Insurgency: Sandstorm

I organise enough Saturday night co-op sessions to know that finding an 8-player online co-op shooter with genuine tactical depth is genuinely rare, and Insurgency: Sandstorm is one of the few that earns its place on the server list. New World Interactive set out to sit between full mil-sim (Arma, DayZ) and casual run-and-gun (Call of Duty), and the result is something that feels immediately deadly without requiring a 30-page manual before you queue up. One or two bullets and you are down. There is no health bar, no minimap, no damage indicators. The minimal HUD is a feature, not a flaw, and it forces communication in a way most modern shooters simply do not. The three core pillars are Co-op, Versus, and Competitive. For group play, Co-op Checkpoint is the standout: up to 8 players push through sequential objectives against AI enemies, with respawns only unlocking when your squad captures the next point. That respawn mechanic alone creates genuine last-stand moments that most PvE shooters never manage. Survival mode tightens the screws further by stripping loadouts back to sidearms at the start, forcing the team to loot better weapons off fallen enemies mid-fight. On the PvP side, Push and Firefight keep things objective-focused, while Domination offers a slightly friendlier entry point with unlimited respawns for groups who want to ease into the gunplay. The community broadly agrees that Co-op is where the game shines hardest, and the active custom-server scene pushes that further still with harder AI, extra maps, and serious mod support. The gunplay itself is the centrepiece. Weapons have real weight and kick; full-auto with an AK-74 will spray the ceiling before it finds a target, and ADS takes a beat to settle. The asymmetric faction design means Security and Insurgent loadouts genuinely play differently, not just cosmetically. The point-budget loadout system gives you a set number of points to build your soldier, so strapping a suppressor, foregrip, and thermal scope onto your M4A1 will cost you body armour or grenade capacity elsewhere. There are enough classes and attachments to encourage experimentation across many sessions, and cosmetic unlocks come from play rather than a separate currency store. There are real caveats worth flagging. The visuals have always looked a generation behind their contemporaries, and texture pop-in on weapon ADS is a known annoyance that patches have never fully resolved. The in-game server browser is legitimately poor; finding populated community servers via third-party tools is the accepted workaround. The planned story campaign was cancelled before launch and never revived, so solo players are left with nothing. Performance was rocky at launch and while years of updates have improved things substantially, CPU overhead can still bite on older rigs during heavy firefights. And with no split-screen and no local co-op, this is strictly an online group experience. For four or more friends who want something that asks them to actually talk to each other, Insurgency: Sandstorm delivers that over and over. It is not the game for a group that wants to parachute in, spray, and laugh about it. The two-second time-to-kill does not forgive casual play. But get a squad that is even slightly coordinated, drop into Checkpoint Hardcore on a map like Outskirts, and the intensity is hard to find elsewhere at this price point. New World Interactive has kept the game going with regular operations adding maps, weapons, and cosmetics since 2018, with Operation: Shell Shock landing as recently as late 2025, so the live game is in better shape than its launch history might suggest.

Riley · Scout Team

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