PlanetSide

"One of the greatest online games for PC"

Let me say that I've never heard of Planetside before actually seeing it in action. I accidentally fell over it one day when a friend of mine that works in a gaming store showed me the great game Planetside is. In a few minutes I fell in love with that game for no apparent reason, maybe it was the atmosphere or it's deep gameplay, I don't know. What's even stranger is that the game looked good for me, but when I bought it it looked even better.
Before you drool over the game let me tell you that you need a ninja PC to run it. Don't trust too much the minimum and the
recommended requirements on the game box.
This game is a RAM hog, so I suggest you to get as much RAM as you can, better if a fast type. Believe it or not with 512 MB RAM you will still experience some slowdowns during gameplay, nothing really annoying and you can still play the game pretty fine, but 1GB will run the game fine with slowdowns only during huge battles.
Another important note: the first month is free, after it you need to pay a monthly fee, and a demo for 7 free day can be downloaded from the official site. You need a credit card (not for the free demo though), if you don't have one you can buy PS gaming cards from a gaming store or either from the official site.

Introduction
The story in Planetside is not really deep. 3 empires, the Vanu Sovereignty, the Terran Republic and the New Conglomerates fight for the domination of a newly discovered planet: Auraxis
Actually the story is very controversial because every empire has (obviously) it's own biased version of the story ^_^
Every empire has it's political ideas that only affect the weak story and not the gameplay at all. It's just up to you and your feeling towards an empire ^_^
The game is a sort of MMORPG-FPS-RTS, but it's actually a FPS with a huge amount of strategy, teamplay and some RPG elements.
It's online only, so no single player mode. During the game you only deal with other humans, no NPC.

Graphics 8/10
Planetside didn't impress me too much graphically. The game is not bad, the scenarios are impressive, when you travel around the world and fly over airships you will appreciate the panorama. If you pay a close look to trees you will notice that the details aren't that high. The terrain is fine if you turn on the grass but still the hills and the mountains look pretty dull. The models instead are really good and very detailed. On the suits you will notice the clan logos and some decorations when you get promoted. The infiltration suit is impressive, if sports a nice oil effect on it. I really liked the shiny alien armor looks of Vanus. The faces are very well done, they all look fine, nothing impressive because during the game 95% of the time you will be in a vehicle, you will be invisible or have a helmet, but they are still good. The animations are very well done, the characters features a large amount of animations that applies during some premade phrases. Also when you jump on a
vehicle there are some nice animations too, different depending if you enter the vehicle as passenger, driver, gunner etc. and depending on the vehicle. The vehicles look great, very definite, smooth animations etc.
If you have a good PC you can pump every detail on high, if not a medium setting is recommended. Globally the game lacks the nice graphic seen in some recent games though. Not bad at all, but just on par if not a bit sub-par with todays games.

Music and sound 10/10
Probably the department with the less amount of faults in Planetside, if not any! The game has a great soundtrack that fits perfectly in any situation. Every continent, climate and situation has it's own music. If you travel in the desert you will listen to a pleasant arab-like song. The best one IMHO is when you travel in a temperate continent, a very impressive effort of tribal-alien music that always makes me melt away. The combat musics are great too, the Terran SOI battle will make you excited. Other hyped up musics are the Vanu SOI combat, the NC sanctuary and the other combat music. There are also some really slow paced tracks like the very new-age style of the Vanu sanctuary music or the Vanu SOI standard music. IMHO the soundtrack deserves 3 thumbs up, never heard of a better fit soundtrack for a game. No techno, no heavy metal, just the right soundtrack for the game. The sound effects do their work, nothing good, nothing bad. There are different kind of voices for each character you create and they all sound good, some female voices are even sexy #^_^# The different weapons have different sounds too for their bullets, you can hear the footsteps, the huffing sound of a tired soldier etc. The footsteps cover a nice part of the game, if you have the sound amplification implant it's really helpful to track the enemies. Sound department fully promoted ^_^

