INSURGENCY: Modern Infantry Combat represents the modern battlefield on the individual and tactical levels. Only the best players will become commanders and get the chance to lead its entire team towards victory. This is a game where real-world squad and guerrilla tactics are necessary to stay alive and repel the enemy, and is geared towards clans and organized teams of players.

That quote from the Insurgency Steam store provides some insight into what we can expect upon entering this "battlefield" of a game but doesn't nearly prepare you for the reality that will hit you after you double click that little .exe on your desktop.

Insurgency is a first release from the oh so appropriately named "Insurgency Team" supported by their publishers, THQ. The game itself is a total HL2 conversion based around the current middle-eastern war, focusing mainly on the conflict between natives and American allied forces. Half-life 2 mods have been around for some time and for the most part have been quite successful and enjoyable (i.e. Smashball - which I may be reviewing at a later date) and this one isn't really an exception, although like any game, it has its bad points.

A main menu laden with some nice concept art.

The game has 2 game modes, Firefight and Push both being fairly simple and common in principle. Firefight is a capture the objective type mode where the objective points start off neutral and both teams are eligible to capture them, whoever captures all the points, wins. Push is fairly similar yet different in the sense that one team owns all the objectives and the other team must push in by means of force and take those points from the opposition. Once an objective has been captured in this game mode, it cannot be recaptured.

A nice feature of the game, despite a few graphical discrepencies and very many clipping issues is the customization of your character. while this feature is fairly standard amongst most FPS's now it is still nice to see in a free game. A customization menu is provided alongside the class or "classification" selection menu. Each classification has its own selection of weapons - usually consisting of 1 or 2 maxiumum different options for your primary weapon. Often during the game, this can be very limiting as only one or two people can play a class at any one time, depending upon server population and team dispersement. Both the Insurgents and US army have equivalents of each others classes with the appropriate weapons to accompany.

Capturing the Objective "Saddam Square"

Classification and Customization menu

The gameplay of Insurgency leaves a lot to be desired. As it seems, its developers were taking the realistic approach and the gameplay paid the forfeit for this. For example; the standard issue sidearm in the game is virtually useless due to the fact that it takes a good 3 seconds to pull it out of your holster and turn the safety off, as per the realistic value of Insurgency. The other thing that raises some questions is the lack of crosshair on the screen. This is supposed to be conteracted by the added feature of "Ironsights" which is a model representation of how it would look, had you actually been looking down the crosshairs of an actual assault rifle, rocket launcher or whichever primary happens to tickle your fancy - this offers up the last resort of no scoping with an assault rifle in a tense situation, which wouldn't be too much of an issue if it weren't for the sheer inaccuracy of 95% of the games automatic rifles, even in ironsights, using controlled bursts. If it's accuracy you're after, you're better off choosing the "old school" single shot rifles. The sniper scopes can have their irritating moments aswell concerning speed and control. Now, some fanboys may find these features extremely attractive and appealing but I personally believe that Insurgency is a classic case of realism in gaming taken too far, to the point where gameplay is sacrificed, majorly and needlessly.

Iron Sights

The guns in the game are as accurately modeled as possible, expected by the realistic tone of Insurgency. The assault rifles, as previously mentioned are widely inaccurate in most situations although can be handy for a "spray and pray" at very close range. The games take on shotguns is quite good and they were my personal favourite whilst playing the game - they do fairly high damage and have a better than expected range for an automatic shotgun, i did however miss the presence of a good ol' pump action in the hands. There are some slightly more "explosive" (terrible pun intended) classes in the game, however their usefulness can vary alot from time to time, as their reload times make them ineffective for more than a kill or 2 at a time.

All in all, Insurgency is one of those games that you might download to bolster your game collection numbers and provides a decent alternative for those days where CS:S or COD4 just doesn't seem appealing. One thing is for sure, given the fact that in some terrain its almost impossible to tell enemies from friends in this game, you'll come back to play this game fired up from all the team-killing and the slim chance that you might actually hit someone. Good game considering it's free. 'nuff said :)