OK, it's time for some in-depth Lim-Dul whining after more gameplay time. Well, not really whining, actually simply providing criticism because I won't be buying the game and hence don't whine, which would imply playing despite criticizing it. :-P
1. The description of the gameplay/setting/ for those not in the know:
The game is set in some kind of generic futuristic war I couldn't care less about. Queue the ever so popular (recently) neon lights on battle suits, shields, mechs, yada, yada.
The gameplay is the usual Battlefield (et al) control point stuff with even the map previews looking laughably like BF2. Instead of tickets DECREASING, you play until one team reaches 1000 points but otherwise everything is as seen before apart from additional ways of getting points known as DCMs (Dynamic Combat Missions - more on this later). Capturing control points is called "hacking" (because it's SO cool and original) and actually requires you to press a key instead of just standing around - you're also vulnerable while attempting it.
There are six predefined classes BUT everything is customizable - you can choose your own loadout with primary and secondary weapons, additional devices (like repair tools, sensor jamming devices, grenades - you get the idea) and special abilities that boost your stats e.g. attack strength, shield strength blah, blah. The downside of this is that everybody uses the same character model and you have no clue for what targets you should go for since guessing their loadout is impossible - even if there will be more models in the game they certainly won't be tied to the equipment, since you can change literally everything. In addition to that the effects of all these abilities have to be naturally smaller than in games with well-designed and well-balanced classes so that players don't create "killer combos" and hence no matter the pseudo-class, everything plays and feels very same-y. It's probably the first game that springs to my mind where even playing a sniper doesn't feel much different from playing an assault-type character.
Your health is a combination of two things: automatically recharging shields and armor that can only be repaired by supply crates, uhm, sorry, supply stations and medics, uhm, sorry, green repair-beam guys (you can use the beam on yourself BTW). While this is a total rip-off of Halo 1 mechanics I actually have nothing against it - I find a dual system better than completely recharging health. Certain weapons also pierce your shields at close range.
A quite nice feature is the overdrive - a very fast sprint used to quickly cover large distances, triggered by holding the sprint button for a certain amount of time (by default it activates automatically). You also get a jetpack (*cough* Tribes *cough*) that allows you to fly short distances but in practice works more like a super jump.
When you die you can choose to spawn in absolutely-not-battlefield-style at your absolutely-not-battlefield-like squad or any other location using the absolutely-not-battlefield-like map. The twist here is that the respawn time is very short BUT the spawning process itself is actually dynamic since you're being thrown out a dropship Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within style. This is pretty nice since it allows you to do something when spawning and provides some tactical decisions: you can spawn close to enemies but they will usually by protected by deployable AA guns which will damage you before landing, you can hit the air-brakes at a certain point to steer your flight and land comparatively gently OR you can not hit the air brakes at all which won't damage you and deliver you to the ground faster but you won't be able to land as precisely and suffer from landing-stun for a while (doing the crouching-fist-ground-trembles-and-cracks-landing kind of move seen in different contexts in hundreds of animes, sci-fi movies, games etc. ;-). This, of course, is nothing like parachuting in e.g. Medal of Honor: Airborne. While the idea is good it has its own share of problems I'll discuss later.
Each player, apart from contributing to the overall success of the team, also gets requisition points that allow him to purchase additional equipment that is dropped after a while at his location - sentries, nay, AUTOMATED TURRETS (he, he), mechs etc.
Apart from the main objectives the aforementioned DCMs will trigger - they're kind of "side-quests". A VIP (LOL! They didn't even go for an original name), convoy, intelligence (a.k.a. flag, symbolised by a briefcase - again, the originality) will appear somewhere on the map and will have to be delivered/escorted somewhere else. Upon successful completion (or failure) either team plus the individual players will get points speeding up victory or allowing the purchase of equipment as outlined above.
Ah! You're also able to lock onto other people for a short amount of time while aiming (the length and/or ability to do so depends on various factors like chosen perks, distance, yada, yada) and surprisingly the auto-aim actually DOES correctly track your target.
2. Problems:
Yes, I know it's a beta, so bugs don't count. I also only mention issues that are either non-fixable that late in the development cycle or simply won't be fixed because of the developers' apparent intentions.
