Comments on: Section 8 Euro Beta Sign Up

By: Rei Onryou

Rei Onryou — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:31:53 +0000

I hope it is real signup. I could do with some Planetside-esque gameplay.

By: LionsPhil

LionsPhil — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:19:34 +0000

So, Jim, what have your journalistic investigations discovered? Beta signup, or mailing list?

By: Aftershock

Aftershock — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 07:07:09 +0000

One of the options for country in the sign-up for the beta was Australia.

I’m really hoping it lets me in.

By: Weylund

Weylund — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 04:51:54 +0000

@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.

By: FRIENDLYUNIT

FRIENDLYUNIT — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:34:16 +0000

Guess I’ll wait for this open beta. I’m not on either of the both continents *cry*

By: Him

Him — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:01:23 +0000

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!

By: Dominic White

Dominic White — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:03:59 +0000

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.

By: Weylund

Weylund — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:45:30 +0000

@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.

By: Dominic White

Dominic White — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:02:02 +0000

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.

By: Kits

Kits — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:25:54 +0000

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.

By: RiptoR

RiptoR — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:23:18 +0000

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.

By: Jim Rossignol

Jim Rossignol — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:10:57 +0000

Hmm, that’s odd, they released a press release saying it was a sign up. I shall find out more.