Planetside

Rating:
Summary: Sick, sick game. I love/hate it.
Review: I'm playing way too much Planetside. I played 'til 4:00 in the morning last night. That got me into trouble with my girlfriend--big time.

Thing is, I don't even know why I played it so late. If I were to make the decision again, right now, there's no way I'd say "Hmmm... stay up 'til 4 playing a game on a weeknight? Sure!"

Planetside is just one of those games that sucks you in, that has you saying "5 more minutes--just one more kill" over and over and over again from 10:00pm until, well, sunrise. I think the biggest reason why it's such a major time assassin is that there's no way to quit the game when you're dead. Yep--you can only quit out of the program when your character is alive and well. And who wants to quit when you're at 100% health?

Sick, sick game. I love/hate it.

Review: Planetside is a sci-fi first person shooter that is also a persistent massively multiplayer online game. That means that the game persists even after you've quit--the objectives you took last night might be retaken while you're away. Players create a character for one of three warring factions (each with a unique look and a few unique weapons/abilities) then battle it out across several islands.

Gameplay is centered on the taking of objectives such as gun towers or major bases. Objectives serve as respawn points and also give access to useful facilities such as vehicle creation terminals. It's fun attacking or defending a base, as the fight moves from the a huge infantry and tank battle in the surrounding fields and forests, to the gun turret-mounted walls, to the inner courtyard, to a desperate struggle in the base's tunnels. Good stuff.

As players invest time, take objectives, and kill enemies, their character gains experience points that can be spent on "Certifications". Certs give access to classes of equipment (such as Assault or Anti Vehicular weapons), armor (such as Power Armor or stealth Infilitration Suits), abilities (such as Hacker, Combat Engineer, and Medic), or vehicles (which range from armored personnel carriers to buggies to various sizes of tanks to fighter planes to big troop transports).

The cool thing is, a player can swap out his character's certs at any time. Tired of being a sniper? Swap out the certs for a tank driver license. Ground pounding losing its appeal? Take to the skies. The ability to trade in old abilities for new abilities is a cool feature that will hopefully be seen in other games.

Speaking of other games: this is what Star Wars Galaxies should have been. Fast paced, exciting, easy to learn but challenging to master, simple and forgiving reward system, and plenty of interesting guns, vehicles, and gadgets. Alas.

This game is definitely a good time, but beware, because it's definitely a *lot* of time.

Rating:
Summary: not for rpg players
Review: having played the beta and now the retail version of planetside I can say I'm pretty satified.

I'm not really sure how sony is justifing charging 14 bucks a month for it but whatever, the money issue is something that I hope they will address when people start leaving in droves after their one month free expires. Also I'm not to happy to pay 14 dollars a month for 'server maintance' when on a typical night my ping to their east coast server is horrible. I would have to say that is one of my only gripes with the game because lag can make things VERY confusing especially in large battles.

Anyway, alot of the negative reviews I've seen here and elsewhere seem to be from people that expected to still be leveling in planetside 3 months after they started a character, sorry just won't happen. You will flesh out your character (which can be changed pretty easily) within a few weeks of steady play. The RPG element (if there is even one worth mentioning) its not what makes planetside interesting, its the idea that it take a FPS and puts it on a much larger scale with much much more depth. People don't level in counter-strike, nothing about cs changes except new maps and various updates here and there, what keeps people coming back to cs is the action and there is plenty of that in planetside.

I also think alot of the success of the game will depend on how sony handles adding new elements, as of now they have a few new vehicles slated as well as some more play options, if this continues I think planetside will stay fresh.

Its too bad there is no way to try planetside before you buy it, if you know someone who has the retail version they can let you borrow their discs to install it and you can play for a trial period of 7 days. this is one game that I would not judge from reviews, positive or negative (yeah, so why I am writing one, bah) see if you can try it and find out for yourself.

Rating:
Summary: Good idea, poor implementation, horrible community
Review: Whenever getting into any SOE game, beware. The community is the low point by far. SOE forums are known for laughing over the deaths of pets and even players. Recently when a player of planetside had a brain hemmorage and died, the customers thought it the funniest thing in the world. You would be horrified to hear their position on the death of a pet.

And that is usually the problem with SOE products. Although they have the technology and the financial resources to back up creation of top of the line products, they continue to fall far short in customer service and community management. In all internet forums there are jerks, the difference is that other forums (such as Atari's Unreal Tournament forum) actually get rid of the filth and manage the forums. The only things that disappear from SOE forums are posts that decrease sales of the product through exposing weaknesses in them.

