Planetside

Rating:
Summary: Buggy. Poor player guide. Having to rely on others a minus.
Review: I've been playing this game for about 3 weeks at the time of this review, so I've got a good feel for the game.

I run a rock solid stable, self-built, Windows 2000 Pro machine. It has crashed more in the last 3 weeks than it has in the last 2 years. The game constantly locks up, or crashes straight to the desktop. Nothing, I mean NOTHING, is more frustrating than working for hours to capture a base, only to have the game crash (or server crash) minutes before the capture, resulting in 0 experience points for hours of work (5000 point captures are not uncommon for hours worth of work). There are bugs everywhere in the game play. Sounds play when they aren't supposed to. Doors don't open. Players spontaneously disappear. Some game features work in some circumstance but not others. For example, when you normally use the map, you can zoom in and out with the 'Z' key. When the same map is displayed to choose your respawn location you cannot use the 'Z' key to zoom, but you can use the mouse wheel (if you have one) to zoom in and out.

The game has an extremely poor player guide. A lot of information is left out of the booklet that comes with the game. Some more information on game play can be found on the website, but most of the info you will just have to learn during game play. Oh...and the off line in game tutorials don't work at all. I spent a good hour trying to go through the first mission, only to find out that you can't complete the first mission because of a bug! And you can't play any other missions without completing the first mission! Sony knows all about it and promises to fix the bug in a coming patch. The game was released 5 months ago; I wouldn't hold my breath for a fix.

The game requires you to rely heavily on other players to advance in rank. I don't find this a problem because I'm not a team player, it's a problem because there is no easy way to communicate with large numbers of players unless you have a command rank, allowing you to communicate to many many players. There are often not many players with the required command rank to give orders and organize attacks. So organizing people that you have to rely on is very very difficult. Another point, partly due to a poor players guide, is many people don't know some of the stuff the need to know. For example, many times I have been fighting for a facility wondering why it's not being hacked (hacking is required to cap a facility). Come to find out nobody has the equipment to hack it, even though any player can acquire the equipment, and any player can use it. You can form squads and outfits of players which helps organize attacks and what not, but there is only so much 10 players can do against an enemy force of 100 or so.

Over all the game feels rushed to release. It feels like Sony one day said "Planetside has been in development for years, and we think it's close enough. Ship it now and we'll fix the big bugs in patches". A lot of the in game logistics seem over thought out and the bugs are quite frankly, unforgivable. There is absolutely no excuse for ever releasing something this buggy.

This game is OK for being the first massively multiplayer first person shooter, that's why it gets 3 stars. I'd give it 2.5 if I could. The game could have been so much more

Rating:
Summary: My My My
Review: Well, for a laggy game, you will love it with the right rig. Have at least 640 RAM, and a decent CPU, vid card isnt too much of a bother, hell i puld it off on an MX420, so you get my point. The team combat is amazing, and I mean, it is worth the 13 dollars a month, and I know there are kids out there, like me, who do not have a credit card, and don't feel like asking "mommy and daddy" for a card number, there is a game card which pays for 90 days! Get it if you want to play! That is all I have to say, except, GET THIS GAME! AND I WILL SEE YOU ON THE BATTLEFIELD!

-Durchii in game

Rating:
Summary: Great game? Well.... It could be, but it's not.
Review: I've had this game for about 2 months. I've played to battle rank 20 and command rank 5 (the highest levels possible). I've played all three factions and used all the skill sets and equipment. After literally days of my life spent on this game, I can honestly say that it was worth playing it for about 20% of the time. The rest, wasted.

This is a game with an identity crisis. It's a RPG and a FPS. I love both genres, so I thought combining them like this would be great. Oh well....

It does the FPS part very well (very VERY well), but the RPG elements actually take away from this game rather than add to it. If it was just an FPS, the players would act accordingly and live only to fight. With the RPG rank system, players often do things only for experience. For example, a team of players may take a base through stiff opposition in order to capture the experience. Then they will actually fall back to allow the other side to retake it so it can be recaptured for the experience again. Players seek experience in order to don differrent armor or a bigger gun or pilot a air or ground vehicle, but the new abilities really don't add to a player's capacity to kill. You can't get strong enough to really become a power player, and while that's fair, it means that there's really no reason to attempt to do things for the experience. After weeks of playing and climbing ranks, if you get wasted by some noob who just logged on 5 minutes ago, why bother?

So people play this FPS like they would an RPG, but they don't get RPG rewards. The RPG element directs how people play, but its never more than a really massive FPS. It's a nice idea, but before I'd recommend people buying it, I'd have to see Sony solve their identity crisis. Either strengthen the RPG elements or eliminate them. I applaud Sony for trying to make the first MMORPGFPS, but it's a weak, WEAK effort. Just enough to claim the title.

