Right, it looks like I was a bit confused on this front: the next stage of Section 8’s testing is a European beta, since the first lot was North American, and it does have limited places. You can sign up here. That European beta will start on the 10th. For my recent impressions take a look here. Kristan at Eurogamer was also pretty positive. As I understand it, an open beta, presumably for both continents, is to follow. The game is scheduled for release worldwide on August 28th.
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signing up now, i liked the NA beta, now its with less laggy goodness.
I was able to sign-up using some byzarre browser ( Avant Browser) after tryiing with other 3 browsers (I don’t have IE installed).
Iggggnore my post. Maybe I was already subscribed. Rawr.
Looking forward for this!
That link for the beta sign up seems broken. Anyone else? Could be its just getting too much hammer I guess…
I’ve changed the link to the front page of the Section 8 site, in case there was some kind of geo-trickery stopping you getting to that page. Try again.
Thanks for the heads up, looking forward to this.
I don’t think this is any signup, I did it back when the NA beta started on Fileplanet. You just get an email saying they will send you details when the beta starts.
Thanks, Jim, that worked. Unfortunately Flappybat is correct: this isn’t a real beta sign up whih
*which is a shame* that should have read at the end…
Hmm, that’s odd, they released a press release saying it was a sign up. I shall find out more.
I read it too on gamespress if I’m not mistaken. Can’t check it here at work though, didn’t memorize my login credentials.
It seems to imply that it is, but the email you receive states that testers have to be over 18, and are decided based upon their computer specs; None of which you’re asked for. Odd.
It’s been nagging away at the back of my mind for a while, but I just remembered the *other* game that Section 8 reminds me of.
You’ve almost never heard of it, on account of Battlefront (hardcore grognard publisher) selling it, and it never having had any kind of press: Dropteam.
Basically, it’s a future tank sim. Not quite modern-day hardcore-sim level, but around Mechwarrior levels of authentic-feelingness. The big gimmick of the game was that you could drop units anywhere on the map, and so long as they weren’t shot down by enemy anti-air, you could switch to controlling anything that survived landing.
Most armored units (such as tanks) had to come in via dropship, which made them quite vulnerable to AA fire. The way around this is dropping in infantry, who land via Warhammer 40k’esque drop pods, fast enough to dodge AA fire with decent regularity. Once the troops were down, you’d jumpjet your way across enemy territory to try and pick off defensive structures (which your enemy had dropped in) in order to move your safe landing zone forward.
It wasn’t/isn’t a hugely pretty looking game, and the documentation was pants, but it felt *right*.
Unfortunately, it seems that Battlefront have abandoned the game. The master servers for it are down, and they don’t even seem to have it listed on their store site anymore, which sucks, as I’d love to see more people playing it.
@Dominic: Me too. And yeah, it’s a great game. The scope of it is pretty breathtaking. It’s kind of like Combat Mission – TONS of stuff is possible. Just reading the manual gives me programmer heart-palpitations. Clay (the guy who led the team and wrote most of the code) is a genius.
There was quite an active mod community for a long time… it’s only starting to die down now. I think the servers aren’t there because literally no one is playing.
On topic, I wish the NA beta still had keys.
If Dropteam were put up on Steam for $5, or even released for free (I assume it’s not selling on account of Battlefront not having it listed on their store at all), I’d imagine a lot more folks would play it. It’s deeply frustrating to see it faded out like that.
No doubt Battlefront (oh, I so hate them as a publisher – hard-headed to a fault and constantly bordering on ineptitude) have all the rights to it though, and doubt they’d be too inclined to make it free.
Got my confirmation email when I looked at my inbox just now; quite looking forward to giving this a shake now that I’m free of my DoW2 addiction!
Guess I’ll wait for this open beta. I’m not on either of the both continents *cry*
@Dominic: You might be right about the Steam thing.
I think Battlefront is bloody brilliant. They are certainly hard-headed, but they’ve helped revive a dying genre, consistently produced innovative wargames and supported them to the fullest, and they never do things without a reason. That might be seen as ineptitude – after all, they don’t seem to SHARE their reasons all that often – random decisions are bound to seem stupid.
I do doubt they’d be inclined to make it free. A Steam release seems unlikely as well, but it’s worth making a suggestion. Thanks.
One of the options for country in the sign-up for the beta was Australia.
I’m really hoping it lets me in.
So, Jim, what have your journalistic investigations discovered? Beta signup, or mailing list?
I hope it is real signup. I could do with some Planetside-esque gameplay.