Insurgency: Sandstorm

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Review by VG247, which is very positive:

And Polygon’s Charlie Hall really likes the co-op:

Personally, I’ve been playing since the pre-order beta started and I absolutely love the co-op. I guess it’s the game I never knew I wanted, since historically I’ve been shunning more “realistic” hardcore shooters while leaning more towards arcadey shooters like CoD and BF. But for me, this game beats them hands down. The intensity of Insurgency combined with the pressure when being one of the few still alive is riveting. Also, it helps that the gunplay is great and the awesome soundscape is maybe only surpassed by the already mentioned Battlefield series.

I really enjoyed Day of Infamy co-op from the same people.

The AI was actually pretty sneaky and pretty good.

Keeping an eye on Sandstorm.

First major update is out:

They also revealed selling 500k copies, which ensures that they’re already profitable.

Free weekend ahead, gonna give it a try as Battlefield 5 is doing nothing for me in terms of fun.

Also the upcoming roadmap!

Insurgency Sandstorm (and really everything by New World Interactive) is my go to multiplayer shooter these days as was the original Insurgency before this. The PVP multiplayer is great, but most importantly the game offers excellent PVE modes with well-tuned AI bots that draws a large community.

I think the Insurgency series has been my favorite since it sits in a comfortable niche between the fast arcadey Call of Duty/Battlefields and the finicky simulation of Arma/Squad. They also just introduced a Hardcore mode that slows movement down, limits ammo supplies, and makes everything more deliberate and tactical.

Insurgency has fun little touches like being able to slowly open a door to peek in a room or just breach and kick it off its hinges. For reloading you can just press the R key to do a normal reload and retain your magazine with remaining bullets; doubletap R to do a fast reload where you just throw your magazine on the ground and discard any remaining bullets but get a new mag in sooner, or hold the R key to check your current magazine and get a sense of remaining rounds.

Wait. A “zombie-inspired arcade mode called Frenzy” is part of this update? WTF?

It sure is.

Did the tutorial for this, but its just not Battlefield, my gaming nda is so tied to that series I just can’t seem to play any other multiplayer shooters.

I will say it seemed very well done, and I liked that it wasn’t on rails, and you could move around the small village pretty freely to your objectives.

I got a little more time in recently.

The Frenzy mode (quasi-Zombies) is neat but more of a curiosity and not the core experience here.

One thing I am loving is the relatively new Hardcore Co-op mode. Movement is slowed, ammo is very limited, enemies are deadly accurate, identification is critical (your team will not have their green handles over them unless they are directly in your vicinity), and if you die you lose your loadout and need to scavenge from the dead or wait until you get to a rare supply crate.

The experience is perfect and just what I want from this title. Troop identification is core part of this experience and something that has really been of interest to me lately. Anything that makes me hold fire and second guess if I am looking at an enemy or ally is what I am looking for now in shooters.

The scarce ammo and loss of equipment on death further inspires creative play and quick reactive thinking on the move.

The free weekend was good.

I tried it. I liked it. Just not enough to buy it.

Yeah, I need to try this mode. Sounds great.

And looking at steam charts, it seems it has a decent boost post free weekend (~50% more concurrent users right now compared to the same time last week).

I feel the same. I’ve played Battlefield so much that going to another shooter just feels weird.

Gameumentary has a 3 episodes documentary on the Insurgency games:

I miss INSmod. It was one of my most played games. It had its little annoyances, but was so much fun. I’ve played the second one much less and only a couple hours of the newest one.

Thanks for posting the vids, watched the first one and am all awash in nostalgia now lol.

Half off at the moment on Steam. Is anyone playing this?

I haven’t played in awhile, but I’m interested in trying out the new domination mode.

But there’s a free week going on right now if anyone wants to check it out.

Last time I tried it it was really rough. Lots of ice-skating and other glitches. Downloading it right now to see how it has progressed.

Interesting way to implement night-vision gear. They put in tiers of quality on NVGs so lower-quality (cheaper) gear mimics the budget stuff a civilian might get at a big-box store, while better gear goes up to high-end special ops or PM equipment.