No quick respawns here for the fallen you'll only be thrown back into the game when your team reaches an objective. Shouts, screams, confusion.ĭeath is a serious inconvenience.
#Insurgency sandstorm stutter series#
They opened fire and instead of that distant crackle and pop there was a deafening series of booms. I made my way outside and was half-way up the stairs in an adjacent building when two men burst through the door behind me. As the sniper, I decided I'd be more useful in a building some distance away, picking off enemies as they approached while the rest of the squad set up a perimeter inside the target. We'd captured a target building and a wave of insurgents had been dispatched to reclaim it. There was no laughter the first time I found myself up close and personal with an enemy.
I wasn't, of course, and death comes swiftly in this game. Exchanging bursts of fire across a bridge, I laughed nervously when somebody zeroed in on my position and bullets started to tear through the sandbags I was crouching behind. The sound of a weapon is different when someone is firing it indoors, right next to your face. Every bullet is the possibility of a life cut short and when mortars begin to thud and pound just beyond your line of sight, it can feel as if the roof of the world is about to fall in.
#Insurgency sandstorm stutter full#
It's not a gory game, but it's full of the kind of shock and awe that breaks the spirit and either crushes or inspires resistance. I guess that's what a rocket-propelled grenade sounds like. My ears are humming and I'm sure there has never been a louder explosion in the whole history of the world. The building shakes, dust falling from the ceiling. Someone shouts “RPG” and, in all honesty, I can't remember if it's an in-game bark or one of the players. It might seem foolish at another time, in another game, but here it feels like part of the surreal brutality of the conflict.
Each falls onto the bodies of the ones who came before. At one point, with my sniper rifle steady for once, I kill five men in quick succession as they run around a corner. The AI insurgents who we're fighting against might be clever, I'm not entirely sure, all I know is that they're dangerous. We're playing a cooperative mode in which we have to move from one objective to the next, seizing buildings and sometimes holding them as a counter-attack arrives. I'm genuinely alarmed, even though I'm playing a game with a bunch of friends, and we were laughing about a team-kill a minute ago. I can hear the hum of the engine but I don't know if this is a spotter, a hovering camera trying to figure out where we are, or an aerial hunter killer. Later, hunkered down inside a building, discussing our next move over voice comms, we're hushed by our commander. When your squad hit the deck though, that's a decision being made by their actual human operators. The vocal cues are automatic, the game using a wide variety of lines for allies and enemies alike to create the illusion of perfectly drilled tactical trickery at one moment, and panic and chaos at the next. The stuttering crackle of an assault rifle somewhere ahead causes friendly troops to shout warnings as they dive for cover. Or, at least, it always starts with the sound. It's one of the most harrowing and thrilling depictions of combat I've ever seen, and I think it's a goddamn work of art. Insurgency: Sandstorm is more than a distraction. I've tried many multiplayer military shooters over the years but I've never thought of one as more than a passing distraction until now. This is what it must feel like to enjoy Battlefield or Call of Duty.
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