New World Interactive‘s Insurgency is an Early Access Title available through Steam, currently in Beta. New World Interactive has stated their intent to create a “community driven development experience,” and to bring about an “indie revival of the tactical shooter genre.” I have to admit that I find it hard to imagine a world where any part of the FPS genre needed any sort of resurgence at all, but I enthusiastically dove into Insurgency‘s beta test, waded through several hours of its class-based tactical shooter combat, and have emerged with the following resounding reaction: meh.
Gameplay
In this case, ‘Realistic’ handling equates to dull, slow, plodding, and clumsy. It doesn’t have the realism of the ARMA franchise, or the clean controls or fluid game-play of the Call of Duty or Battlefield titles. It’s difficult to describe Insurgency as anything but generic, excepting perhaps bland or derivative.
The top of a match involves selecting a team, picking a squad, selecting a class, and utilizing your Supply points – gleaned through actions like capturing a point or killing an opponent – to upgrade your load-out. Yep, you’ve played this game before, several times.
You spawn in one of several areas that you control or have captured, and you proceed (very slowly) to creep around the map, nervously searching the screen for any sort of motion. You will probably take several kneejerk potshots at the one or two mediocre particle effects strewn throughout the map, and then you either pull off one or two lucky shots at someone who hasn’t seen you yet or get dropped by the guy who you haven’t seen yet – someone who’s played a few more matches and knows exactly where to pitch his tent. Yep, you’ve played this game before too.
The matches are either mercifully short or painfully long but without any of the satisfying frenetic burst of action that characterizes titles of similar design structure. Insurgency feels like a perfectly valid entry into the genre but from 10 years in the past. It simply doesn’t have anything new or interesting to offer over and above its more polished competitors.
The map design is good enough to not be noticeable, but there are definite issues with weapon balance (looking at you, LMG) and hit-boxes.
Visuals
Nice texture work, but lacking in particle effects and the animations are still quite clumsy – but this IS a beta and it shows a lot of potential for early days. There are some nice suppression and smoke effects, but the lighting engine is palpably dated.
The character and gun models are nicely detailed if generic and do a bit to show the potential that New World could offer in the future.
The UI on the other hand is pretty awful across the board, with passable menus but particularly ill-though in-game overlay work. It’s hard to say anything nice about it at all.
Sound
Mediocre at best, and without question the area that needs the most work. The reports and bullet impacts sound a lot like paintball. There’s no punch to the guns’ reports, the ambient sounds are virtually non-existent and almost all the effects sound canned.
Tech
The Source engine is still the Source engine, clean and quick and reliable as ever, the match-making is quick, simple and painless – but the infrastructure necessary to run a community this small wouldn’t cause much of a challenge anyway.
Several sudden and inexplicable crash-to-desktop errors occurred over the first thirty minutes of game-play, and eventually the title wouldn’t load matches at all. I was forced to re-install the title twice over a 5-hour span of time. I acknowledge that this is a beta-test but that was not the best end-user experience I’ve ever had.
Intangibles
The issue at question here is necessity, and market. Does it distinguish itself enough from the CoD/Battlefield/CounterStrike crowd? No, not even a little bit. The FPS-genre is the most crowded, and it requires perfection or creativity to succeed. You either take on the big boys (CoD, Battlefield, CS, ARMA) at their own game or you find a way to be unique: Guns of Icarus, or even Red Orchestra spring to mind. You have to be the best or you have to be different, and this game does neither.
Overall
Insurgency just doesn’t have what it takes to distinguish it from the hundreds of similar competitors. This needs a tremendous amount of work in order to be anything but generic or derivative.
There’s no question that the development team at New World Interactive is a group of hard-working and talented individuals, but their desire to “revive the tactical shooter genre,” seems to have resulted in the mere replication of an already-tired game-play formula. Let’s hope that this beta process is a productive and fruitful one, and that it lives up to their talent.