Insurgency

[Cakedaddy]

YOUCH!! Awesome. By FAR the best of the mods. Wanted to give it a quick try. 2 hours later, I'm quiting cause it's late. Loving it. WILL be played much by me.

It's US Marines vs insurgents in Iraq.

Weapons. Standard issue, what you'd expect. Movement, standard realistic FPS movements stuff.
Shooting. NO CROSSHAIRS!! So, this is not for the weak of heart. In normal aim mode, you are hipshooting and have no crosshairs. The bullets still hit the middle of your screen, where the crosshairs would normally be though. So, it's not that hard to kill if you are in close quarters. All guns do have an aim mode. Right click, and you take aim. It brings your weapon up and you use it's actual crosshairs to aim with. So, in aim mode, much of your screen is now your weapon. But, you have dead on aim now. You can't run or even walk fast in this mode. You are walking and aiming now. Drop your weapon and you can walk faster and hip shoot. Hold shift, and you drop your aim completely and you run.

With no crosshairs comes easy death. Actually, it's realistic death. You won't take many shots before dying. And you don't have to give many.

You also don't get the handy 'friend or foe' highlighting while aiming. So, if you aren't sure, you don't get the person's name showing up with a color. So, you have to learn the profile of the characters. The servers I played on had friendly fire ON. I LOVE that. So many times, I wasn't sure and didn't shoot. Then died.

I'm not good with grenades and didn't do well with those. You get issued one per life.

You can switch weapons. Come accross a dead guy and you can switch out your weapon. I had to do this a couple times while sniping. Found my self surrounded by bad guys. Shot one up with my pistol (cause a bolt action sniper isn't good in close quarters. Remember, no crosshairs! If I aim, I'm zoomed in and can't find the guy!) Anyway, I kill him and run over and pick his weapon up. I start to shoot, but am quickly mowed down by his friends. But, the option was there anyway.

While playing, you get no idication of what your health is. You don't get kill notification. You don't know how you are doing until you die. Then it tells you how you scored with that life.

Unlike other games, if you hear bullets, MOVE!!! Remember it only takes a shot or two to kill. That was something I had to get used to. You hear the 'ping' of rounds hitting the metal behind you, or the 'thud' of one hitting the wall behind you and you better hit the dirt or take cover NOW. You REALLY have to pay attention while playing. You can't use a damage indicator to figure out where the shooting is coming from. You take cover and hope it's enough.

Because of the lack of normal indicators (damage, kills, etc) it's very immersive for an FPS. You listen, you look intently at your surroundings, and you move quickly between cover. On many occations, I'd be moving through an area, taking up a sniping position, whatever, and all of the sudden there's shots coming in and I would jump from the sound. You are scanning the terrain so intently looking for movement, or the outline of a person, that things scare you.

There seems to be some squad based stuff too. When you join a team, you also join a squad that has a seargent. I saw a message about 'No orders issued', so, I guess you can issue orders as a seargent. At one point, I was offered a promotion. I turned it down because I had only been playing for about 10 minutes and I still didn't know what was going on.

Maps were good. Not too big, not too small. All the ones I played were 'capture the point' based. I played two variations of that. The spawn points were spaced so that at no point did either team have an advantage as far as proximity to a capture point. In other words, the defenders weren't spawning in the capture point repelling the offense. Well designed and thought out maps. The ones I played anyway.

There was NO team chatter. Definately would benefit from communications. But, no one was talking. Not sure why.

Ok, long review is ending now. I REALLY liked it. HIGHLY recommend it. Just fucking awesome. That being said, I'm guessing I'll be the only one playing it. It's hard. You have to try. It's not the generic 'spam your bullets at the bad guys, hit space, repeat' FPS. You die easy, you hardly EVER see the guy who shot you, it's hard to pick up targets, etc. But it's fucking fun because of all of that.

[Cakedaddy]

Holy shit. That was REALLY long.

[Cakedaddy]

Small update.

I have yet to find a server that doesn't have freindly fire on. Awesome.
You do get a damage indicator telling you where the damage is coming from. Doesn't really help though being that you can take so little damage.
You do get friendly names showing up at the top of the screen when aiming. But I only have noticed it when I'm close up on the people. Far away, I have yet to get any indication of who I'm aiming at. The M key helps though. It brings up a map and shows green dots where your teammates are. So, if you have time, you can hit the M key and see if there are any green dots in your field of view.

I was OWNING as the sniper on multiple maps. One map, they could NOT capture point B. I'm not going to claim 'it was all me baby!'. But I would take out at least 50% of the rushing force every time.

Awesome awesome game.

[Leisher]

I've got it downloaded and will give it a shot at some point in the near future.

I'm looking forward to this one as I've heard nothing but good things.

(I'll admit my time in Insurgency will be based on me taking breaks from Saint's Row 2 and Far Cry 2.)