Insurgency Sandstorm review 28/08/2020
It's got a solid base of FPS mechanics. You can realistically do well with any gun and they all feel good to shoot. The movement is solid and you have a good number of routes in all the maps making use of it. Feels fun to shoot at both medium engagement distance and in CQB, though I've had little opportunity to shoot at distances longer than 200m as the maps really aren't that big. I've only really played coop though, so I haven't got a full picture of the game yet.

Pros:
>> Guns feel good.
>> Movement feels much better than the first Insurgency game.
>> Lots of options for customisation on your guns and on your characters.
>> Maps are dynamic and well populated.
>> Game is challenging and promotes well coordinated team-play.
>> In-game radio/comms sound good.
>> Updates fairly regularly.
>> Graphically really good.

Cons:
<< Game can be overly challenging and frustrating at times.
<< Only one game-mode in COOP - checkpoint is fun, but at the time of review that's it.
<< You earn points slowly by levelling, and it takes multiple levels to unlock single cosmetic pieces.
<< The classes being restricted behind account level is pretty pointless when you have a team of people who are new. > (I guess that could work out as a positive as new players won't hog the classes they aren't good at until they've got a good feel for the game.)
<< Some of the call-ins the AI can get in COOP just kill you for no reason, which is frustrating.

Modding:
<< It doesn't have steam workshop mods, which makes it awkward to find the mods you want.
<<< Because of this, I haven't bothered to get into modding it.
>>> On the plus side though, it doesn't really need mods at this point in the game, it's got a really big selection of guns to pick from and hasn't gotten samey to me yet.

Summary:
I think it's a good game and worth trying out, but it needs some more development to live up to the breadth of gameplay offered by the original.