Planetside

Rating:
Summary: Planet Sized Problems
Review: Planetside for the PC is first person shooter where you wage war for territory and enemy bases in futuristic alien worlds. Planetside can ONLY be played online; there is no offline mode. No practice mode offline either and this is really disappointing. Then you need to pay a game fee! If you bought this game retail it comes with a 30 days free play, after that you have to pay a subscription fee ($12/month) if you wish to continue playing! Planetside is not for the casual gamer, because the game offers so many options: you can be a medic, engineer, pilot, assault soldier, heavy assualt, sniper, spy and more! You can choose from three different factions and they all of similar soldier types but feel a bit different. You'll be shooting with weapons found in most FPS like the shotguns, rocket launcher, machine guns, pistols, sniper rifle, energy weapons and some neat gadgets. The alien worlds (earth-like) are humongus! Even your base is huge and is easy to get yourself lost and confused. Running on foot takes forever, so you need to ride vehicles to travel faster to battles. If you don't have a vehicles you can ride a shuttle which arrives every 5 minutes! or use a warp gate. The battles are very awesome seeing 50+ players having a real war: lasers, bullets and missles flying everywhere! The real problem begins with "LAG", even if you have a powerful PC with cable internet, it LAGS like heck! Then there is game crashes...this game is so glitchy and full of bugs that they keep making the game crash (even with patches)! Lastly, the game feels repeatative because the battles NEVER end! When you take over an enemy base you are then supposed to defend it and then the enemy comes after you! There is NO ending, no victory screen or FMV, no stats to give you satisfaction. So after a short while the never-ending battles seem pointless: completely ruining the game experience.

Pros:
+tons of options
+cools weapons
+excellent graphics
+excellent sound effects
+excellent music
+huge battles
+huge worlds

Cons:
-no offline gameplay
-no single player game mode
-tons of game crashes
-tons of strange glitches
-tons of LAG
-waiting 5 mintues to ride a shuttle
-easy to get lost
-complicated interface
-battles never end
-game becomes pointless
-paying $12 a month to
play a glitchy, crash-happy game



Rating:
Summary: What do you mean I can't play USED software?
Review: Don't buy Planetside USED if you want to play it.

Sony Station will only allow a software key to be used once and will not give out another. This happened to me and after speaking to customer support, all I could do was buy a new version. Buyer beware!



Rating:
Summary: Absolutely the Best MMORPG !!!
Review: Words cannot describe the fun you will have playing this awesome game. You can be one of 3 groups of thought. The New Conglomerate,the Vanu and the Terian. Each have multi-weapons,multi-vechs and multi- other characteristic both common,and unique for each group.

The are 10 continents....huge..vase. Each continent has numerous Facilities that you or your Squad or Outfit can capture.

Consequently,everytime log off,then back on,depending on how long you have played,the Continent Ownership could be completley different. Maybe the Vanu,or Teran own the continent and Facilities now.

As you accomplish you missions,you get BEP (Battle Experence) or CEP (Command Experience) which gets you Certification Points to purchase expertise in a multitude of disciplines...like Assault,Heavy Assault,AirSupport,Ground Support etc....



You can have up to 4 Characters each specilazied to do particular things...

Get this game!!! You willnot stop playing it once you do.
Each time you play the game you can have a completely different experience.

Rating:
Summary: Great game
Review: It is the only MMO that hasn't disappointed me. When it first came out it had a few problems but they have been fixed. Lots of fun shooting with tons of guns and vehicles. As well as a huge world.

Rating:
Summary: Under pain of lag and inexplainably high ping time.
Review: Most people know that mass multiplayer onlines are for only those who possess high speed internet and have high end computers. What you don't know is: I have cable internet and this game is still laggy enough to make me scream.
Lag is especially painfull for a first person shooter. Imagine you are fighting one on one with a dangerous opponent, when all of the sudden you character freezes for seconds at a time in a substance known only as 'lag'. Your opponent, however, is not, and proceeds to blow your frozen character to smithereens. Not only that but the game suffers from a pluthera of unbearably long load times and a multitude of crashes in between. If its not bad enough to have a frame rate of one every five minutes, you also have to stand a loading time of another ten minutes, and then the game just loves to crash right about then. Don't get me wrong, this game probably works on supercomputers connected to the internet with high speed cables as thick as trees, but I wouldn't know, I'm not made of money. If your computer and internet combined cost you more than someones house, then you probably have a high end enough computer for this game. Otherwise, it will leave you pulling your hair out in frustration.

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.

Rating:
Summary: Planetside - 1 year later
Review: Damn you, planetside! You've ruined me forever!

Back in the day, I used to brag about playing on 32-player Unreal Tournament servers. After Planetside, those are just too small. I just can't handle playing a game with under 300 players online at once. I tried UT2k3 a couple months ago, and the graphics were great. But it was boring - only 16 on the server. So I went back to PlanetSide, and was immediately in my happy place.

The game requires some interdependence with your teammates. You need engineers to repair your body armor & fix your tank; you need medics for healing; you need tanks to charge the enemy; you need snipers to suppress the enemeny infantry & snipers; you need cloakers to sneak in & cripple enemy defenses; you need bombers to soften the enemy positions before the big rush; you need troop transports to drop soldiers behind enemy lines (paratroopers); you need air defenses. Nobody can do everything, so people end up finding the roles they enjoy and contribute to the whole war effort. I'm currently rebuilding my main character into a tank-driving sniper.

Its well known that Sony released Planetside too early. They tried competing with their own Star Wars MMORPG, so they shoved it out the door too quickly. Early player experiences were rough. But the PlanetSide team has definately improved the game. Its much more stable; more equipment has been added. Strategies have been changed. Large online games like this are always being tweaked by the designers, and Planetside is no different. The developers are very active on the forums explaining new things, asking for feedback, and taking requests. Several well-thought-out player requests have made it into the game.

The hardware requirements for Planetside are immense. You need on the order of 1.5Ghz+, and around 1 GB RAM. A high-end video card helps a lot. Before buying, I would try downloading the 7-day trial. You'll lose yer character at the end, but you'll get to find out if your box can play before throwing down some cash.

I saw a few people complain about the "missing" single-player game. THERE IS NO SINGLE PLAYER GAME IN PLANETSIDE. If it moves, its another player. The only AI in the game is in stationary turrets; everything else is player-controlled. No bots; ever. You've gotta be able to handle getting smacked down by other people. And you've gotta be able to try returning the smack. If Player-vs-Player sounds scary (it does to some of my friends) then you might wanna try somethign else. But if pure PvP sounds interesting, then Planetside is probably your game.