By Stephen Vernon Smith on February 26th, 2004

Genre: MMOFPS
Developer: Sony Online Entertainment
Publisher: Sony
# of Players: Many thousands
Memory: 3+ Gigs
Website: www.planetside.com

Very rarely is a sci-fi based shooter released that I actually garner interest in. Typically, the game is based on an alien planet with uninteresting weapons and stereotypical "Hey, we’re in the future, so anything can make sense!" attitudes. But Planetside (And it’s Core Combat expansion, which will also be covered in this review.) is one of the few that managed to really lay it’s charm on from what I had heard about it. A massively multiplayer online first-person shooter? Gain battle ranks (Or, levels, if you will.) and advance to better weapons and vehicles, abilities and armor? An amazing concept that makes you wonder why it was never done before. But does it live up to all the fancy hype surrounding it’s concept? If this concept interests you, read on.

Presentation

Planetside sets itself up well. Upon installation, the game gives you pointers on things you’ll be doing. Many, many games do this, but pay attention to these pointers and you’ll be starting off with a lot of skills you may not have figured out otherwise. After installation, you go into a fancy little "launchpad" and put in the required info, your key, payment options and the like. The game will most likely do a very large update, but you can spend this time making a sandwich or reading the log files to see what this one time goliath of a download is doing. Keep in mind they update about every month or two. But none are nearly as huge as the first. Once all is said and done, you can enter training. This is vital if you wish to get your feet planted once online. You’ll learn everything from how to set equipment favorites for quick use in massive battles to how to respawn in the right place after dying. You’ll learn vehicle control and enemy and friendly armor types, and all their various forms.

While training is not mandatory, you’ll greatly appreciate it and it’s well-structured lean towards teaching you, rather than dragging you along and hoping you’ll keep up. All the complicated looking menus and abbreviations suddenly make a lot more sense, and you’ll soon be navigating with ease. Rather than begging why your mouse "stopped working," you’ll be taking advantage of the cursor usage. The things people I allowed to play the game thought were bugs (Because of the fact that they refused to do training.) were all actually just part of this genius set-up. I’ve taught them how to use it all and now they’re just as addicted as I.

Once all this hub-bub is done with, and you enter the character creation scene, you may be slightly disappointed. Rather than choosing every bit of detail your character has, you choose a name, a face, and a voice. There are a plethora of faces, but you’ll soon find out that your appearance is meaningless in this game. Rarely will you be sitting around commenting on the fashion statements of the characters. You’re soldiers and this is war. Most of the time you’ll be in a heavier armor than default anyhow. Upon creation, you’ll be allowed to choose from 3 servers. One for West Coast, one for East and one for Europe. If you have a relatively good connection, all 3 should have fairly nice pings. So you won’t be limited to only going on the West Coast server due to lag if your friend is on the East Coast.

And then... You enter the game.

Gameplay

You start off, of course, as a complete grunt. You’ve got a basic rifle, a pistol, and a few obligatory supplies. You can go to the nearest certification/equipment terminals, which you may have learned about in training, and get some better equipment. You "purchase" equipment, but the game has no currency, so it’s all basically free. But before you can use certain weapons and all vehicles/armor types you must spend certification points. These earn you semi-permanent (Meaning they can be traded off, but you never lose them otherwise.) certifications to whatever you choose. Each level, or rank if you will, will earn you a single certification point. The amount of points it takes for each certification (’Cert’ for short.) depends on what you get from it. No cert costs more than 5 points though. They range from multiple types of MAX-Armor, each with it’s own power, some may be anti-vehicle, another will be anti-infantry and of course, the mighty anti-air. Or, maybe you want Heavy Assault, which for the New Conglomerate Empire gives you access to the Jackhammer heavy shotgun that deals extraordinarily heavy close-range damage to any unfortunate infantry to cross the path. Another example is the Terran Republic’s mini-chain gun. A devastating beast of a gun that’s powerful both close and long range, and has a huge ammo clip of 100 rounds. However, it is not as effective as the Jackhammer at close range, but you don’t want to cross one of these path’s. And of course, for the Vanu Sovereignty’s heavy assault, you’ll get access to the mighty Lasher. While it may not have a huge clip, and it’s very hard to hit with at far distances, for close and medium ranges it’s virtually unmatched. It shoots out rather slow balls of blue energy. However if you’re hit by one of these, it may only take 3 shots to kill you. So the best way to defend yourself is to run, or be very good at strafing.

