Is this game worth trying?

[all cats are beautiful]

Hello everyone. Should I get this game, is it even worth it? Is it good in its current state? Is the playerbase big enough? Thank you for any advices!
I have 250 hours in Insurgency so I am not completely new to this game, just never tried Sandstorm before.

[Viperstar]

yes try it out, Don't be scared by the reviews, Build your own opinion by playing it. Most of these reviews are people that didn't even test everything and never even played community maps

[Pain_Train]

I just bought it the other day have played 4.4hrs some of the best hours ive had in months tbh

[Deejudanne]

not sure how it is in the rest of the world but so far i have been able to find games all around the clock, from early morning to 4 in the morning

[Numenor]

I would say no. While there were some quality of life updates in Insurgency Sandstorm over the original, there isn't really anything new or innovative in Insurgency Sandstorm over the original Insurgency.

The only 3 major differences is you can save load outs, cosmetics, and support calls.

Saving load outs is great... though its been horribly bugged for the past 2- 3 years, where if you switch servers or switch classes your previous used load out will often times over write what ever loadout you landed on in the new round or when swapping classes. Which means half of the time you have to redo your load out anyways.

Most of the cosmetics in the game are lazy texture reskins of the same like 5 - 10 models of each item. Like for instance Insurgents probably have like 100 "headgear" pieces, but like 70 of them are just the same exact shemagh / turban with a different color. Not to the insane amount of grind you have to do to get points to unlock said cosmetics. Then add in the fact that 80% of the time the game fails to load said cosmetics. Then add in the fact that there aren't even any unlockable cosmetics for guns except for some terrible looking paid dlc skins is just fail. Want a black laser attachment? Nope its this ugly generic tan laser attachment on every gun. Want a black SCAR or Honey Badger? Nope it only comes in Tan. You would think if they can give you like 30 different colors of 1 turban, they could at least spend the time to add like 5 different basic colors for each gun and attachment, like black, tan, green, white, grey to match cameo.

Unless playing against bots on like 90 bot servers, support calls are mostly underwhelming. The only one really worth using is the A-10 strafe since it can penetrate walls and smoke. For instance its not worth calling down explosive artillery because it only fires 5 rounds and has a small impact radius, takes about 45 seconds for it to come down, doesn't really penetrate buildings... so it doesn't really do anything. By the time it comes down the enemy already moved away from the target or you already killed them or they are under cover and it doesn't affect them. Security also has Blackhawk minigun support calls, and Apache which are pretty strong. But if you are playing as insurgents, your support calls are all some type of artillery essentially which are mostly useless. The only only one remotely useful is the rocket barrage which fires 14 shells, has decent spread and blast radius, and is good for target suppression. Otherwise drone bombing run, and explosive mortars are pretty useless cause they take so long to initiate, don't go through walls, and have very limited effect. Chemical mortars are pretty worthless because almost everyone has a gas mask, it essentially is just orange smoke.

Otherwise like 1/3 of the maps are recycled, and they still have terrible idiotic boundaries for objectives and no go zones. Like you have a lot of buildings where randomly the staircase isn't included in the objective so when defending during a counter attack it is easy to just accidently leave the objective zone without any warning. Some objectives only consider the ground level part of the objective despite being a 2 or even 3 story building so you can't go up and get the enemy shooting down at you.

Also this game has terrible bugs and performance issues and seems to get worse with every patch. Like 3 years ago this game was playable, now it just gets more stutters and crashes for no apparent reason.

[DOOMJESUS]

Originally posted by Viperstar:

yes try it out, Don't be scared by the reviews, Build your own opinion by playing it. Most of these reviews are people that didn't even test everything and never even played community maps

EXACTLY, YOU SHOULD MINDLESSLY SPEND YOUR MONEY FIRST INSTEAD OF ASKING PEOPLE WHO'VE BEEN PLAYING THE GAME FOR A WHILE.
BECAUSE THAT WAY, BY THE TIME YOU FIND OUT HOW F'D UP THE INTRICACIES OF THE GAME ARE AND YOU WISH THAT YOU HAD YOUR MONEY BACK, IT WILL BE FAR TOO LATE FOR A REFUND AND NWI WILL BE THAT MUCH RICHER AND YOU WILL HAVE ANOTHER EMPTY ICON TO TAKE UP SPACE IN YOUR LIBRARY.
PROBLEM SOLVED. NOT A SHILL RESPONSE, WHATSOEVER.