I'd recommend Battlefield 1942 or Star Wars Galaxies (an acutal effort by Sony) long before I'd recommend this game.

Rating:
Summary: Player vs Player at it's finest
Review: First and formost, this is a player vs player game with "level gains" (called Battle ranks). It's set in the future and the fighting occurs on several continents that offer differing terrain and look.

Most games of this type HUGELY favor the high level characters. In Planetside, an BR 3 can kill a BR 20 just as easily as the BR 20 can kill the BR 3. You have a ton more options in weapons, vehicle and skills as a BR 20 but it's just that... more choices.

Fortunately, if you go through the virtual training you start out with a very decent BR of 3 which means that you can use lots of things starting out. Two vehicles, 2 Maxes, Any weapon combo, etc.

Having played many player vs player games I can attest that this is the best.

Pros:
3 way fights, balanced sides, static bases, fun fights, instant action, outfit support (guilds), benefits to grouping, many, many aspects to master (Infiltration, vehicle combat, air combat, infantry combat, etc)

Cons:
low populations at offhours (always play on the most populated), a game expansion which should have be a patch

They have a free 7 day trial offer. Worth checking it out.

Rating:
Summary: Defend the spawn tubes!
Review: Here's the short version.

The game is truly addictive. Even with all the bugs, crashes to desktop, warm reboots, and all the other associated problems, you will find yourself coming back to this game again and again. This game will make you feel powerful and 10 minutes later you'll be screaming at the monitor over a wacky death.

After having just finished my 1st week trial subscription (each full game comes with a special code, give it to your friends to try out for a week free) I have some lucid thoughts to put down here for anyone interested. The planet Auraxis is colonized by the enormous Terran Republic, but after the wormhole that transported this group here collapses the main populace soon begins to break apart into 3 separate factions. The Terran Republic (TR) loyalists, the New Conglomerate (NC), which is a group of revolutionaries that want freedom from the TR, and the Vanu Sovereignty (VS) that have embraced the technologies of an ancient race who have left thier artifacts behind. Because of the Vanu technology there is no permanent death here on Auraxis. You are basically reconstructed with nanites in a cloning tube where you can feel free to rejoin battle at any time over several different continents each with thier own terrain differences and climates.

You begin at Battle Rank 1 (BR) and after training on the various weapons and discovering new systems you gain exp. Each new BR you achieve gives you Certification Points, which you can spend on several different options, like being able to drive certain tanks or aircraft, or to better customize yourself to infantry work. In addition to this you can gain Command Ranks, which give you the ability to organize and direct offense and defense on a truly global scale. Command Rank is much harder to achieve though, so by and large the average player you'll find concentrates almost solely on BR. If you don't like what you're certified in (you can't fly a plane to save your life or die remarkably quick in infantry positions) no worries, you're given the option to "forget" certain skill and apply them to new ones.

Combat often gets chaotic, and as your skills improve you can deal out more harsh damage on the battlefield. There's nothing more gratifying than getting kills in this game, and the harder the kill it is the more exp. you get. As such battles get *very* big really quick as the experience points pour in. To describe the game itself though I'd have to say that it's a mixture of Team Fortress Classic, combined with a little bit of Deus Ex, and further mixed up with some Battlefield 1942. It's definitely unique and that's it's biggest draw.

As for the problems, I won't lie. The game has terrible bug issues...the worst I've come across in my week's trial subscription were crashes to desktop. Those are annoyingly frequent (and due to some terribly bad luck) usually at a time when I need to be in the game the most. Other times the game will freeze without warning, requiring you to reboot. And still other times consoles don't work right, or weapons don't load up correctly. Sometimes you respawn not in a cloning chamber like you're supposed to, but in water, where you drown and die again.

This game is made for a certain kind of game player. If you love First Person Shooters like Half-Life, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, or Battlefield 1942, you will love this game. If you liked Deus Ex you will probably like this game. If you like the above games but are over the age of 30 and don't like getting spanked regularly by highstrung 15 year olds with the gift of agility, you will hate this game, but you'll keep playing it, probably cursing the whole time as I did. There's also some imbalance in the game...actually there's one GIANT imbalance in the game. The VS Lasher, that faction's "special" weapon is overwhelmingly too powerful. So if you subscribe and join the VS you'll find conquests to be less challenging than you would with the TR or NC, save for nights when they're actually organized to do something.

