Assuming you can actually get it to run, Section 8 might be the best FPS game made to date. Seriously, it's fantastic!
Second, let me get the negative stuff out of the way: the game is a total crash-fest on startup right now for many (if not most) gamers. I literally spent hours fighting just to get to the main menu, after which I spent hours trying to get its connection to Games For Windows Live working. You might be one of those lucky souls who just buy it and run it, but you could be facing a long, painful bunch of troubleshooting if you take the plunge. The beta was solid and worked great from day one, but the final game is buggy as hell in its startup routines. Properly warned ye be, says I.
Having said that, what's so great about Section 8? Hell, what's not so great?! You have a number of different loadouts that are pretty well configured by default, but you can customize them greatly if you like. You can select primary and secondary weapon, as well as what would be "perks" in another game, which give bonuses to damage, shields, and so forth. The flexibility is like the Tribes series of games but with more focused and arguably more interesting choices.
When you're ready to join the battle, you can choose to spawn with a squad, or you can do your own thing. Either way, you come rocking down onto the battlefield in a fantastic take on High Altitude Low Open (HALO) skydiving. There are even tactical consequences to deciding when (and if) you fire your air brakes, insofar as you can alter your trajectory a bit once you have. The developers have made the process of spawning into an interesting exercise in itself. Seriously, folks, this is the first FPS game ever I've played where I have never been bored waiting to respawn. How wacky is that?!
Once you're on the ground you can get to the action very quickly thanks to the speed running. You see, a meter charges up as you run and after a few seconds switches into turbo mode, which lets you run really fast for a good long distance. There's even a bit of skill involved, insofar as bumping into things can knock you back to normal speed, at which point you have to wait for the ability to recharge. Of course, if you were smart you picked a spawn point right behind some pain-in-the-ass camper in order to knife him from behind. Pure glee, that. This is the first FPS game I've played that basically makes spawn camping/raping impossible, and oh my god is that a wonderful thing!
On your way into battle you can engage your jumpjets. They don't give you the kind of hang time a lightly armored player could score in the Tribes series of games, but you can go pretty high and pretty far if you use the jets in the middle of a speed run. Once you get in close, aim down the sights and hit the 'E' key to lock onto the enemy in your crosshairs for an even quicker kill. I particularly enjoy speed-running/jetting into a crowd of foes with my guardian loadout and mini-gunning them down at close range, often before they even figure out what happened. That's death from above, baby, Tribes style.
So now you've killed some enemies or maybe blown up some sensors, turrets, etc. That means you've earned money, which you can now spend on deployables. You can call down a supply depot, a walker (think tiny, Mechwarrior-ish exo-suit), a tank, turrets, or other useful stuff. These deployables can make a huge difference for your team, particularly if you place them intelligently. A well placed supply depot, for example, can be a godsend for wounded comrades in the field, and stepping into a walker turns you into a walking infantry killer. Big fun.
If you manage to clear a path, or find a way to sneak past the front lines, go capture an enemy-held control point. The more points you capture, the more score your team accumulates with each tick. Since the first team to reach 1,000 points wins the match, that's important. It's also important to keep your eyes and ears open for missions. You heard that right: the game isn't just about shooting the bad guys or controlling points; Section 8 brings variety to the table and that's the proverbial spice of life.
From time to time your team will be given the opportunity to escort a VIP across the map to safety, defend an air-dropped outpost from the enemy for a period of time, retrieve a bomb from a remote location and detonate it in an enemy facility, retrieve a suitcase of intel from an enemy location and bring it back to your base, and so forth. If your team can fulfill the objectives in the time granted, your score jumps. Of course, if the enemy shuts you down, then they get points instead.
It sounds crazy and chaotic, but in practice it's bloody awesome. It's like S8 takes all the game modes other games have built up over the years and mashes them together into one fantastic melange of gaming goodness. Seriously, deathmatch, team deathmatch, conquest, domination, bomb the objective, protect the VIP, recover the McGuffin--they're all in there in varying degrees.
I realize I'm gushing. I realize I've only been able to get the final game working for the last few hours. But it's even better than the beta suggested it would be, and I thought the beta was pretty damned good. You definitely need to check this out if you're an FPS gamer. I'd give it a ten, but it's so badly broken at launch I can't do so in good conscience.