Gameplay 9.5/10
Now it comes the hardest and longest part. Don't get me wrong, the game IMHO is great but it gets a 9.5 just for it's good amount of annoying bugs and exploits that sometimes force you to relogin, restart the game or even the whole system. Bullets and explosions occasionally through walls, you can't board the shuttle, vehicles that don't deploy/undeploy, you fell under the world, exit the game for no reason etc. Annoying for sure, but SOE is fixing it with frequent and automatical patches.
Speaking of pure gameplay, Planetside has a deep and yet simple gameplay. The game is a cross between a large FPS game in maps that are thousand times bigger than the ones you see in Unreal Tournament or Quake and hundreds time bigger than the ones you see in Battlefield. The RPG element is just noticable, when you kill or you capture a base alone or in a squad you get experience points that will fill up a gauge, when you fill up an entire gauge you will get a bar and when you fill up 10 bars you level up one battle rank. The highest battle rank you can get is 20. There is also a command rank that will grow when you are a squad leader. When you level up a BR you will get a certification point and with them you can buy certifications for vehicles, weapons or jobs like medic and engineer. Once you choose your certification you can use that vehicle, weapon or job as you wish just by accessing equipment terminals spread throughout bases, towers and Advanced Mobile Stations. Every 6 BR you can also get a body implant like surge, darklight vision, melee booster, sound amplificator and others. Those need a few seconds to be activated when you respawn and they suck your stamina level but not only they can save your life, they can also help you detect hidden enemies. There are different kind of weapons for each empire, heavy weapons, antivehicular or the 3 huge MAX suits that are pure death machines for troops, strong armored troops and vehicles. There are 10+ of weapons, from pistols and rifles, to machine guns, plasma guns, rocket launchers and grenade launchers. Most part of them are common pool for each empire and a few of them are personal for each empires, example: the Vanus have the lasher, the Terrans have the minichaingun and the New Conglomerates have the jackhammer. Some weapons have an alternative fire and can use different types of bullets like the punisher rifle, practically a Swiss army knife that can use normal bullets, perforating bullets for vehicles and strong armors, rockets, explosive grenades, EMP grenades and plasma grenades. At equipment terminals you can also get support items like medipacks, hacking devices, repair guns etc. and access your favorite equippments just by saving them.
Different kind of armors too. standard, agile, reinforced, MAX and the particular and useful infiltration suit, that gives you invisibility. Every armor has it's own armor points and a certain inventory completely customizable, you can put whatever you want, bullet boxes, support items, weapons etc. The strongest the armor is and the biggest the inventory is. The downside of the infiltration suit and it's invisibility is that when you walk the enemy can spot your silhouette (just like the movie Predator) and you become clearly visible if the enemy uses the darklight vision implant. Another downside is the very limited inventory, you can just carry a hacking device, a gun, a few bullet boxes and one or 2 grenades if you want. The jobs you can get are medic (and then advanced medic), engineer (and combat engineering) and hacking (and advanced hacking). All 3 are
extremely important for the game, medics can heal and revive teammates, the engineer can repair armors and vehicles and the combat engineer can even place mines, turrets and explosive. The hackers are basilar, they can capture any kind of enemy terminals and also vehicles!
You can use more than 10 vehicles, ground ones and flying ones. There are simple transport vehicles like the sunderer, a big van with 2 gunner spots, or the galaxy, a huge airship for 10+ passengers and gunners and a cargo for vehicles. Tanks can have a driver and some gunners, buggies can also have a gunner, transport vehicles can have some more passengers etc. As for weapons, some vehicles are exclusive for each empires, like Vanguard tanks for NC, the Magrider for the Vanus and the Prowler for Terrans.
Strategy is basilar for the game, when you reach Command Rank 5 you can control all the other players and make them do what you want...well almost, it's up to you to obey or not ^_^ You can also start a squad of the 10 people, in this way you can cooperate and share XP points and feel the best from Planetside: teamwork! You can't even imagine the fun of being in a group that cooperate! The squadleader can also start a voice chat which can speed up orders. No need of external application, Planetside manages everything. Squads are also basical for the game, doing a solo during the game is funny too, but the best comes with teamplay hands down. Outfits (clans) are managed inside the game! You can start an outfit of how many people you want. It's not just a stupid tag next to your nickname, you can actually get a list of the outfits in the game, watch their stats, their players, their global score etc. Once you get enough points you can even choose your own logo to put on the suit of the members and on the vehicles!
Objective of the game: capture bases on each continent (10 continents), you capture bases by hacking them. Not an easy job if the enemy has an opposite opinion, so they will probably kill you on sight if you try to hack. The bases are linked between them and to hack a base you need that base to be linked to a friendly one. It may sound easy at beginning but if the job gets harder then it will probably end up in a huge battle involving even hundreds of people in a single base and on the outside. There are also towers around bases that may be captured because the enemy can respawn from there and has also landing pads for airships and turrets. Commanders so have a nice job to do, coordinate troops to attack/defend towers and attack/defend bases. They can set waypoints on your map and write on it, so you can know where to go and what to do. Higher command rank players can also call an orbital strike. Remember the satellite strike from Command & Conquer? It's the same, a huge and god-like ray falling from the sky that destroys troops and vehicles instantly. Another element similar from Command & Conquer are resources. Bases consume nanite and when the level indicated in the silo is too low someone should get an Advanced Nanite Transporter and get nanite. You get it just by going inside a warpgate and deploy the ANT. Once it's full you can go back to the base and deploy the ANT in front of the silo. If the base runs out of nanite it becomes neutral, so noone can respawn from there and no weapons nor vehicles can be bought from terminals.
The scenario as I said before it's huge, 10 continents in total + 1 sanctuary island for each empire. The sanctuary is an island that can be accessed only by people from that empire, weapons can't be used. In the sanctuary you have everything you need, certification terminals, weapon terminals, vehicle pads, virtual reality training and warpgates to 3 continents. There is also a HART, a shuttle that can drop you wherever you want in the planet, but there is a HART every 10 minutes almost. In the training area you can try every weapon you want without getting through the level up and certifications, the same for vehicles that you can try in a big virtual island. Despite everything is virtual you can level up some BR in the training area, so it's a good start for a newbie.
The continents are themed, there are snowy and cold continents, temperate ones or desert ones. Esamir and Cheryshen can look similar, in fact they are except that they are linked to different sanctuaries and that Cheryshen forces you to follow the streets because of the high mountains, or either use flying vehicles! You don't know how annoying it is to be force to do a long walk to turn around a mountain. Desert continents are annoying for their dunes instead, watch out for them because you can crash with your vehicle.
The Auraxis planet also suffer of real-time weather, sandstorms, thunderstorms, rain, snow, wind. The climate is not random, you can see the perturbations and clouds moving on the map. This really affects gameplay, try to pilot a Galaxy during strong winds or try to move during a sandstorm. The game is not in realtime though, Auraxis time runs faster than our time, you can feel the difference from morning to evening, too bad night never comes for real, it just gets darker but nothing more.
A single continent can host hundreds of people, while a single server can host more than 3000 people. Just think about the big battles and why I said you need a ninja PC! The biggest battle I saw was in Girru a few weeks ago with around 200 people involved, impressive to say the least! You needed indications from the commander to move, enemy was coming from different ways, we had to hack a base and destroy an Advanced Mobile Station from which the enemy was respawning. Tons of tanks and airships, people running among lasers and explosions, all with a great combat soundtrack in the background and during a sandstorm. That was an awesome battle, probably the best one I've ever seen in a videogame, and I started playing with a C64 just to tell you.
Speaking of the empires. The New Conglomerate sports blue and yellow suits, they probably have the most powerful weapons for short distance while they aren't good for long distance, they also have a strong tank, the Vanguard. Their MAXes are funny and dull to see, but they are strong. The Terrans are probably the ones that look more from people from Earth, their volume of fire is impressive, the minichaingun and the cycler are the fastest weapons. Their MAXes are probably the strongest ones because they can deploy and fire blasting bullets that can kill everyone in their range. The Vanu use alien technology, they have plasma weapons and hovertanks, their MAXes are probably the weakest ones but they have a jetpack and their vehicles are probably the best globally. An empire can be strong in a department but be weak in another, globally IMHO they are balanced,
I don't pay attention to those that cry for an unfairly strong weapons because I can't see an empire dominating really over another. If it occurs it's just a matter of organization, because at the beginning when the Vanu had crappy weapons before the patch they could also win because of good commanders...this at least on the Werner European server.
If you are wondering if the game it's too complicated...it's not! I could get into it in just a hour of training, the
controls are simple, just the movements a few buttons to recall inventory, squad options etc. and the normal chat messages. After a hour of training I got so bored that I wanted to get into instant action as soon as possible.

