Game: Section 8: Prejudice

Platform: PC

Publisher: TimeGate Studios

Developer: TimeGate Studios

ESRB: N/A

Genre: Shooter

Players: 1-40

What's Hot: Tremendous value; Conquest mode is addictive; superb bot play; tons of personal stat tracking

What's Not: Campaign is merely filler; Games for Windows Live remains an annoyance

---

Review by: William Abner

Section 8: Prejudice is criminally priced at fifteen dollars. It’s like the folks at Timegate don’t like money. I tend to think of it as the company knows how cool its game is, so it lowered the price point to attract as many players as possible, balance sheet be damned. I hope it works, because this is a wonderful team based shooter.

The game is more or less a copy of the Xbox Live Arcade version that’s been out for couple of weeks. It’s not a port, really, as the PC controls (keyboard+mouse) work just fine, but if you’ve played that version, this is more or less the same game. Here’s what you need to know: The single player campaign runs around five hours and is pretty standard stuff: a linear design with straightforward objectives with enemy AI that doesn’t seem to care that you just popped its shields to shreds and waits for you to finish it off. It’s basically there to get you used to the controls and to throw new gadgets at you as the story continues so you’re ready for the meat of the game -- the multiplayer.

Prejudice, currently, offers up two modes of multiplayer mayhem: Spawn mode, which is essentially a co-op horde defense game where you and some buddies fight off wave after wave of enemies. Conquest mode is where the game makes its living. In this mode you are part of a large contingent of up to 20 teammates who battle over various locations. During a match you earn weapon upgrades, vehicles, turret deployments, and can even partake in side quests mid-game like escorting a convoy or protecting a VIP. Teamwork is crucial to playing well, but there’s no stopping you from just going off the radar and doing your own thing. Matches are fast and furious and normally last around 20 minutes as each team battles to 1000 points.

There’s clearly a “Tribes” feel here as you come complete with space armor, jetpacks, and deploy (respawn) from several thousand feet after each death. Picking the proper landing zone is also wroth considering as if you get too close to AA guns you’re going to get blown out of the sky before you manage to get back into the action. Conversely, a well aimed deployment can land on an enemy – killing them right quick.

My favorite trick, however, is the auto-lock feature which allows you to press the Ctrl button to auto lock onto a target. You can’t use this feature at will, but there’s nothing like playing a multiplayer game and chasing a guy in a jetpack for 30 seconds and finally saying, “screw this” and blasting him out of the sky with one auto lock shot. Of course the same can be done to you, which isn’t quite as fun.

The game also comes with stellar bot play so even if you don’t have a full team – for both Spawn or Conquest – you can play with fairly competent bots. The bots actually know how to play the game, which is refreshing. There is another mode that should be coming soon called Assault which adds another team variant into the mix. As of this writing it’s not out yet, as Timegate is waiting until the game registers 10 million online kills. Yeah, silly. But another game mode is definitely welcome.

There is a lot of game here for $15. Sure the controls could be a tad tighter (I do love the hoverbikes, though) and the graphics aren’t in the same realm of other games in its class, even though this does lower the system requirements quite a bit, but Section 8: Prejudice is an excellent value and hopefully Timegate takes the revenue from this one and develops a new Kohan game.

I can dream.

William Abner is the Editor-in-Chief of GameShark . He is also co-founder of No High Scores and is a regular on the Jumping the Shark podcast.

Questions or comments? We'd love to hear from you .