Section 8

[Ozone]

Hi all. Soz about not being about too much. Hit my internship so I'm running on 12-14 hour days. Anyways...

Downloaded the demo for this off X-box live. Loving it to the point that I'm picking it up Tuesday when it comes out. Didn't expect to buy a game till MW2, but this has made me make an exception. If you're into on-line shooters, snag the demo.

My thoughts...

Load outs rock. You get access to all classes, all weapons, all armor and weapon upgrades. Better yet you can totally customize everything. Want to have a defender? Snag an assault rifle and a shotgun. Crank up your shields, armor, weapon damage and repair ability (for those turrets). Want to snipe? Grab a long range rifle. Increase your weapon's gyros, your reflective armor, etc... Once done, get ready for the drop into combat.

Love the 'entering combat phase'. If you've read 'Starship Troopers' (not seen the movie which has no relation to the book), you're initially dropped from your ship 15,000 feet up (aka the Roughnecks dropping from the Roger Young in power armor). You have the option to being braking for impact at 1,500 feet. The advantage of braking is you hit the ground running but are suceptable to AA fire, not braking means you hit the ground in a crouch and lose valuable seconds recovering.

Combat is pretty straightforward. You have shields which drain before armor damage and limited jumpjets. The demo map involves a small island with two bases on it which you compete to capture and control. As you rack up kills you gain access to special drops from the ship. You can set up an armor/weapon repair drop, have a turret dropped, even have some massive heavy armor dropped in which you can jump into and begin beating the snot out of enemy infantry.

Here's another neat thing. You can call in your own missions during the game. Say you have a base pretty secure, you can enter a menu and start up something to add a few bonus points for your team. For example, you can call in a general from the ship. He drops into the local landing strip. Now its up to your team to protect him and get him to base as the other team attempts an assassination.

All in all, I'm loving it. Take the graphics of Halo and Tribes (but better), drop in some Command and Conquer creation abilities, throw in Gears of War sprinting, and tie in a bit of Call of Duty/Unreal Tournament type combat mechanics, and you've pretty much got the package visualized.

Anyways, hope to catch some of you guys about.

Oz