[DOOMJESUS]

Originally posted by Numenor:

I would say no. While there were some quality of life updates in Insurgency Sandstorm over the original, there isn't really anything new or innovative in Insurgency Sandstorm over the original Insurgency.

The only 3 major differences is you can save load outs, cosmetics, and support calls.

Saving load outs is great... though its been horribly bugged for the past 2- 3 years, where if you switch servers or switch classes your previous used load out will often times over write what ever loadout you landed on in the new round or when swapping classes. Which means half of the time you have to redo your load out anyways.

Most of the cosmetics in the game are lazy texture reskins of the same like 5 - 10 models of each item. Like for instance Insurgents probably have like 100 "headgear" pieces, but like 70 of them are just the same exact shemagh / turban with a different color. Not to the insane amount of grind you have to do to get points to unlock said cosmetics. Then add in the fact that 80% of the time the game fails to load said cosmetics. Then add in the fact that there aren't even any unlockable cosmetics for guns except for some terrible looking paid dlc skins is just fail. Want a black laser attachment? Nope its this ugly generic tan laser attachment on every gun. Want a black SCAR or Honey Badger? Nope it only comes in Tan. You would think if they can give you like 30 different colors of 1 turban, they could at least spend the time to add like 5 different basic colors for each gun and attachment, like black, tan, green, white, grey to match cameo.

Unless playing against bots on like 90 bot servers, support calls are mostly underwhelming. The only one really worth using is the A-10 strafe since it can penetrate walls and smoke. For instance its not worth calling down explosive artillery because it only fires 5 rounds and has a small impact radius, takes about 45 seconds for it to come down, doesn't really penetrate buildings... so it doesn't really do any. By the time it comes down the enemy already moved away from the target or you already killed them or they are under cover and it doesn't affect them. Security also has Blackhawk Minigun support calls, and Apache which are pretty strong. But if you are playing as insurgents, your support calls are all some type of artillery essentially which are mostly useless. The only only one remotely useful is the rocket barrage which fires 14 shells, has decent spread and blast radius, and is good for target suppression. Otherwise drone bombing run, and explosive mortars cause they take so long to initiate, don't go through walls, and have very limited effect. Chemical mortars are pretty worthless because almost everyone has a gas mask, it essentially is just orange smoke.

Otherwise like 1/3 of the maps are recycled, and they still have terrible idiotic boundaries for objectives and no go zones. Like you have a lot of buildings where randomly the staircase isn't included in the objective so when defending during a counter attack it is easy to just accidently leave the objective zone without any warning. Some objectives only consider the ground level despite being a 2 or even 3 story building so you can't go up and get the enemy shooting down at you.

Also this game has terrible bugs performance issues and seems to get worse with every patch. Like 3 years ago this game was playable, now it just gets more stutters and crashes for no apparent reason.

I AGREE WITH MOST OF THAT, EXCEPT THAT THE WARTHOG STRIKE DOESN'T PENETRATE BUILDINGS AT ALL ANYMORE.

[Viperstar]

Originally posted by DOOMJESUS:

Originally posted by Viperstar:

yes try it out, Don't be scared by the reviews, Build your own opinion by playing it. Most of these reviews are people that didn't even test everything and never even played community maps

EXACTLY, YOU SHOULD MINDLESSLY SPEND YOUR MONEY FIRST INSTEAD OF ASKING PEOPLE WHO'VE BEEN PLAYING THE GAME FOR A WHILE.
BECAUSE THAT WAY, BY THE TIME YOU FIND OUT HOW F'D UP THE INTRICACIES OF THE GAME ARE AND YOU WISH THAT YOU HAD YOUR MONEY BACK, IT WILL BE FAR TOO LATE FOR A REFUND AND NWI WILL BE THAT MUCH RICHER AND YOU WILL HAVE ANOTHER EMPTY ICON TO TAKE UP SPACE IN YOUR LIBRARY.
PROBLEM SOLVED. NOT A SHILL RESPONSE, WHATSOEVER.

