Insurgency: Sandstorm. Play it.

[Beetroot]

Insurgency: Sandstorm is only like $29 and it's one of the best shooters I've ever played. It's very difficult and rewards tactical gameplay, but it's got all the sweet shooter action. Best war-shooter out there right now in my opinion.

You can do PVP or ranked play, but the co-op mode against bots is really excellent. The bots are brutal and will shoot you. I suggest Hardcore mode which is "realistic" and makes the game totally heart-pounding.

 

[jpishgar]

Great recommendation! It comes highly rated, so it's a bit surprising that it isn't talked about more.

 

[Beetroot]

I know, when I checked it out, I kind of figured it was some off-brand shooter, but it's extremely well made.

At its best you wind up on a team (of 8) where everyone is communicating and advancing through the large sprawling levels like Seal Team 6 and it makes you feel like a total pro. If people don't coordinate it's mayhem, but the good kind of mayhem.

 

[Nighthood]

It has to be one of the most stressful games ever when you're getting shelled. The sound design is incredible.

 

[Grimshaw]

I was initially really interested in Insurgency: Sandstorm on account of this trailer.

But then the campaign was cancelled, and since I'm not really interested in multiplayer shooters, I lost interest. (The chances of them ever picking up the campaign again are slim to none.) I understand that the developers made a difficult decisions considering the resources they had available, but I think it's a shame that this kind of subject matter will likely only ever be touched on by Call of Duty or Battlefield. I would have loved to see a smaller developer's road trip military FPS with a tactical shooter bent. The big AAA games suffer from either being outright compromised by American military connections, or somewhat softball in how they portray military conflicts.

There seems to be a trend of tactical shooters becoming multiplayer games, and I think it possibly stems from the fact that singleplayer FPS games require diverse teams (stuff like voice actors and "cinematic animators" are NOT optional) and they don't have the kind of viral potential of MP games. You can spend 3-5 years crafting a AA singleplayer campaign and sell 100,000-500,000 copies (or sell 15,000 despite acclaim), or you can spend half that time working on an MP game into Early Access, and if you're lucky you sell millions of copies. It's really easy to Early Access an MP title. Early Accessing a story-driven game is a nightmare, and We Happy Few is a good example of this.

With Insurgency, since it's the sequel to an MP-only game, their safest bet was to fall back on that demographic, and it worked pretty well for them.

 

[gamezenchill]

I agree !

I want to share my thoughts on the game as well as provide some help to those who don't know much about the game or haven't played it in a long time:

Bought this, the past summer and still haven't uninstalled, in spite of limited storage space on my rig.

That means, while there are weaknesses in the game, it's still got enough going for it, for me. Some people feel that development is too slow - I'm not really sure whether criticism is or isn't fair because some also feel that the size of their team is small and qualifies as an Indie.

Recently, I played a limited time game mode called Frenzy, which had a night map with Zombies of various types. That was super fun !

The game seems to have most people playing PVE rather than PVP - I'm not really sure why that is. Some see it as a negative; I don't really mind much because PVE is so enjoyable - the bots and AI is quite entertaining and challenging.

I've discovered that one of the benefits of custom servers is that there is a broad spectrum of experiences to be had even within one map alone, because of the amount of customization that is possible for tweaking AI difficulty, health, loadouts etc. Meaning enemies can sometimes take a whole lot more damage, or the players can gain bonus health for killing enemies, or gain loadout points for capturing objectives, to then use as currency to start the next round with better gear. Servers can also limit loadout points to start games, for an extra challenge. I'm sure there's even more I haven't covered here.

I was kinda hoping to make some more friends who play this game - it's definitely more enjoyable with communication and teamwork. Specially the hardcore mode.

Feel free to add me on any and all platforms - Steam, GOG, YouTube, Twitch, Discord wherever.

 

[gamezenchill]

Wasn't aware of story mode being cancelled. Bummer. That would be so cool !

@Grimshaw You made so many good points !

I still feel that the game has enough for someone who wants to play a realistic close-quarters team-based shooter which has not too steep a learning curve and not too complex with too many systems/mechanics to manage.

Also, does the game have any close competition ? I'm struggling to think of similar games. I mean you've got many games with larger scale maps and battles these days. Only a few smaller scale ones, but even they're either not realistic enough and feel classic/game-y or the setting is either WW2 or modern/futuristic. I'm genuinely curious to find out what people feel is the closest in terms of feel to this game

 

[MeFirst]

It's alright, but it never really managed to grab me (unlike the predecessors). I guess that is mostly on me, since it is one of these games in which you need to invest a lot of time to "get good" and even more time to stay good. I did not see myself using a lot of my "game time" for this.

 

[gamezenchill]

@MeFirst - beyond learning the maps, is there anything else that needs considerable time ?

I've been playing a while, not to get good, but because I'm enjoying the game. I didn't get the feeling that I needed to 'get good' or that there was a steep learning curve. It's pretty much understood that any new game requires some learning and the first thing you need to learn are the maps. The other things like learning how objectives work or loadouts etc are smaller things to learn and don't require much time.