I haven’t mentioned the very special Core Combat expansion pack weapons yet, however. This expansion pack enables the use of a few more guns, a nice amount of vehicles and a whole new underworld to explore for each continent. A truly massive expansion. Almost everything from this is based on "Ancient" technology, so it’s all powered by energy from the Caverns, the underworlds for each continent. When you want to reload this powerful suckers, you’ve got to go down, which is typically the only place you can get the weapons in the first place, unless a facility has a Weapon Module installed. More on that later on in the review, however.

Fighting is surprisingly quick for a massively multiplayer game. The danage is dealed client-side, so if you see a bullet hit an enemy on your screen, it’s a hit. This has called in a few bandwidth chokers that try to ruin the balance of the game but not only dancing around the screen oddly, but hitting you easily as you’re frozen to them. However, this is not a huge problem and typically unnoticed anyhow, as explosions will take care of them easily. The action isn’t as fast as say, Unreal Tournament or Quake, but it’s also extremely faster than of course, Everquest. And the battles are far more epic than the games mentioned all combined. Huge wars that actually feel like you’re in a war. You can never win alone, but you can still, as in any war, make a difference. Teamwork through squads and platoons (Squads are groupd of ten people who share experience, much like a party in an RPG. And Platoons are groups of up to 3 squads, who can all communicate very easily, yet don’t share experience.) often decides the victor in battles. If you can work well with a team, and enjoy having someone there watching your back, give this game a shot.

I’ve often found myself addicted for entire days at a time, surprising even myself, as I’ve never been one to skip out on say, a game of football at the park or maybe some window shopping at expensive electronics stores that I could never afford. Planetside gets a grip of you and it never wants to let go. Though you shouldn’t worry, it’s definitely not like Everquest or Counter-Strike where you find people on them for so long they’ve actually caused physical damage to themselves or others. Once it gets late, the battle start to die down and you’ll most likely find yourself doing something else until a new day approaches.

What is it like to be in a massive war you say? Well, to be summed up in just 3 words, it’s freakin’ sweet. Aircraft soaring overhead, dropping bombs and having dogfights, massive tanks and small transport vehicles battling it out in the valley below, your team of 30 rushing down the hillside to take over the nearest tower to gain access to a closer spawn point of the facility you’re raiding, it all comes together so amazing that it feels like a scripted event. Rarely will you find idiotic people rampaging through the server team killing or anything, as they will have gotten confused and quit long ago. In the Unreal Tournament 2004 demo released shortly before this review was written, if a server has friendly fire on, you can almost always count on a small group of imbeciles to enter the game and constantly attack friendlies. In Planetside, friendly fire is always on, yet the only time you’ll really see a friendly killed is by accident in large battles of for fun while waiting in the front of a facility for a hack to go through.

While exploring the continents (Each is basically it’s own world, there are 8 continents in all that all players can explore, with 3 exclusively as sanctuaries for each empire.) you’ll find that they’re enormous. If you don’t have a vehicle certification or a friend with a ride, it’s going to be a long walk. So, how do vehicles work anyhow? You control them essentially how you would while walking, save for strafe. Almost every vehicle has it’s own weapon, whether you can use this alone or while needing a gunner remains to differ between vehicle sizes. Some massive vehicles, such as the galaxy, have many turrets, while smaller ones such as the ANT have absolutely no defense besides shields and armor. You can run people over, but don’t count on getting kills that way, as they can take quite a bit of damage.

If you’re on foot without anti-vehicular weaponry, then you’d better get some back-up or take cover in some shelter. Often times you’ll find yourself outclassed by a vehicles superior firepower and armor, so you’ll be left to wits. A good quick way to get some running time is to disable it’s weapon systems by throwing a jammer grenade it’s way. This also disables any implants (Implants give you added abilities, such as running faster or making a shield out of your stamina.) the drivers and passengers may have. So if they get out to come pound you down, they’ll be at a disadvantage. If you’re the one behind the driver seat, it’s time to take some evasive maneuvers to dodge any fire that may be headed your way, if you’re in an aircraft, just keep an eye on your target and increase altitude, if you happen to be in a land vehicle, you’d want to try to ram your enemy and hope you can do enough damage to make them run until the jammer wears off.

Speaking of aircraft, controlling them is fairly easy compared to other first-person shooters of similar type. Any air-based vehicles will stay level if you’re not inputting any commands, so you won’t have to worry about adjusting altitude when getting in position for an air strike, and assembling many vehicles in one placed won’t be a bunch of random head-on collisions. However, in light of this, vehicles cannot roll or do loops. This limits dog fights somewhat, but a lot of them have immense speed abilities, so it has to be fair for those to hit it from the ground.

