Section 8 Prejudice is a futuristic first person shooter developed and published by TimeGate Studios. It is the sequel to Section 8 which came out in 2009. Prejudice puts players into the role of Captain Alex Corde, a rookie in the first game but now a veteran, part of the 8th Armored Infantry. Corde and the 8th Armored Infantry must track down a rogue military unit, The Arm of Orion and figure out what their true motives are. Prejudice unlike the original is a digital release only and is only $15 but aims at giving players the full package of a full priced game.

The soldiers in Prejudice are geared up in space marine armor with shields similar to games like Halo. Players shields recover if they avoid taking damage for a bit but their health needs to be regenerated either at a drop kit or repair tool. The actual shooting in the game is pretty standard but solid FPS fare. When players sprint long enough they go into Overdrive which makes them run much faster and can damage enemies if they’re run into but it uses some of the suit’s energy. The suit also has a jetpack for getting up to higher areas and combining it with overdrive can jump huge gaps. The jetpack is very useful for getting the drop on enemies but it uses up energy very quickly. A core mechanic for the game is the drop in spawning system where players choose where on a map to spawn and then they are shot out of a drop ship and can control where they land. There is also some strategy when being dropped in for when you want to put on the breaks and slow your fall. Say you want to drop in an area with enemy Anti-air turrets or just enemies shooting at you as you’re coming down you can reach the battlefield very quickly by not putting on the breaks but there is a recovery time once you hit the ground. If you’re deploying into an area your team controls or there are no enemies though you can activate the breaks and sort of glide to exactly where you want to land and there is no recovery period.

The game has a leveling and class system in it so players can unlock and upgrade their weapons and abilities while having 6 customizable loadouts to choose from. One cool feature this game has that other games with customizable loadouts/classes is that they’re usable in the singleplayer campaign and can be change at any drop kit. Each loadout has 2 weapon choices and they can be any two weapons, 2 equipment slots, an armor slot, and upgrades. There are 7 weapons in the game but each one has a lot of different ammo types that change how the weapon works. For example the machine gun starts out with regular Slug Rounds that do high armor damage but low shield damage but if I unlock and equip EMP Rounds then my bullets will drain the enemy’s energy and do high damage to their shields but will do less armor damage. There are 6 different types of equipment to choose from and like the weapons they each have different variations to them to give the player more variety and choice. The armor slot is just an esthetics choice. For each class you have a certain amount of upgrade points and you can put them into different upgrade slot raise certain stats such as bullet damage and shield regeneration rate. The loadout system truly gives players the freedom to experiment and try out weird builds and still be viable.

Multiplayer consists of Swarm, Conquest and soon Assault modes. Swarm mode pits players against waves of enemies. Players must defend a position while each wave gets tougher than the last until they’ve defeated them all. There are 4 maps for this mode and there are 3 difficulties to choose from. Conquest mode is the versus mode in the game in which two teams of up to 16 players each must capture positions and hold them to gain points and the first team to the point cap or the team with the highest score when time runs out wins. In this mode there are 4 maps with 4 variations of each which technically gives you 16 maps but it ends up feeling like you’re playing on the same four maps. In multiplayer as you kill enemies and accomplish objectives you collect money which can then be spent on things like drop kits, turrets or vehicles. These things are actually all balanced very well while making saving up for things like a tank worth it.
Section 8 Prejudice is the full package; has a standard length campaign that is around 4-5 hours long, has a fully fledged multiplayer setup with classes, upgrades, and unlockables and it even has 32 player multiplayer games on a console. The game is solid and well balanced. It really seems like it could’ve been a full priced but it is only a downloadable $15 title. If you like shooters and like to get the best bang for your buck I’d highly recommend getting Section 8 Prejudice.

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