 

[MeFirst]

I consider myself "okay" in FPS and I have played them for like +20 years.

Map knowledge is very important. Especially if you avoid the game modes with a lot of players and you play something with 5-10 players per side. Knowing key areas of the map is key there. Maybe it is an age thing, but If I don't play "map heavy" games like this a lot, I tend do forget how they work. One major reason, why I never really played a lot of Six Siege too.

But the game also has a very low TTK, which means that any mistake you make, might be the last mistake you make in a round. Apart from that, you also need to get good when it comes to mechanical skills.

 

[Dan]

I played a lot of the Source version, but the optimisation on Sandstorm was never great. I haven't played in a while, so it may have improved since then.

 

[MeFirst]

Performance is okay now. I think that this was a problem with a lof of FPS that were using the Unreal 4 Engine at the time. I found a couple of old gameplay clips that I recorded shortly after the release and I was close to 60 fps there.

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[Beetroot]

I have heard some people complain about framerate on Sandstorm, but it has always run really smoothly for me.

I have a gtx1080, SSD and 3960x (was a beast in its day but =long in the tooth today).

 

[neogunhero]

It's a shame the co-op story mode was cut, it seemed like such an interesting concept and I was excited to play it. However, it was for the best, as they put all of their focus onto making sure the multiplayer was top notch. To me, this game has some of the greatest sound design in any FPS game. Just the noise of getting shot at is such an alarming sensation.

 

[Beetroot]

I agree, sound design is key in shooters and Sandstorm has it. I love that distant reports sound muffled and eccoey. Also they got the bullet whizz and snap sound effects right.

 

[gamezenchill]

I've experienced the performance issues. I should add that I'm using a fairly old 3rd gen i5 4 core 4 thread processor - the only thing it doesn't have is the AVX2 feature of the minimum required i5 4440. (It has the older version AVX only).

I'm not sure really what that is and how much of a difference it makes but the first time I installed and played the game, I couldn't get it to run well enough. So I searched for solutions and there are a few good guides in the community hub section of Steam. I found one that helped a great deal, and since then I've learnt how to improve performance for myself.

There are still times when I get really nasty lag/stutter but I'm not sure what the reason is because there are so many factors - ping, Windows updates, Game Bar, MSI Afterburner, Nvidia GeForce Experience, game updates, Windows Defender etc. It's hard to tell which one of those is acting up and needs tweaking.

But generally I'm much happier after I found the Steam performance Guides which require some tweaking in the .ini files and the only minor annoyance being that after every game update you need to do those tweaks again.

I don't think the rest of my rig is responsible for any performance issues, though if I'm wrong please correct me - GTX 1060 3GB, SSD, 16 GB RAM DDR3, 1080p60Hz screen

 

[DJNOOB]

I played a bit of the fist one and liked it and recently picked up this one.

I strictly play the co-op pve mode. There is one thing I can't stand with the new one and this is the damn smoke. People have no f'ing clue as to how to use it. We get to a point and people smoke the heck out of it to a point where can't even see or engage the enemy. Drives me nuts.

 

[gamezenchill]

@DJNOOB - LOL. I see that as one of the things that makes me laugh so I take it positively and enjoy it.

Found a server yesterday that was hilarious. There's modifiers which are extra customization/features that servers can add to change it up. So this one server had a modifier called Hot Potato - everybody explodes when they die like a grenade after a short fuse, so if you're not careful and are near the body, you'll take huge damage/die. There was another modifier called Vampirism - you take extra health for damaging/killing enemies.

Was so much fun

 

[MeFirst]

Not so sure on smoke. Some people might play a meta you have not yet understood. That said, I never played the COOP mode, so I don't know how smart the bots are.

Smoke is not just useful for visual concealment, but also as alarm trigger for audio clues. If a player does not use a gas mask, his player will cough the entire time he is in the smoke. This is especially helpful on objective points, both on the defense and the offense. The gas mask also practically does no limit vision and only slightly muffles sound.

So at least in PvP, it is not uncommon that attackers throw a smoke right on a objective/building and listen for people coughing. I also used this as a proximity alert when I was inside a objective and was defending it. When I played the game I always used the gas mask and often put it on after spawning. One of the best equipment points you can invest in my book. I also ran basically "no optics" on all weapons, since you save points and you get a faster ADS time, which helps a lot when you play aggressively, or you are doing tight defense.

 

[gamezenchill]

So this happened yesterday

Twitch

Twitch is the world's leading video platform and community for gamers.

www.twitch.tv

 

[MeFirst]

I guess this is why a lot of people play PVE. ;-)

 

[DJNOOB]

@DJNOOB - LOL. I see that as one of the things that makes me laugh so I take it positively and enjoy it.

Found a server yesterday that was hilarious. There's modifiers which are extra customization/features that servers can add to change it up. So this one server had a modifier called Hot Potato - everybody explodes when they die like a grenade after a short fuse, so if you're not careful and are near the body, you'll take huge damage/die. There was another modifier called Vampirism - you take extra health for damaging/killing enemies.

Was so much fun

oh that is neat. I had no idea about the modifiers. I am now wondering what else is out there.