Section 8 Prejudice

I stumbled across this game last night on steam for the low price of $16 and began my download. I have played it now for a couple of hours and I feel like I have enough of the basics down to do a review.

Let me start by saying that I did not play the original Section 8 but was able to discern, from various reviews on the net, that it left quite a bit to be desired. I think this game delivered better than it's predecessor in that it actually has a single-player campaign. This is where I have spent most of my time on the game thus far.

The story-line of the campaign is very lacking. Everything around the narrative seems very thrown-together and generic. The game starts you off as a captain of a unit who holds a very important prisoner. Inevitably, the prisoner gets away and you must track down his where-a bouts in order to bring him back to his cell. The main characters don't seem to be that memorable. Ultimately, it feels like just an excuse to shoot bad guys.
I also had issue after issue trying to create a Microsoft LIVE ID through the game itself. I eventually navigated to the site manually with Google Chrome and registered myself externally. I think this is a bug that needs to be looked at.

The graphics are ok. Nothing spectacular but definitely not sub-par here.
The games controls are fun. You are equipped with a jet pack, a super-sprint ability and all of the game's buttons are in a place where one would think they should be. I did not feel like I could control the character the way I wanted to most of the time though. I found myself wanting to crouch lower, to strafe while I was running and to control my jet pack direction a little better.

The multiplayer seemed to be a confusing mess for me. I was able to join a server easily enough but once I got in and deployed myself (you get shot out of a drop ship anywhere you specify on the combat map) I wasn't sure what was going on at all. New missions would be assigned to either team almost sporadically. Once the mission was assigned I had no idea where to go to accomplish the mission for my team. The result was about thirty minutes of pure frustration before I left the server.

Both weapons and amo can be selected from inventory stations or load outs before you deploy yourself. These items can be modified and certain stats can be tweaked to give your character more armor, more damage, etc. This could make for a lot of different variations of different characters and possibly make the multiplayer more revolved around the individual's play style.
All and all, the game is certainly worth the $16 I paid for it but not much more. It feels like a Halo spin-off and I think it would be a great game for fans of Halo in the single-player aspect. The confusion from the multiplayer matches makes the game virtually useless for those of us who are looking for a good fps to play competitively with our friends. In this case you get what you pay for.