Squad finally has tutorials after three and a half years in early access
Fashionably late to boot camp.
Tactical sim-shooter Squad is an intimidating beast. Boasting realism up there with the Arma series, but the added pressure of having 39 other players relying on you, it seems like it should have a tutorial. And now it does, coming just a few months after its December 15th early access debut. In 2015. Ah. Still, that intimidating first step hasn't stopped it from becoming a big hit among the mil-sim crowd. The game has sold over a million copies, and devs Offworld Industries just rolled out a major update featuring the Russian BMP-2, which you can see a video breakdown of below.
While not comprehensive, the game now has two tutorials as of this update. The first teaches you the basics of infantry combat, and a more advanced tutorial teaches you how to deploy structures out in the field. Not quite comprehensive, but there are more tutorial bits planned. There's one big new vehicle -- the versatile BMP-2 IFV -- in this update, backed up by a BMP-1 variant with a powerful ZU-23 anti-air autocannon. Of course, it'll only have infantry to shoot at for now (at least when playing without mods), but perhaps it's a sign of things to come in future updates?
This update also expands the Territory Control mode to support all maps. They've also given several of the older battlefields a touch-up and optimisation pass, so things should look and play nicer. They go into absolutely painstaking detail on how they achieved the performance improvements in the patch notes, but your average player just needs to know that it looks and runs nicer now. With this update, it feels like they're firming up the game's foundation and accessibility, perhaps with release plans in mind. If nothing else, the tutorials make it a little less scary for the newbies.
Squad is still in early access with vague plans for a 2019 release, but it's well populated even now. You can jump in via Steam and Humble for £32.50/€37.50/$39.99. You can see today's full patch notes here.