Section 8 refers to your squad in the game, the 8th Infantry, set in some alternate history version of the USA (or pseudo futuristic setting I suppose), and the single player experience revolves around a guy named Alex Corde. I didn't get particularly involved in the actual story at play, I found it largely uninteresting, and I thought that the single player campaign was mostly an excuse for an elongated tutorial that will help you out with the multiplayer mode, which seems to be the real meat of this title. Single player takes place over a series of missions, interspersed with some limited cut-scene action, and each mission seems to put you in a different role with a new set of weapons or devices, which is where the tutorial feeling comes from. I don't think it's something you'd need to play to understand the game, but if you want to get a grip on the controls and weapons, I suppose it does the job.

Multiplayer, however, is pretty fantastic. It's a team based objective mode, typically featuring a couple bases set in a relatively small map with defined borders. There's multiple control points to take over, usually done by running up to them and pressing A to begin a hack, and then staying in the area until the on screen meter fills with your teams color. Once that's done, every object within the base comes under you command, including automated defenses like rocket launchers and mini-gun turrets, along with sensor arrays and anti-air units to prevent enemies from landing within your base when they respawn. There's a point objective to reach for each map, and whoever controls the most locations will generate the most points. There didn't seem to be an instant win situation, even if one side controls all available points you can continue to fight and get them back.

The game also supports bots in its offline and online modes, so if you're unable to fill out a team you can opt to enable them. The bot AI is actually pretty good, but I did find them to be a little too stationary at times, they'll locate enemies and chase them within a certain area, but they don't stray out too far or get particularly vindictive like a real player will. Case in point, if I'm sniping in at a base from far away, they'll fix their sights on me and fire back after a shot or two, but they wouldn't typically come outside of the base to get up close and personal with me, in an effort to negate the power of my sniping ability. For the most part though, the bots are a serviceable replacement for actual players, but the most fun you'll have with the game definitely comes from a full group.

Section 8 employs a few neat tricks to keep its multiplayer interesting and fun amidst a slew of popular titles already present on the Xbox 360. One is the use of jetpacks, which is where a lot of people seem to want to make Tribes comparisons, which is mostly apt. The Jetpacks are certainly useful for getting to high ground or throwing off an enemies aim, but they're generally pretty limited in time, and even when you outfit yourself with modules to extend their use they don't allow you to fly around and shoot accurately, or that often for that matter. Along with the jetpacks, when you spawn into the game you do so from far overhead, and fall down to the map from a drop ship. There's about a 10 second timer on this, and you can choose your landing point prior to launch, assuming the entry isn't blocked by an enemy sensor. This makes spawning pretty dynamic and interesting, allowing you to approach from all sorts of angles, and the dropping in approach also allows for an air brake about 4 seconds from descent. This will let you fine tune your final approach a bit, which is really useful when dropping into structures to try and get your placement just right.

The game incorporates a number of weapons, but nothing that's super outlandish or something that we haven't seen before. Characters and units have two health bars, one for shields and one for physical damage. The shields recharge over time, but physical damage will need to be healed, and can impact your characters performance depending on where you are hit. Certain weapons will have greater effect on shields than your body, or vice versa, so you'll want to adjust your load out accordingly. There are preset classes in the game, but you can create custom load outs, selecting your primary and secondary weapons, along with a number of modules that create bonuses to weapon damage, shields, jetpack boost, and so on. There's a nice level of customization here to keep things interesting, and you'll generally be able to find a comfortable balance for just about every player type.

The battles themselves are lengthy, and at certain points various objectives can be introduced and completed, allowing a side to gain requisition points, which basically serves as in-game currency. This allows you to buy placements outside of bases, or even mech units that you can walk around in, which are pretty tough to take down and can create a lot of mayhem if left unchecked. The objectives range from easily taking down a particular enemy player, or defending mobile convoys or even Intel pieces, and they add a little spice to what might be an otherwise bland game of capturing control points.

All the little things that game incorporates into combat, like the drop ship spawning, the customizable load outs, the base control with automated defenses, and the various modules, keep Section 8 from being a bland multiplayer shooter, and help it stand out against the pack of Halo's and Call of Duty's that currently populate the system. It's well worth checking out for team based play, and while I think the single player campaign was significantly weaker than the rest of the experience, I fully believe that it's worth checking out for the multiplayer alone. It's definitely a fun experience, and hopefully one that more people will pick up on.

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