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Name: Section 8: Prejudice

Alex Corde is back, along with the rest of his military squad, Section 8, in TimeGates sequel to their 2009 game of the same name. Section 8: Prejudice is the latest labour of love from TimeGate and in a somewhat growing trend among developers it's a download only title, as opposed to the fully fledged release of the original. That's not to say that they haven't taken this seriously though, they've looked at the criticism from the first title and fixed their sights on fixing these for Prejudice.

For those of you who missed out on the first title, the universe you inhabit is set in the future; mankind has long since gone in to the outer regions of space and colonised plenty of planets for human habitation. The only trouble being that all of the planets answer to the same Government and the furthest planets can still take an age to reach, even simple communication can take weeks. A group of rebels, calling themselves the Arm of Orion, (or simply The Arm) have been taking advantage and slowly conquering some of the furthest planets from the home world. This is where 8th Armoured Infantry (also known as Section 8 due to the insanity of the missions they are sent on) come into the fray.

The first game had a flimsy single player experience, something akin to what the tea lady might have cobbled together in her lunch hour and served as little more than a training exercise for the multiplayer side; this time round, however, a proper story has been put in place. Of course, your still given an introduction on how you're supposed to play, the first mission sees you training some fresh faced recruits, teaching them is teaching you. It's all straight forward enough as your shown how to aim and fire your gun, how to jump with the jetpack and how to run faster than a road runner. Once your training is complete, you're more or less dumped straight in the action with an attack on a base. Over the course of the campaign you'll see yourself in all manner of locations, given an array of weapons to point at The Arm, you'll transform into a huge whacking great mech, hell, you'll even be dropped from spaceships on a descent course through the stratosphere.

Your first assignment sees you sniping for a team mate whose trying to blow up enemy bases and this is where you'll need to find a decent sniping position at the location marked in your HUD. The enemies you engage here are a fairly adequate opponent, unfortunately, however, they also seem to be deaf. Often you'll find an opportunity to sneak up on an enemy and perform a silent kill, however, the sneaking part isn't really required since no matter how much noise you make they'll simply not take notice. I did experiment and shot them once or twice and that got them moving, other than that, however, I could have set up camp behind them before making my move. Likewise, when you begin sniping, one shot doesn't kill your intended target, yet they don't take advantage of this and make the minimum of effort to get out of the way of your next shot.

The single player campaign is still primarily a trainer for the multiplayer, but it's a good one and clocks in at around 5 hours worth of play which may sound short, but remember, this is a digital release and it's around the same as some top tier recent releases of late. The missions are mostly a case of following waypoints and listening to instructions, there's not a lot of scope for going off on your own and it's highly unlikely you're going to feel lost at any point. TimeGate have obviously put a lot of work into the characters in Section 8, there's a certain camaraderie among the group that you might expect from soldiers, given the hardest of missions.

Multiplayer is what Section 8: Prejudice is really all about and includes two game modes; Swarm sees you and up to three chums defending your area against an onslaught from The Arm for a given time limit. As you battle on you can collect points which can, in turn, be used to buy better defences such as turrets, vehicles and other gadgets to help in the fight. Conquest is the second multiplayer mode which sees you attacking and defending points on a map with the inclusion of the DCM (Dynamic Combat Missions) system; this sees you break off from normal activities to complete a mission, such as assassinating a VIP, or performing an aerial strike. The best thing about all of this is that you can play this mode with 32 other players if you're playing on Xbox Live (40 if you're on PC) so things get fairly hectic - in a good way.

Prejudice offers full support for dedicated servers and a web portal where stats can be tracked which is where the multiplayer is going to come in to its own. It's not a game for going Rambo on, you won't get far if your intent on doing things alone and like the great Battlefield games before it, team work is everything. As an added advantage, if you played the first game to a certain point then you'll be rewarded with better armour from the start of Prejudice. The more dedicated or higher through the ranks you got on the original Section 8 the better the armour you get to start; don't worry, however, there's plenty for the newcomers as well, unlocks are abundant and you don't necessarily have to get to the top ranks to get your hands on the good stuff either which makes a refreshing change.

The production values on Section 8: Prejudice are extremely high for a download only title. While it may not be the best looking game on the market it's certainly way above and beyond most others. What you've got as a package with Section 8: Prejudice is nothing short of a bargain, and I don't say that lightly, it's 1200 MS Points (or £9.99 on PC) and it's difficult to think of another title in the same category that offers so much. TimeGate have said that they're going to add more game modes further down the line, hopefully they'll stick to the same game plan and make that every bit as worthwhile to download.