Insurgency: Sandstorm – Beginners Tips (How to Get Good)

Tips for Newbies

All credit goes to ImTimK!

Basic Tips

Getting good at this game is a combination of a few things, one thing is simply learning the maps. This is easy, just play and you’ll automatically learn the flow of the maps, where the teams spawn and which routes there are to the objectives. Watching replays from an eagle-eye perspective or observing the pov of good players definitely helps aswell.

The second thing is developing situational awareness, this isn’t easy at all. For most good players this is something they developed by playing shooter games for years.

Good situational awareness allows you to know where the enemy is (potentially comes from) and how to move and position smartly. You know which angles are dangerous and how to keep your exposure to a minimum. Where you look and aim is where the enemy comes from, you don’t get surprised that easy.

This game really isn’t much about being the greatest and fastest aim, it’s not unimportant but awareness and smart movement are much more important. It’s all about seeing the enemy before they see you and having your gun aimed and ready to fire when they pop up. Tactical reaction time advantage > twitchy aim skills.

General Tips for Awareness, Movement and Positioning

• Always attentively listen to gunfights (preferably use good headphones) to understand where the enemy is.
• As beginner, don’t take too many risks, follow teammates and support them. When you get a little better you can try to play more offensively and take more risks. You’ll die less the better you get at calculating the risks/reward of certain actions.
• Stay close to walls and prefer to move along the edges of the map, this minimizes your exposure and you don’t have to guard 1000 angles.
• Same for positioning (defensively): Make sure the enemy can only come from angles within your direct field of view, trying to defend multiple angles (out of sight) is a huge tactical mistake.
• Don’t sprint too much, keep your gun up and ready when needed for faster reaction times.

One last thing, a good mindset is considering every death a tactical mistake and try to learn from it (why and how did it happen?). Don’t get mad though, you will make load of mistakes before getting better. Try to enjoy the learning process, otherwise I don’t think it’s worth learning anything.