Like Section 7, But Better! Section 8!

An article over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun caught my eye; mostly for vague references to "Tribes" and "Planetside", two games I rather enjoyed back in the day. The new game being compared to the latter is Sector 8.

I want to say up front that I’m having great deal of fun with this. It’s the kind of game I go into for five minutes to take a screenshot, and emerge from two hours later. Read onwards for why.

When people were throwing the “Tribes” word around to explain where Section 8 sat in the big scheme of things, I was unconcerned and not particularly inspired. I assumed it would be another vague sci-fi squib that wouldn’t really satisfy anyone. Tribes-alikes have a habit of not quite hitting the best things about multiplayer gun-violence on the head. As much as I respect the original games, their weapons, physics and environments never quite grabbed me in the way they did so many other people. So you can imagine that I was pleased to find that despite some similarities in the sci-fi, jetpacks and vehicles sense, Section 8 is very much its own game.

Just running down my "What makes a good FPS" checklist:

1. It looks good, both UI and atmosphere.
2. It has classes, not just guys with guns that they shoot people with.
3. The maps look BIG.

Now, does that make it worth the price-tag? Probably not. It is an Xbox360 release, which always makes me leery (For example: Halo was great on Xbox, but sucked on PC). Also, without any apparent digital distribution via Steam or another platform, it doesn't appear that the PC is their primary market. I'm not the only one with the digital distribution question either.

I'd be interested to know if Section 8 will be downloadable at launch on Steam - and if so if there will be a preload offer?

*coughs*I won't mind a free weekend and if you offer one you are bound to sell more copies. But yeah, you'll never do that.*coughs*

+1

So where is the response to this post? Purchasing this game on steam would really motivate me to purchase this game. Direct2Drive and all of the other content systems are a joke.

I would consider purchasing this game in store, but lately I have made it a hobby to secure all of my games with steam so that there is no worry of losing cd-keys and such.

I'll be keeping my eye on the game in the meantime.