You know how to turn off caps lock or? If not then read this here, it might help:

https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/websites/web-development/caps-lock/#:~:text=On%20most%20keyboards%2C%20if%20the,by%20pressing%20the%20Shift%20key.

[DOOMJESUS]

Originally posted by Viperstar:

Originally posted by DOOMJESUS:

EXACTLY, YOU SHOULD MINDLESSLY SPEND YOUR MONEY FIRST INSTEAD OF ASKING PEOPLE WHO'VE BEEN PLAYING THE GAME FOR A WHILE.
BECAUSE THAT WAY, BY THE TIME YOU FIND OUT HOW F'D UP THE INTRICACIES OF THE GAME ARE AND YOU WISH THAT YOU HAD YOUR MONEY BACK, IT WILL BE FAR TOO LATE FOR A REFUND AND NWI WILL BE THAT MUCH RICHER AND YOU WILL HAVE ANOTHER EMPTY ICON TO TAKE UP SPACE IN YOUR LIBRARY.
PROBLEM SOLVED. NOT A SHILL RESPONSE, WHATSOEVER.

You know how to turn off caps lock or? If not then read this here, it might help:

https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/websites/web-development/caps-lock/#:~:text=On%20most%20keyboards%2C%20if%20the,by%20pressing%20the%20Shift%20key.

FORGOT TO MENTION THAT THE ENEMY BOTS NEVER, EVER, EVER MISS. AND THAT EVERY SINGLE MOVE THAT THE FRIENDLY BOTS MAKE IS 100% RANDOM.

[v^v^v^v^√\/]

Originally posted by vandaL:

Hello everyone. Should I get this game, is it even worth it? Is it good in its current state? Is the playerbase big enough? Thank you for any advices!
I have 250 hours in Insurgency so I am not completely new to this game, just never tried Sandstorm before.

"Should I get this game" - maybe.
"is it even worth it" - for PvE - yes
"Is it good in its current state" - good - yes, but there are some problems. If you are not ready to read at least on short guide on how to configure video settings then don't buy it. There are million posts on this forum from people who should have bought the console instead of PC because they expect every game to run perfectly on every possible hardware config without them trying to read something useful about how they can configure the game to make it work better.
"Is the playerbase big enough" - for PvE - europe, US - yes it's bit enough. I don't play in other regions.

[Numenor]

Forgot to add you now can now weapon bash, and you have 2x versions of your favorite 1x optics and you can toggle between 2x and 1x. And on some 4x scopes you can toggle to a secondary 1x sight. Not sure if the optics that you can toggle between 4x and 1x is a thing in real life or just some gimmicky game mechanic that NWI came up with.

[ImWeTodd-Ded]

there are not many FPS games i can play for long time but this one i can

[Viperstar]

Originally posted by DOOMJESUS:

Originally posted by Viperstar:

You know how to turn off caps lock or? If not then read this here, it might help:

https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/websites/web-development/caps-lock/#:~:text=On%20most%20keyboards%2C%20if%20the,by%20pressing%20the%20Shift%20key.

FORGOT TO MENTION THAT THE ENEMY BOTS NEVER, EVER, EVER MISS. AND THAT EVERY SINGLE MOVE THAT THE FRIENDLY BOTS MAKE IS 100% RANDOM.

You know that you can type normal on a keyboard, don't you?

[DOOMJESUS]

Originally posted by Viperstar:

Originally posted by DOOMJESUS:

FORGOT TO MENTION THAT THE ENEMY BOTS NEVER, EVER, EVER MISS. AND THAT EVERY SINGLE MOVE THAT THE FRIENDLY BOTS MAKE IS 100% RANDOM.

You know that you can type normal on a keyboard, don't you?

ALSO DID I MENTION THAT IT TOOK THEM A YEAR TO FIX THE BROKEN CROUCH TOGGLE KEY?

[Pierce Dalton]

Yes, but get it on sale. My guess is the playerbase is around 10k, because the game usually shows the active players around 6~7k. I'd say if you like the original game, chances are you'll like this too.

[ItaAndy]

Hell yes! Best military game out there. Period!