Someday I'll buy the full version of Planetside...it's a really entertaining (and ludicrously enfuriating at the same time) romp from SOE. You may want to wait a month or two for the worst of the bugs to get worked out, but if you can't wait that long I can't blame you.

Rating:
Summary: Tap the potential!
Review: People say it's lousy. People say it lags. But do they talk about the real time wheather, cool guns (triple barrel shotgun, people!) and excellent squad based combat? Nope. I have 56k and a 800 mhz processor and it works great on my PC! You can become litterally anything you want: a daring Assault troop, deadly sniper, or just a guy who shoots up things with a gun. Your choice. And the lag? Almost none on my AVERAGE system. Just beware of phone calls. They mess you up. But for you who don't have call problems, and have a fancy for carnage, action, and teamwork, this is a great game for you!

Rating:
Summary: Tribes2 with the fun removed
Review: The gripe that I have with Planetside is that you don't seem to be getting anywhere or be making a difference to anything. Okay, I only played the demo (solidly) for 7 days, but in that time I helped retake the same base at least twice and I never seemed be advancing either in the conquest of territory or in the ability of my avatar.

Let me explain. In Planetside, you earn the ability to wear armour, use weapons or drive vehicles based on "experience point"s which gain you "certifications points". The more "experience points" you get (by fighting, killing, hacking into enemy installations etc), the more "certification points" you get to use to be allowed to use different bits of equipment, armour, vehicles etc. But even if you do this - you still don't really advance the cause of your Empire (you have to belong to one of three empires all fighting for the same territory) because at the end of the day - you are still just another grunt in a huge army of online grunts.

You don't affect the overall outcome one little bit. That's because there is no overall outcome. No goal, no victory. A sparkling performance from you means nothing. You don't even build your avatar into a powerful demi-god able to smite thousands with a single shot. You just get to compete in an ongoing, repetitive battle for the same installations over and over again and with no conclusion. Do you see?

If you're a Tribes2 player - then this is just Tribes2 with 3D grass, no jet packs and no winners. And what's more - it'll cost you. That's right, you have to subscribe to Sony Online Entertainment after the free 30 days period if you buy the full game.

So, I'm off to dust off my spin-fuser. Lets go vertical!

Rating:
Summary: Caveat Emptor
Review: Buyer Beware. If you have the right system and connection, this game rocks.

DO NOT buy this game unless you have at least a GeForce 3 64mb graphics card and 768 mb RAM. If you don't know for sure that your system meets those specs, then it probably doesn't.

Also: this game is a multiplayer internet action game. DO NOT play it without DSL or a Cable Modem. You will not enjoy it.

There are some other technical problems but they are not major.

Rating:
Summary: Cant Get Enough!
Review: This game is awsome, one of the best i've ever played. Theres so much to do and so much you can be. A pilot, a tank driver, sniper, infintry, it goes on and on. I've had this game for three months now and I have not once became bored. Get in an outfit, make some friends, and your never bored. For those that complained it was boring, they werent moving around enough. last week i was blowing things up in a tank, this week im raining bullets from the sky. I will admit, however, that when i started to play this game, my computer sucked. DONT EVEN THINK ABOUT BUYING THIS GAME IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING LESS THAN 256mb of ram. I started with 256mb of ram and a 56k and the lag was horrible. That didnt chase me away, bought cable, worth the money,got 512mb of ram and installed it myself and the lag is gone. So to say that i stuck through the game through all the lag i used to have, it has to be a great game. But why are u listing to me, go read up on it, DL a movie or 2. if u cant afford the game, dont even DL a trial version, u will be addicted immediatly and spend every last cent u have on this game.

Rating:
Summary: Unstable, Lousy Technical Support, certainly Massive
Review: In theory, PS could be a great game. The squad system is finely tuned, the social aspect of the game is great, and it's ripe with potential and possibility to keep a player hooked.

However, my experience with PlanetSide was inundated with crashes and bugs. I once spawned as a wall. Drops to the desktop and forced reboots were frequent, often only 20 minutes of play in between. My hard drive is still trying to recover I think. At one point you could get stuck in a spawn tube, then they fixed it, then they broke it again.

Worse - the technical support basically won't pay any attention to you unless offer your problem in the right "format", basically digging around for log files (which PlanetSide sometimes doesn't generate) and posting them up - and even then they usually just add you to their ever growing list of "information". Complaining about this lack of service online will get your posts deleted or your account cancelled (the only response I ever got from Sony was to tell me I was being inappropriate).

For those who don't have to deal with the bugs, it's a fine a game. I wouldn't recommend taking the risk or supporting a beta with a $13/mo fee.