REVIEW : Insurgency: Sandstorm (PS5)
I was a little over nineteen when I made contact with a first-person shooter called Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat at the suggestion of a friend. Before becoming a stand-alone game and obtaining a sequel, the tactical shooter that Andrew Spearin and Jeremy Blum were initially conceived as a mod based on the Source graphics engine that made Valve’s fortunes, then used in series development. Successful video games such as Half-Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike.
Even after two decades, I keep fond memories of the evenings spent on a punitive FPS like few others, so different from the usual shooters popular in that period and which did not have the strength and will to renew themselves in the following decade. The sequel I was talking about corresponds to the name of Insurgency: Sandstorm, already passed under the microscope by his colleague Francesco “Checco” Destri on the occasion of his arrival on PC in 2018.
For the game’s landing on console, we had to wait almost three years, thanks to a couple of painful postponements that have postponed the release date by several months. Still, finally, even Xbox and PlayStation users have a way to appreciate the work done by New World Interactive, the software house founded in 2010 by Jeremy Blum and Andrew Spearin.
One bullet to hell
It must be said that tactical shooters infused with realism and simulation elements are a somewhat masochistic paradox. The more the game experience tends to be hardcore, the greater the degree of satisfaction of those who delight in shooters capable of punishing the first mistake. Although it is not comparable to His Majesty ArmA III, the war simulator par excellence, Insurgency: Sandstorm, is a big deal for anyone who approaches an FPS like New World Interactive without the right mindset.
The American team has brought a shooter to the console that, apart from the technical sector, mimics the PC version published in 2018 and incorporates its characteristic features: the time to kill is so low that a single well-placed shot is enough and advances to go to the carpet, the excellent bullet ballistics that is paired with a very realistic feeling of the weapons, and an interface cleansed of indications such as mini-maps or superfluous indicators.
Conceptually, the shooter of the American team keeps its idea of hardcore experience firm, but without absurd hyperbole, applying the philosophy of “think before pulling the trigger” even to gunplay that gives satisfaction not to die … as long as you don’t die often. Hence the courageous choice, sometimes, to show the K / D rate only at the end of the round and not during it, avoiding the player’s unnecessary distractions that can distract attention from the objectives to be attacked or defended.
The two souls of the conflict
In Frontline, rebels and security forces clash to push the opposing counterpart to their base and destroy their ammunition depot, in matches that can be subject to sudden changes in the front. We then find Firefight, which proposes an interesting basic idea. To win, the players must conquer three areas but, in the event of elimination, they will be able to re-enter the game only if the allies gain control of an area controlled by the enemies. Finally, Domination is a model that offers a more sustained pace of play, where the two teams spend most of the match attacking and defending a triptych of areas located in strategic points on the map.
In 8-player PvE modes, collaboration takes on an even more critical role, often being called upon to survive dangerous waves of enemies as in Outpost. Checkpoint and its Hardcore variant (with limited HUD and equipment) instead ask to conquer and destroy one objective at a time; Survival makes us part of a squad of survivors, armed only with a sidearm, which must take control of six zones to obtain new equipment every time an area is secured. The four cooperative modes can also be played alone and with the help of soldiers guided by artificial intelligence, not very brilliant, but that gets along when called upon to take sides against or for the players.
Therefore, the multiplayer offer satisfies the needs of those who love to compete against real opponents or collaborate with them, keeping unchanged gunplay that goes round and round always asks to keep concentration high. On balance, it was good that New World Interactive decided to set aside the single-player narrative mode to redistribute resources and developers on the PvP and PvE multiplayer experience.
Team play
In Insurgency: Sandstorm, we can choose from 8 classes, each with specific equipment that influences the style of play. In the case of the rifleman, we are faced with a soldier adaptable in every situation; with the specialist, the focus shifts instead to close combat while, demonstrating all his feeling with RPG and C4 blocks, the wrecker can assert his skills as an expert in demolitions. Shooter and machine gunner are quite eloquent roles in the equipment available and the support functions of the team. Still, when the couple formed by an observer and a commander work closely together, the latter can require aerial bombardments, rain of mortars and fire. Cover from above.
The “dirty” guerrilla
The New World Interactive shooter fails to prove equally authoritarian is on the technical side, far from refined and which does not do justice to a shooter that brings a breath of fresh air to a genre that boasts too many similar exponents. Support for 4K resolution and 60fps for current-generation consoles is all well and good. Still, the texture quality of the terrain elements of the maps and polygonal models of the soldiers is not very next-gen. Resulting slightly better in the yield of the guns. I state that on PlayStation 5, the game runs in backward compatibility, having not yet received an ad hoc update capable of highlighting the performance of the new hardware, so it was to be expected to find yourself in front of a product that was designed to be first and foremost beautiful inside and not. So much out. The update for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X / S is still in the works; in short, all that remains is to wait for it with some trepidation.
In the end, however, it is a pleasant battle between explosions and particle effects, such as the haze of smoke grenades or the mixture of dust and debris that is created when a bullet hits a wall on the verge of crumbling (but only from a scenographic point of view). There are not the usual comings and goings of players crowding into one point in the dozen playable maps, let alone creating deadly funnels. The intricate conformation of Middle Eastern scenarios provides more than an alternative route to take get around the barrage. Enemy. This is as true for urban agglomerations as for crumbling and difficult-to-conquer high-seas villages, passing through oil refineries and entirely enclosed buildings, all well packaged from the point of view of map design.
