The ability to lock on to enemies is an interesting dynamic, which allows you to literally lock your aim onto an opponent so that for a brief period of time you simply cannot miss your mark. Your lock’s longevity is based on many factors such as the weapon you are using as well as the modules equipped by both you and your enemy. Even in the best case scenario the lock doesn’t last more than a second or two and the ability to use it does have a long cooldown time. Despite such a cooldown the lock-on ability does begin to feel like a crutch more than an assist, and while it is clearly meant for the times when you are whipping around in the air and would find it impossible to be accurate on your own the feature also quickly becomes something to use every time it is off its cooldown. For every instance it can be used in over-the-top situations where superhuman aiming skill is required, it can be used more often to trivialize combat such as jetpacking behind someone, locking on, and mowing them down at point blank range with a machine gun by simply holding the button down and letting the lock take care of the hard part.

Such high mobility happens often thanks to the powered armor’s ability to let the wearer sprint at very high speed or use a jetpack to not only reposition themselves but also to help avoid enemy fire. Jetpacks have a relatively low usage time before they have to recharge before the next use, but when used tactically it can make all the difference in a gunfight that otherwise that would be dictated solely by circle-strafing. Jetpacks rarely are a deciding factor by themselves, but their judicious and tactical use can help you outmaneuver or escape your opponent’s return fire while laying down some lead of your own. This often makes gunfights last a lot longer than you may be used to, given that you are essentially two moving targets further protected by shields and underlying armor. Players who hate getting one-shot by a sniper rifle at long range will rejoice in knowing that such a thing simply cannot happen, while in-fighters will often find each fight a slugfest.

In either case once you have your loadout selected you can choose where you want to drop into the map. On the map you will see large and small red circles which signify areas protected by enemy anti-air turrets, and dropping into which will either kill you while you descend or at the very least leave you with no shields and low health by the time you hit the dirt. Dropping in is itself a minigame of sorts, as your view is flanked by two rapidly decreasing bars and a time to impact timer at the top. Once the bar lowers enough to reach the yellow you can hit the brakes and drift to the ground, but you can also wait until the bar turns red to slam into the ground at high speed. Braking early means you have much more time to maneuver in the air as you cannot do so until you engage your brakes in the drop, but it also means that you spend much more time in the air where sensors and ground fire can tag you. Coming in hot and braking in the red zone of the bar means that you will be temporarily stunned when you impact the ground but will also kill any poor soul who used to be underneath you. Of course, brake way too late or not at all and you risk simply getting killed on impact outright.

Once on the ground your attention will turn towards either defending the control points your team owns, attacking those held by the enemy, or participating in the random variety of objectives that appear on your screen for your team. Control points are surrounded by a respectable defense of AI controlled turrets to make them a little less of a pushover, but ultimately if no players are there to defend them they will easily get hacked and taken. The side objectives are what help keep either team from turtling and are made up of goals such as protecting an AI VIP of your team as he wanders around the map, getting in a convoy truck that is dropped in from orbit and driving it to a location, or grabbing enemy intelligence and returning it to a specific control point. Of course on the enemy team’s screen these objectives are to kill your VIP, destroy your convoy truck, or prevent the intelligence from making it home.

To help you achieve these goals you will accumulate credits based on killing enemies, helping complete objectives, capture/defend points, etc. These credits can be spent on deployables such as anti-armor, anti-air, and anti-personnel turrets. They can also be spent to deploy supply stations that heal and rearm nearby friendlies, and on mech suits and tanks if you really want more firepower. The mech suits are bipedal monsters armed with chainguns and an instant kill melee ability if anyone is fool enough to not jetpack out of their way. Tanks can seat up to four players with each one assigned control of a difference set of weapon systems on the tank. Just one guy with a tank and its main gun is hard enough to face down, let alone a tank with a machine gun, missiles, and mortars blazing away.

You also gain ranks based on your actions in combat, and though you will rank up time and time again in doing so there is no real reason to care. You have all of the weapons, items, and deployables available at the start of the game, which makes ranking up feel hollow and trivial. On the other hand this makes it so everyone is immediately on a level playing field when it comes to the equipment that they use, but few players will care when they hit successively higher ranks as they essentially mean nothing.

The biggest strength and weakness that Section 8 has is that it lacks any defining functionality or flaws. The lock-on system is a great tool given the mobile gunfights but its usage trivializes other combat encounters. The only aspect of Section 8 that truly stands out is how you spawn into the map, leaving the rest of the gameplay to reside in more of the tried-and-true territory established by previous games in the genre. That criticism aside, the game is great fun and has a strong and balanced multiplayer—it just doesn’t take its gameplay into any areas that fans of the genre haven’t seen before.

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