Ipassed on the original Insurgency game which was a huge indie hit a couple of years back. However, the constant badgering of one of my buddies led me to give Insurgency: Sandstorm a try and spoiler alert, I am actually glad that I did.
How to Download Insurgency: Sandstorm
If you wanted to get hold of the game simply click on the Download button at the end of the review.
The Game Review
At first glance you may think that Insurgency: Sandstorm is just another first-person shooter and I can see why. Really though there is a lot more strategy in play here than in say a game like Call of Duty (that is not a knock on COD at all). So I think the battles in Insurgency Sandstorm can be a little more intense. The game is set in the middle east where there is a war and your team is caught in the middle of the war.
The Gameplay
You can play with and then against another team of people. Or you and some buddies can team up and take on what feels like a never-ending army of bots. It is the gameplay that sets this game apart from all the rest. While the action is quite fast-paced, Insurgency: Sandstorm is the kind of game where you have to think before you act and work as part of a team.
The first couple of games I played I tried to be a lone wolf and just run off and do my own thing. That did not work! Ammo is scarce and the guns do some serious damage, like two shots and you are more than likely dead.
That is why you will need to try and communicate with other players to come up with attacks plans and to try and outsmart the enemy. It also comes in handy when the poop hits the fan and you need someone to save your butt. There is certainly a learning curve here and I can see that being the games downfall for some people.
You have to be willing to give this a real try and realize going in that you are going to die and die a lot. Also, there is more to this than just straight out killing everyone, sometimes you are going to have to complete certain objectives. As I said, Insurgency: Sandstorm is more of a thinking man’s shooter than just a run and gun style of game.
Presentation wise, I was very happy with the way the game looks. The weapons all look cool and there is a ton of customization available for your weapons and also your character. This is something that I found out was new to this game and as someone who loves to tinker with their character and their weapons, I thought this aspect of it was really neat. The actual maps are great and you do feel like you are in some war-torn part of the Middle East.
The Bottom Line
In all Insurgency: Sandstorm is a very solid first person shooter and one that rewards skill and patience. You have to knuckle down and put in some serious work to get good at this game.
I also feel that if you are playing with people you know or at the very least people who are willing to work with you and teach you the ropes if you are new, you will have a much better time.If you like your shooters to be all about bang, bang, bang, bang and nothing else, Insurgency: Sandstorm may not be for you.
A Journey Back in Time: Insurgency: Sandstorm Beta Review
On August 18, 2018, we also reviewed Insurgency Sandstrom Beta. Let’s go back in time and see what we thought about the title back then.
Insurgency Sandstorm is set for release next month on the 18th September 2018 and is currently in-development by New World Interactive, the same team behind the original Insurgency that came out in 2014.
The game quite recently gave way to a short, closed beta for players that had access to it that allowed players the opportunity to see just how this tactical FPS played out on PC. Do be aware, this review is based on a game that is currently unreleased, so by the time of release, some problems may have already been ironed out.
As with many online shooters, there isn’t really any sort of story or rhyme and a reason for what the player’s doing, so let’s just skip straight onto the visuals. When it comes to the visuals, the overall environments and player models look quite nice.
They aren’t absolutely incredible but considering that the developer isn’t an AAA dev, they’ve done a really nice job on the visuals as a whole.
What they managed to do a great job with, though is the weapons themselves. Not only do they look pretty darn close to their real-world counterparts, but they also sound pretty close to the real thing and helps to give them this sense of realism that not a lot of shooters manage.
Gameplay is designed around a 1st person perspective and plays practically the same as the original Insurgency, as it’s pretty much just more of that game, just with a few refinements. A close comparison to the gameplay would be Rainbow Six: Siege, where barely a couple of shots can kill the player and most weapons handle quite realistically, at least when it comes to the recoil.
Players are free to change the look of their character – depending on which side they’re on – which adds for a nice level of customization and gives the player the chance to put their own personal touches on their characters.
Alongside this, loadouts are also readily available to switch out, but weapon customization has yet to make its way to the game, at least not until the developer’s state otherwise.
Available to the player is a number of different game modes, all of which have been seen before, such as domination, team deathmatch, hold an objective, that sort of thing.
Typically, though, most of the game modes are designed for tactical gameplay, due to the nature of the game. This means that thinking tactically and strategically during play is going to be a key part of the game and will require more skill than an average FPS game.
While it must be stated that the game is a blast to play online, it definitely had its issues here and there. First of all, the FPS wasn’t always at a stable level, occasionally dipping and then suddenly going back up to its original level.
From what can be read online, the FPS dip isn’t just a problem for one person and is being seen by numerous users, some with hardware that far surpasses the game’s recommendations.
Hopefully, that’s an easy optimization fix before the release of the main game, as it is a pretty big issue, especially for people playing on older hardware, which the original ran perfectly fine on.
Another problem with the game is the movement animations. A lot of the time, especially with sliding, it looks as if the player model has slid a lot farther out than it should have, before snapping back to the player’s actual position.
It is really jarring to look at and can make shooting certain targets an impossibility since it’s difficult to track properly. Again, hopefully, this is an easy problem to fix, but that’s something the main game is going to have to demonstrate to the community.
Overall, Insurgency: Sandstorm definitely has a couple of problems here and there, but they don’t exactly take away from the overall experience. The game is a hardcore, tactical FPS that any fan of FPS games is bound to enjoy, regardless of how much or how little time they put into it upon release.
Irmartinez
As we can see the game has improved considerably since its Beta release.
