Insurgency: Sandstorm

After nearly 300 hours of gameplay (I have 50+ on console), I can confidently say I love this game and do recommend it. This is coming from someone with little to no experience in first person shooters, as I've really only played Sandstorm and Ready Or Not (which isn't PvP). For that reason I can't fairly compare Sandstorm to other FPS titles. However, with a respectable amount of experience under my belt, I believe I'm qualified to speak on Sandstorm as a game. When I was thinking about buying Sandstorm a few years ago, the most appealing characteristic of it, for me, was how "simple" it was. I don't mean "simple" as in the mechanics or gameplay, as there is certainly a learning curve that is tough to get through, especially for someone like me who didn't grow up playing FPS's. I mean "simple" as in there is very little "stuff" on your screen. Pretty much all you need to see is your gun, teammates/enemies, the environment around you, and the objective. I never got into FPS games mainly due to the amount of audio-visual stimulation and amount things you need to keep track of. But Sandstorm hooked me because of the roller coaster of action that usually takes place. Most of the time in-game is spent in low to moderate action. This is exactly where I like it to be most of the time. But don't get me wrong, when sh!t goes wild, it is absolute chaos. Panic and fear can set in real quick in this game, especially when you are the last alive. One of my favorite fire support options is the Insurgent's "rocket barrage," which is just absolute chaos to be on the receiving end of. It's loud as all hell, your screen shakes everywhere making obtaining a sight picture worthless, and you feel like you are actually on the receiving end of steel rain. My point is, Sandstorm is a gritty, no-frills take on first person shooters. The maps are dull, the guns feel real, and the objective is simple: Stay alive, and play the damn objective. If you can stick to those two rules, then the rest will come with time. The other characteristic that roped me in to this god-forsaken game was the attention to detail and (general) commitment to realism. 12 Gauge Buckshot doesn't become a squirt gun after 5 yards. Blasting a .50 cal over and over will cause "temporary" tinnitus (not service-related of course). You can't eat 6 rounds of .556 or .762 and keep going like nothing happened. You can't sprint at Olympic speeds with 100 pounds of gear. And the one that really got me was the M16 rifles. The 3-round burst on the M16 is controlled by a cam inside the fire control group. If the game only offered standard 30 round magazines (which is 10 full bursts for the slow ones in the back), then modeling it's function wouldn't matter. But if you use an entire 35 or 50 round mag (numbers that are NOT multiples of three), then the fresh mag you put in won't fire off three rounds because the cam won't be in the right position. Other games might model this, I don't know, but when I found this out it only gave me more reason to love this game. Is this game excellent? HA! Absolutely not. Not even close. The biggest issue this game faces is the lack of time and care the Devs put in. Sandstorm doesn't bombard you with microtransactions and in-game purchases (another reason I like it), and you can spend no extra money besides 30 bucks up-front and have a full experience. The problem is, this is not a money-making strategy, especially in modern times when AAA companies want to suck every last penny out of you. Sandstorm is and will always be rough around the edges, buggy, unrefined, slow to find a server, and have few current players. And that's fine. Sandstorm doesn't try to be anything it isn't, and most players except it for what it is. And yes, finding servers for many of the game modes is hard, but the silver lining is that this game feels like a much more tight-knit community than most other games. I regularly see names that I recognize in the games that I play, and most people are chill. There are of course many a-holes, in fact just recently I was team killed off rip for wearing a red baseball hat. The guy called me a N@zi fck and left. I was clueless as to what happened, then someone in the chat kindly explained that he interpreted the red hat as a MAGA hat. I was wearing it because it matched my glasses. Anyway, to make a long review short, this game shines when it's good and sucks when it sucks. You should play it.