the sniper will tell you that he’s going to find a suitable position to take you targets that you designate. Riiiight.

Personally I would have appreciated a “campaign” made up of training missions that would have explained the game mechanics, the finer things of gameplay and various tactics that could give me an edge online.

The multiplayer on the other hand is a different story. For start, there are a lot of official servers available and the pings on the European ones are around 60 – 70ms. The bad news is that the number of combatants isn’t all that high, at least not on the old continent. The US servers are usually more full, but even on the European ones you can find adversaries, especially in the afternoon.

Although Section 8 has a single game mode, in which two teams duke it out to get victory points (usually 1000) by capturing strategic locations (Control Points – CP), it actually encompasses most of the known game types familiar to FPS fans, which are now called Dynamic Combat Missions (DCM).

These vary from escorting a VIP to a safe zone and stealing information to detonating a bomb inside the enemy camp or using a special transmitter. If your team completes the mission, it gets a hefty number of victory points. If not, it loses some, and a part of them are offered to the other side.

DCMs have specific requirements and are triggered by the feats pulling off by each member of the team. You’re killing enemies with the Assault Rifle? Have some points. You like healing your comrades? Have some more. When a team has enough feats, the corresponding mission is automatically triggered, whether you like it or not. And since you can’t win a game by simply holding all the CPs, you have to do everything you can to help your team complete as many missions as possible, while sabotaging the other side.