Absolutely everything in the game deals horribly low damage except for the mech's punch (yes, it's better to punch people than shoot them with the minigun ;-) and knife. This, coupled with the fact that most of the time everything is immediately visible on the map (except when you use this radar jammer (short duration), not a single enemy sees you etc. - these are all rare cases), means that there are virtually no ambushes and all encounters end being many-second long retarded out-strafing duels. It's not a question of simply tweaking some weapon damage - it's the intended Halo-like console-ish (the game is coming to the XBox360 after all) flow of the game, which perhaps some people like. It works on consoles, since the limited turning and aiming precision would break the game for unskilled people if they were being quickly killed by ambushing experienced players - this allows the player to react but is completely misplaced on the PC and reminds me of Battlefield Heroes combat.
Another problem of this gameplay type is reinforced by the "drop/spawn anywhere" mechanics - even if the enemy team sets up AA guns there will be a constant stream of players popping up all over the place in vital locations (if both teams know what they're doing) resulting in dragged out clusterfucks. Yes, the more skilled team will win these by getting more points BUT this will come over as an artificial reward, rather than the usual satisfaction of having cleared out an area of enemies.
When you consider that there are things like the overdrive and jetpacks you truly can't ever predict where the enemy will strike so the matches will result in endless back-and-forths when capture points are won and lost all the time since the maps are large and open like in the BF series, not closed with carefully designed choke-points like in e.g. TF2. While this might sound as if the rounds were very dynamic and exciting, it really isn't - you have to try it out yourself.
But hey, does that mean that I simply don't like the BF gameplay style? No, no! I played BF2 quite a lot back in the day. This gameplay style simply worked for it since it was very carefully designed. You knew where people MIGHT be spawning, knew where the assaults initially started and even if people could e.g. jump out of planes these had respawn timers and meant wasted team resources (yeah, you parachuted somewhere but a useful vehicle was lost in the process). Here the designers simply looked at the dropship concept and thought "*dur dur* that's so cool". Yeah, visually and from a single player's perspective it really is - you do EXACTLY the stuff that's shown in the cutscenes - but as a gameplay mechanic it fails.
Another very console-ish feature is the lock-on, which breaks the flow of aiming in quite annoying ways if you're used to PC shooters. Yes, you could ignore it and simply aim well but then again it provides you with cheap auto-hits regardless of whether the enemy is using the jetpack or overdrive (making them a bit pointless as evasive devices), so mastering the transition between the two aiming modes potentially increases your efficiency. However, why introduce ANOTHER thing that needs to be mastered in a game that's already overloaded with half-assed features and concepts? Shooting other people in games is, or rather SHOULD be a simple idea: the better you aim, the more effective you are. Here, you have another factor that influences your efficiency and this doesn't make the game more difficult, just unnecessarily complicated since accurate shooting is already a field that offers unlimited potential for distinguishing more skilled and less skilled players. It's so ironic that this is EXACTLY the kind of problem and bad game design I saw some days ago in a feature on ScrewAttack.com - I didn't think I'd stumble upon a game like this so quickly, what a coincidence. ;-)
http://screwattack.com/TGO/Ep26
So yeah, there you have it. I dropped quite a few names in this post and some might argue that you could apply the "unoriginality" argument to virtually every FPS but each part of the gameplay mechanics is SO derivative of the games I mentioned, actually of many, many more I haven't mentioned too, that it sticks out. The titles Section 8 apparently "drew inspiration from" had a main idea or concept that they tried to get right to the best of their designers' ability and then built a whole game around it. Section 8 takes clues from everybody and hence gets NONE of them right since you've seen all of them done better elsewhere. Remember, "universal means good for nothing".
I don't even know what this game might be advertised as - what is its main selling point, so that people don't skip over it with a "seen-it-dun-it" kind of attitude?
Ah - have I mentioned the graphics that, despite using the Unreal 3 Engine, look very, very dull with the usual barren brownish-grey landscapes populated by the glowy-power-armor soldiers I already described? The same artistic effect might have been achieved literally 10 years ago with absolutely no difference when it comes to the overall feel of the environment.
So there you have it. I will be playing the game some more as long as it's free but it's absolutely not a contender for a purchase. And no, I'm not "too quick to judge" since no amount of content introduced in the final version or the tweaks stemming from beta feedback will change the core of the gameplay which is chaotic, yet boring, derivative and simply not fun since you will be constantly reminding yourself that you could pick up/return to basically any other multiplayer shooter for a similar, nay, better experience.
P.S. Wall of text hits everybody for 10000000000 damage. :-D
I think this might be more suited for a Blog entry. ^^
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Release date is september 1, 2009 