As for the game itself, it is a great idea and poorly implements. Client side hit detection in the game is a hacker's paradise. Furthermore, the company seems more interested in slowing down the achievement of players than making an enjoyable experience. Their recent expansion, Core Combat, was yet another example of their incompetence.

There are many players in the MMOG industry. The days of the EQ monopoly are over and I suggest you check out their compeditors instead.

Rating:
Summary: A Unique Experience
Review: Planetside is a very unique game. Being the first mmofps, along with some aspects of role playing, Planetside is undoubtfully something that you should buy if you're a hardcore first person shooter fan.

Planetside has many amazing features, such as its huge arsenal of weapons. Planetside consists of three "factions", or teams. These factions work together to take over bases on each unique continent. Teamwork is essential in order to succeed in Planetside. Sony has recently applied a new voice system into the online universe, so you can talk with other members of your team.
Along with a large arsenal of weapons, each faction has a number of unique vehicles. Vehicles range from 4 wheel land rovers, to massive flying fortresses used for transportation.

In terms of graphical detail, Planetside definetely delivers. If your system is capable of handling Planetside in full detail, you'll be very suprised of its graphics. I find it hard to imagine how Sony managed to create a world with such glorious graphics without an exceeding amount of lag.

To sum it all up, like I stated earlier, this is a must get for a first person shooter fan. Graphically, this game packs it all up, and the gameplay is simply superb.

Rating:
Summary: Bad programming and design ruins the game
Review: The aircraft controls and gameplay in this game are absolutely horrible! They should take a good lesson from Halo on how to design aircraft controls.
The player vs player combat is flawed as well. Here they need to learn a good lesson from Quake 3 in terms of gameplay.
I bought this main game but WILL NOT buy the core combat expansion as I think this game is not worth it.

Rating:
Summary: Frustrating game with poor gameplay, bad lag
Review: The good point is that the concept is not bad but the actual game is. Bad controls, glitches in the program, bugs make this game frustrating to play. Very disapointed with this game.

Rating:
Summary: Good while it lasts, I recommend it.
Review: Let me start by saying most of what the other reviewers have said is true.
The requires at least 512mb RAM to run, and you must have DSL (or cable). 56k users can stop reading here.

If you meet all the minimum requirements the game is awesome. Massive battles. The 3 factions are well balanced. *most* players are quite friendly. Other reviewers have said it gets boring after a while. Well...to most people it does. But the 1-2 months of fun you get out of it are worth it. XP users can download a free 30 day trial period from www.planetside.com.
Do not buy the expansion though, its just not worth it. A recent server merger has increased the population quite a bit. Their are 4 servers currently: Emerald-East Markov-West Werner-Europe and the test server, I forget the name.
All in all a great game, and the only one of its kind,

Rating:
Summary: A great shooter that needs a top PC to play it
Review: *NOTE: This review is from itreviews.co.uk*
As soon as it became clear that gamers were willing to pay a tenner a month to play in a persistent online world, there has been rather a glut of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Fair enough, these are expensive projects and they're constantly updated, but there are definitely dollars, euros and pounds in them thar multiplayer hills.

PlanetSide may be an MMOG but at least it brings something a little different to the table; it's a 3-D shooter. No it's not unique in this - there's Neocron already out there for example - but this is still a refreshing enough concept when compared to the compost-heap-load of RPG affairs.

A flippant description of PlanetSide is easy work; think of Tribes, but with huge continents, three massive teams and hundreds of players running around. The storyline is that these three opposing teams are all in a struggle for control of a planet, with ten continents to fight over, each of which has multiple bases. The idea is to take control of as many base installations as you can and even to lock down whole continents if feasible.

PlanetSide may be a shooter but it does boast RPG elements in the form of a certification system. Every kill you score and base capture you're involved in perience points and when you 'level up', certifications are gained. These can be spent on acquiring skills which allow you to use heavy weapons or power armour, pilot vehicles along with various medical, and engineering pursuits.

So, for example, you can develop an engineer (who can repair vehicles and set up defensive gun turrets and mines) specialised as a scout and infiltration expert (he has the skill to use cloaking armour and advanced to help break into buildings by cracking the locks). There tends to be a good mix of support type characters and mainline infantry grunts who are specced out in weapons, armour and various deadly firepower-wielding vehicles.