Lastability 10/10
This is not a game for everyone and capturing bases can become boring. To me though it never gets old, it's very different from a simple deathmatch. Since when I started playing PS a simple deathmatch looks stupid to me, no point to keep playing again the same maps fragging people. At least PS has a wide area of interest, there is a lot to do, a lot to tryout and a lot of teamplay that is a lot of fun. Not to underrate the fact that no bots are involved into the game, only humans and everyone knows that the best only comes while playing with other people. It's not a game for everyone I know, but if you get into it then it gets really deep for a long time. It may get boring also for me, but not anytime soon! Why do I have to play a deathmatch on UT2003 when I can fight huge battles, pilot vehicles or sneak inside bases à la Solid Snake? Everything comes inside a single package called Planetside. I've seen players getting bored of it, but still noone has talked trash about it.
It may have bugs and exploits, but nothing that really keeps a good player far from playing it.
Dump your girlfriend, divorce, send your wife on a long trip around the World, install a fridge near your PC and play on a water closet because if you get into Planetside you will probably lose any kind of social life in the first days, then it gets worse. The wars rage day and night, especially at night, prepare to lose sleep time.

Buy or Rent
Actually you can't rent it, but you can try the free 7 days demo at www.planetside.com. If you have a good PC it's worth a try, if you think it's your genre of game buy it as soon as you can, Planetside is really addicting. If you don't like it go back playing Counter Strike and have fun with it ^_^
Thanks to my friend that showed the game to me I'm a PS addict ^_^

Global rating (not an average) 10/10

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/28/03