PlanetSide

"Could have been so much more"

After years of waiting, months of beta, and more hype than Daikatana, Planetside could have been a ground-breaking game, shaping the FPS world for the future. Unfortunately, the game in its current state disappoints and puts the validity of future MMOFPS games in jeopardy.

Graphics: 7/10

This games graphics on full are quite pleasing to the eye, however I docked them one point for requiring a killer system to max-out your graphics, with at least a 128 meg video card, and at the bare minimum a gig of RAM if you're running Windows XP. Playing with low graphics is sufficient for the minimum requirements for the game, however the graphics truly look horrible. I docked the other two points due to the lack of diverse terrain and the fact that all bases are extremely similar architecturally, making the game get very repetitive (which comes into play later).

Music: 9.5/10

As far as I'm concerned, the background music is perfect for this game. There is a wide variety of it which helps intensify the feelings of tension and epic battles. The only slight thing I would add would be to allow players to replace the in-game music with music of their own. Although the devs promised that we could do this at release, this turned out to be (another) lie, and if you attempt to do so, the music will be re-downloaded and replace the music that you wanted.

Sound: 8/10

Some sounds are quite suitable for the game; however others sound piddley and weak. The Gauss rifle for the NC is VERY annoying, as is the Striker's incessant beeping when in lock-on mode. Sure, it doesn't sound like much, but eventually the sounds become extremely annoying.

Gameplay: 2/10

At this point in the game, here is where things start to fail. There are far too many factors to list here about the gameplay problems Planetside currently has with possible ways to fix them, however I'll touch on the important ones:

''Musical Bases''

A term coined-up on the official forums referring to how almost all of the game's battles take place. One team (lets say the Terrans) captures an enemy base, then they move on to the next one in the lattice-chain. The team that they just captured the base from (say, the Vanu) goes and re-takes the base captured by the Terrans. The Terrans move on to another base, while the Vanu slowly follow them. Base captures continue in a circle on-and-on with no ending. Why does this happen? There are ZERO incentives to defending a base. Not only that, but with the current XP system, there are far more incentives to continuing with the ''musical bases'' than staying to defend, so no one does.

Horrible lag

By lag I mean server-side lag, not framerate loss (slowdown) or client-side lag. At peak hours, a player’s ping is approximately 5000, meaning that between the time you see something on your screen, it happened 5 seconds beforehand. How can one possibly be expected to aim and shoot at something 5 seconds in the future? Note that this only happens on the more crowded servers and only at peak hours, however, for people who inadvertently chose to use those servers, it has become a real burden for them to play the game.

Repetititive Gameplay

I will admit that this game is a blast to play when you first try it. Participating in a 50 vs 50 vs 50 3-way battle is quite a treat for the ego (although a killer on the system). However, in a week you'll get a slight nagging sensation in your mind that you've done this before. In two weeks, you'll start to realize that you're doing the same thing over and over again. Eventually you will become bored of the game and will move on to something else.

The problem isn't that the game is constantly the same. All other multiplayer FPS's use the same map sets over and over again. The problem with Planetside is that there is no closure and no point to the battles. If you take an enemy base, so what? It doesn't matter at all, because the next time you log on, the world will have totally changed. You receive very slight bonuses for holding bases which have no bearing on which base you take next. All that matters is getting the next closest base, getting the experience for the cap, and moving on to the next closest base. With a game of Counter-strike or Quake 3, a match is like reading a book from start to finish, unlike in Planetside where the game is similar to reading the same chapter over and over again.

I can't possibly go over all the problems with the gameplay, but I'll sum it up saying that the game has excellent short-term potential, but virtually no long-term potential as it currently stands.

Bugs

The game has various bugs, from quickbinds being bound incorrectly to falling through floors into an abyss. Doors sometimes do not work and vehicles ram you 200 yards away and from behind trees. Up until recently there was a bug which could let you max the level of your character overnight, and other gameplay related bugs which encourage conspiacy between the empires, even though this is something which the devs have often said they do not want.

Conclusion

So, that's my very condense review of this game as it is now. Please note that this is an MMOFPS, meaning that in a month from now, the game could be completly different and this review will be pointless. However, for some unknown reason, few sites have any reviews about Planetside at all so I guess this is one of the few people can turn to. This is starting to remind me of the time a certain to-be-nameless game asked reviewers to not review their game until they considered it complete, except in this case Sony Online are asking their customers to pay while devastating bugs are still being fleshed out.

This game had a lot of potential both RPG and FPS wise, yet it has turned out to be a lot worse than expected. I can only hope that it becomes better in time, but I ask anyone who is reading this to NOT purchase this game until it becomes fixed. Purchasing this game in its current state only encourages more buggy, gameplay-flawed games to be released. Send a message and do not purchase this game until it is fixed, and if never fixed, do not purchase it at all.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 05/29/03, Updated 05/29/03