With the Free to play revolution starting up over this past year, Sony Online Entertainment jumps on the bandwagon with Planetside 2. The original Planetside was released by SOE in 2003 and received a lot of praise for the large scale battles. It certainly had some rough edges, but when it comes to FPS multiplayer of that scale, there simply isn’t another choice.
For those unfamiliar with how the game works, let me enlighten you.
Planetside 2 is an MMO, but not in the traditional sense. There are no quest givers with hovering yellow punctuation as head wear, there are no enemy NPCs milling about on a pumpkin patch, waiting for you to whack them on the head with a level 2 sword of damnation, in a misguided attempt at saving a farmer’s lovely daughter from the horrors of the most docile looking chicken in all the land. There aren’t countless pieces of huge shiny armour and weapons waiting for you on the most inappropriately small creatures that litter the landscape. Instead there is something that no other MMO I have ever played has ever managed to do well, there is war.
The initial drop…
First thing to do in any MMO is choose your faction, race etc. If you’re one of those folks that spend countless hours on the character creation screens, PS2 is going to disappoint you. The only options are gender and the three factions you play, it seems scant, but you won’t be spending much time hanging outside the local auction house on your new mount, trying to convince people you genuinely did earn all 30,000 gold coins to pay for it. So it doesn’t come as much of a surprise.
There are three factions in PS2. The Terran Republic, The New Conglomerate and the Vanu Sovereignty. The Terran is a government run force that believes in absolute law and order. The New Conglomerate are a rebel band that strongly oppose the oppressive Terran way, and finally the Vanu, they wield powerfully advanced weaponry in an attempt to help mankind ascend to its next state of existence.
The only real difference is aesthetics here, I personally went with the Vanu, but that was mainly because one of their attack fighters looks like a Cylon ship. Each faction has similar vehicles and weapons, with a slight graphical difference. The only other notable thing visually is that the Vanu use energy based weapons. That’s pretty much it
Initially the gameplay can be quite overwhelming. You are dropped (literally) on to one of three continents, your only goal is to capture outposts and hopefully control the map. Some of these bases are pretty huge and I did find it quite hard at first to find any real direction. The map is filled full of information to lead you to the larger battles for big installations, there’s also a host of territory information and statistics. It all looks very nice, but despite all this it can still be very hard for the first couple of hours to find your feet. I would strongly recommend running through these videos here on the official site. These should suffice until such time that some in game interactive tutorials show up.
Tactical analysis…
Something that always comes up with F2P games is the question of whether it is more of a “pay to win” system. So far with F2P games I have never come across one that seemed to be unfair toward the people not paying. It may give a slight edge here and there, but in my view, you still need the skill to use things correctly. That is very much the case in PS2, The majority of the best weapons are available from the start, the rest are really just side grades, usually you get a bonus in one stat but a decrease in another. So if this kind of thing puts you off playing, don’t let it. If you are a competent gamer, you will have no trouble with those that choose to pay to unlock things.
There are a lot of things to obtain in this game, it will take you a considerable amount of time to get what you want from each class or vehicle, and I would suggest trying to stick to upgrading one thing (vehicle or class) at a time as trying to spread things out can leave you a little bare. There are some cheap things like utility slots, which can be opened up for a measly 1 cert.
Cert points are earned from general gameplay, killing, capturing bases etc. Anything you buy with real money will be with station cash (real money will be exchanged for this). Attachments for guns are usually around 30-100 certs, most of the class unlocks cost around that mark. The vehicles share a similar price for new parts, there are a few that require in the region of 200-500 certs, but in the grand scheme of things, it won’t take that long. An average player will gain around 30-50 certs an hour, give or take. It can seem like an uphill struggle at first, but remember, this is an MMO, and it takes time.
A matter of class…
There are six classes to choose from in all. Heavy assault, light assault, combat medic, infiltrator, engineer and MAX. The medic and engineer pretty much speak for themselves, the medic can heal and revive players and still hold his own very nicely at short/medium range. The engineer has probably the busiest role of all; he can repair vehicle and MAX units, generators and turrets in bases too. He is also the supplier of ammo by throwing down packs for people, and finally you can erect (stop laughing) anti-infantry mounted guns.
The light assault is a very versatile fast moving soldier, one I play very often due to them being given a jet pack. This becomes invaluable when encroaching on strongholds if there entrance is being bottlenecked. The heavy assault is your all-purpose infantry, he comes equipped with a rocket launcher which can take down vehicles and MAX units, you carry a sort of LMG type weapon which favours rate of fire over damage, most importantly you can activate an over shield to give yourself that extra bit of protection when going toe to toe.
The infiltrator is the class for you snipers out there. Armed with a long range rifle and a cloaking device, you can try and wreak havoc from a mountain top, or cloak and get up close. You also have in your arsenal a projectile that enables you to light up enemies within a certain area on the mini map for your team mates.
Finally you have the MAX, this puts you in a very large but slow suit of armour (think War Machine), with guns on each arm and the ability to charge a short distance. You can take on infantry easily and even take big chunks out of vehicles. You can choose which type of guns adorn your arms (after unlocking them of course), which allow you to go after air or ground units more efficiently. If you have an engineer following you around healing you, it can be very difficult to take down in small groups.
The balance between each class and vehicle seems nigh on perfect, you will generally find that, whatever you choose to go to war with, it will have a hard counter and also things you will have an easier time with. This rock-paper-scissors approach works very well and gives a great sense of fear and power at the same time. The game can be tailored to your play style through choosing carefully what weapons to unlock for your class and vehicle of choice, allowing for a nicely personalised experience.
War is beautiful…
With games like Hawken coming through, F2P titles are looking very pretty, PS2 holds that boast to the fore with some very impressive visuals. There are sacrifices with some textures but the overall look is great, especially considering the square footage of the continents. Any flashes from weapons look superb against a night time backdrop. The sound is equally good, weapon discharges of every kind are excellent and soundtracks to each faction are suitable.
All this makes a solid game, but it doesn’t make it great, what does make it great are those moments you never forget, the ones you can’t wait to tell your friends about, the ones that you always bring up on forums when people reminisce about past games. Planetside 2 has these, and it has them in spades.
A few nights ago in game, I was rolling along with a tank line, about ten strong, infantry all around us, ample air support. As we neared a large base we started to shell it with the tanks as infantry and the air support moved in. It was an incredible scene, the defensive turrets opened fire and were quickly destroyed, but that wasn’t the great part. As we started to feel a sense of dominance over our opponent, the distant sky was suddenly filled with what looked to be about twenty dropships. Now these are basically huge flying tanks and hold twelve soldiers and have six guns around it. Accompanying them was maybe two dozen smaller aircraft. To say that we panicked is something of an understatement, I retreated to some cover (quiet, it was totally tactical) to watch as a storm of metal flew over raining down destruction. I have honestly never seen anything like it in gaming, that was simply one instance in over twelve hours of gaming.
That’s what Planetside 2 is, a series of great moments. Moments that no other game can give you right now. It’s not perfect, there are some rubber banding issues and some odd collision detection here and there, but these are very minor and forgivable things. If you can, grab some friends and use VOIP, it becomes so much more enjoyable playing that way. Whatever you do, don’t miss out on this one, as a gamer you owe it to yourself to grab some of those moments.