Playing Insurgency is like stepping into a parallel universe where Call of Duty 4 never took off, Battlefield never found a following on consoles and Counter-Strike is still the first FPS mentioned in conversations. It is a game for people who want their guns to feel like guns, and who don’t want their enemies to be bullet-sponges who can withstand a clip of lead being fired into their stomach, before happily carrying on with their day.
In Insurgency, if the enemy spots you, you are dead. If you wander too far across the map, you are dead. If you decide to go solo without the assistance of a comrade, you are – you guessed it – dead. Death lurks around every corner, and when you encounter it, expect to jump right out of your desk chair with surprise. as you’ll rarely see the person who killed you. Each server is populated with tacticians who sneakily navigate their way through each map, crouching as if their life depended upon it. This is the kind of player that Insurgency will solely appeal to, and judging from its already robust community, it seems to have done a successful job of courting the so-called “hardcore” gamer.
Insurgency already had a following prior to its release on Steam, though. Starting off as one of the most popular Half-Life 2 mods, Insurgency was downloaded over a million times by FPS fans, and received the Player’s Choice 2007 Mod of the Year award from ModDB. While developer New World Interactive, led by the mod’s original creator Jeremy Blum, has chosen to stick with Valve’s Source Engine for Insurgency‘s repackaging (something which is evident from its admittedly dated graphics), it still feels like a fully-fledged release rather than just the same old mod with a few more bells and whistles attached.
For those already initiated with the world of tactical shooters, Insurgency‘s gameplay rests somewhere between Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad. For those uninitiated with the world of tactical shooters, Insurgency‘s gameplay is thoroughly dependent upon you sticking close to your teammates, discreetly taking control of/destroying objectives and NEVER running out into the open. Luckily, the majority of the game’s maps are ideally suited to this style of combat, offering a decent amount of vantage points for long-range shooting and enough cover for some truly intense mid-range firefights, too. Fortunately, each players’ reluctance to step out of cover and reveal themselves to the opposition means that sniper camping is a rarity, an issue which often plagues this genre. It is especially surprising that camping is rarely an issue considering that each map supports up to 32 players, yet you’ll never find your team being picked off like fish in a barrel from a lone sniper setting up base over your spawn point.
Insurgency‘s biggest selling point, though, is the “feel” of its guns. Each gun in the game, of which there are over 20, provides unique advantages and disadvantages, and handles noticeably differently from each of its contemporaries. They’re each suitably bulky, take a realistic amount of time to reload and, most importantly, they feel like they could do real damage. To put it bluntly, Insurgency‘s guns are guns – Call of Duty‘s guns are pea-shooters.
These guns can also be equipped with a variety of attachments, which can be switched around prior to a round, match or respawn using the game’s nifty Supplies system. The Supplies system gives you a limited number of points which you spend prior to spawning on weaponry and equipment. For instance, equipping Heavy Armor will cost you 4 points, an above-average gun will set you back 3 points and a frag grenade 2 points. Equipping a variety of equipment will also stand to weigh you down, meaning that if you plan to engage your enemies in close-quarters combat, you won’t want to drag around a whole backpack full of munition. This stands to make Insurgency much more balanced than the majority of its peers, though you’re still likely to find yourself picked off by snipers more than any other class in the game. Fortunately, the Sniper class can typically only be occupied by one or two people per team, so you’re much more likely to find yourself facing enemies using the Assault or Engineer class, running with standard-issue AK’s and the like.
However, for all of Insurgency‘s many strengths, its high difficulty level and huge focus upon tactical play means that it will likely be too alienating for the majority of FPS fans. It’s a game which requires patience and teamwork, and as such the games in which you aren’t in constant communication with your teammates are games which you’ll likely lose. Insurgency is targeted to appeal to one niche market – if you feel that you belong to that market, then snap it up for the fair price of $14.99. If not, then it is unlikely that this will be up your street.
Paul Tamburro is the Associate Gaming Editor for CraveOnline. You can follow him on Twitter @PaulTamburro.
PC code provided by publisher. Game is exclusive to PC.