Mentioning the vehicles, they include both ground and airborne types. There are buggies with mounted machine-guns that the passenger can fire, destructive rocket-spewing fighter craft and even huge transports which can drop a whole squad into enemy territory. It can be handy to have a vehicle to travel in, because it's a darn long walk to get anywhere, unless you happen to be in a squad group or outfit (a player-run guild) with a pilot who can chauffeur you.

And it's a great idea to join up with an outfit as soon as you can, as the tactical combat in PlanetSide puts the emphasis on being in a squad of players. Besides, it's much more fun and sociable this way, and higher-ranked characters who lead groups can obtain command levels which accord them special privileges, such as the ability to mark waypoints on their group's map.

PlanetSide is a plain blast in combat. The action is adrenaline-packed and if you die you can (generally) always re-spawn close to the battle and get straight back in. It strikes a good balance between the pure fun of fast-flowing FPS action and the squad tactics which are necessary to overcome a competently defended enemy base.

There are a few weak points in PlanetSide's armour though. Taking bases does earn your side strategic advantages, but they're not huge and as such you can feel a rather small cog in your world, particularly if when you next log back on, all the stuff you fought for has swapped back into enemy hands. Such is the nature of a massively multiplayer team game, but it does help if you're part of a well-run outfit.

Graphically PlanetSide isn't astounding either; it's slightly above average rather than anything special. However, this doesn't stop it from jerking quite badly at times, unless you have a very fast PC (we're talking 2GHz and at least 512Mb of memory with a serious graphics card). Lag also rears its head in big battles, which can be annoying but not game-ruining. Bear in mind that I'm playing on 512K ADSL and reports from 56Kbps modem players are that it's very laggy indeed.

Verdict: In short, PlanetSide is a top, team-based shooter, but you also need a top spec PC and net connection to get the most from it. The well designed, flexible character system and tactical, fast-paced combat make for a most heady mix, though you can feel rather insignificant in the big game world picture at times. Also bear in mind that there is a monthly subs fee to pay.

Rating:
Summary: be a zergling, a soldier, support-trooper or a general
Review: I have been playing PlanetSide for a year now.
Obviously I like it. I used to play RTS games.
This game has some RTS and some FPS elements.

Best thing are the pretty environment
(i switch flowers on) and the big battles.

PlanetSide is a wargame. Three Empires fight
for 100 bases. Each Empire has thousands of
soldiers. Each soldier is a person sitting
behind a computer just like you.

You dont have to be a good shooter to be
able to play this game. If you are not a
very good shooter, you can still lay mines,
transport people, be a medic, repair the
base wall turrets, drive a mobile base, etc.

Usually I am a sniper or drive a mini tank.
A month ago I was an outfit leader (General)
of 160 people. It seemed just a tough a job
as running a small country.
So I am back to grunting...

Its hard to coordinate things like fighter
wings, tank squads or multiple transports
dropping paratroopers at the same time.
It takes practice. Usually these are
prepared a week in advance. That means
getting to know the other people.
But when this happens, to me the game shines.

So for most the game ususally ends up
as a zerg: hundreds of people (troops,
air, tanks) storming a base defended
by hundreds of other people, each
person doing his own thing. Which is
not bad, since that is like a normal
FPS with 30 times the number of players.

Rating:
Summary: Planetside: Frustration incarnate
Review: I originally picked up Planetside long ago, before Core Combat. It was so bug riddled I finally had to quit...after 6 months I picked it up last month and tried it again. To keep things short, they fixed the major bugs but the game is victim to a terrible engine and very bad programming.

I have a Radeon Pro 9800, an Athlon XP 2100, 512M corsair Ram, and play on Windows XP. Still this game is all but unplayable even at the lowest graphics settings. With the LOWEST texture settings at 1024x768 resolution you will still have the game stutter even just walking around with no other players involved. Once you try to have a fight, or even walking around, the game can lock for a full 2 seconds at times. This means you are dead, even if you had superior firepower, position, and skill. You can seriously expect framerates of about 10-15 (or far worse) in most fights even with the hardware I have at low graphics settings. This is the reason I don't play the game any more. I can't begin to describe the frustration this brings to the game. Not only this, but the game STILL has bugs all over the place. The programming and engine are horrendous.

I have been told that if you have 1G+ ram, a 3Ghz processor, and a top of the line vid card you can actually play the game. I don't know. But unless you do, I'd heavily recommend skipping the game.