It would take many pages to explain everything Planetside has gameplay wise, but I’ve explained to you the main portion of the game. Try it for yourself using the 7-day trial if you’re interested, it’s a huge download, but it’s the full game. It’s completely worth it, or your money back. (That was a pun, the trial is free, that doesn’t mean you’ll get your money back if you pay for a month of the game and say you didn’t enjoy it. Phew, liabilities out of the way...)

What’s all this hub-bub about empire owned bases? Simple. There are 8 continents as stated before. Each continent has a bunch of facilities with their own benefits (As per usual.) on them. These include, but are not limited to, quicker respawn times, larger vehicles, and repair landing pads. To take a base, you’re going to have to have a large force attacking, unless of course the continent is fairly empty. In which case, the real battles begin. Command Rank 5’s (Command Rank is gained by leading squads and getting lots of victory, minimum level is 0, maximum is 5, each has a new and useful ability. Battle Rank minimum level is 1, maximum is 20, at set points, you gain things like suit upgrades and implant slots for a maximum of 3 implants.) leading the "zerg" down upon the other place, and the madness that ensues is pure gold. Epic, crowded, and most of all, fun. You have to get through, most likely blow up the spawn tubes so killed enemies cannot respawn at that base any longer, or the generator, which is only for desperate situations, in which case the facility has no power for spawn tubes or turrets, and then hack the control console using your REK, Remote Electronics kit. It’s fairly simple, teammates defend you as you spend anywhere from 4 minutes to 45 seconds, depending on your hacking certification, to complete the hack. In this case, depending on the base type, you’re either going to have to defend the facility from attack and re-hacking for 15 minutes, or grab the LLU, or Lattive Logic Unit and carry it to the nearest friendly facility. You cannot hack a facility that is not linked to any other friendly facility. It’s sort of a connect-the-dots fashion so you can’t just go willy-nilly.

Certifications include, but are also not limited to; medium assault, heavy assauly, Transport, Air Cavalry, Air Support, and MAX-Armors. There’s a lot to do and explore, I urge you to try this game out, if only for the massive scale alone.

Graphics

This is where the game my cease to impress a bit for some people. It’s definitely far from ugly, and sometimes looks beautiful, especially in the caverns. However, it’s got a slightly "blocky" feel to it. It’s excusable because the amount of variables and such the game has to pull, but if you’re a videophile, it may be a bit of a downer. There are some excellent weather effects (There are stormfronts that you can see coming at you weather-report style on the map.) that look amazing, and then there’s some textures which are plain ugly. The game has a built-in fog engine type structure to where if something’s too far away, it’ll be fogged up. Trust me, unless you’ve got an extraordinarily powerful computer, you’ll thank Sony for it.

In this way, even if you do happen to have that computer I described, you’re still on even terms with people of lesser PC abilities, so you never feel gypped out of a kill because of processor power. You can turn the weather effects and such off to improve your performance, but some of the special effects are too nice to simply turn off. Though you’ll want to set a lot of the details on other things low to begin with. The less client-side slowdown there is, the better time you’ll have.

Not much else to cover here, nice looking, but nothing new or extraordinary.

Sound

Excellent. The game has realistic, yet fantasy-like (No, not in the oxymoron fashion, but in the "Hey, if this thing was real it’d probably sound just like this!" way.) sound effects. Rockets and armors all sound just like they came out of a high-budget Hollywood film, and on Surround sound you’ll swear you were in the theaters. If you’re in a big battle, appropriately epic music will play to further enhance the experience, and if something good happens, it’ll pick up, bad and it’ll die down.

You can even use sound as an advantage in the game. And it’s meant to be. There’s even implants to increase the sound you hear from enemies, or muffle the sound you make so that if you’re stealthing, you’ll be much more aware, and if you’re looking for a single enemy, or a small group, you’ll be sure to hear them. The sound is magnificent, what it lacks in amazing visuals, it makes up in truly great audio.

Well, if you’ve ever needed to know how to wrap up something great in two paragraphs, there you have it.

Final Thoughts

Not only is this game an experience, it’s also fun. It gives a feeling like no other. If you’ve got a lot of pals, you can arrange for quite the game. There’s buddy lists and all. Even if it only holds onto you for a few months, you’ll find it was well worth your time. A true masterpiece and appropriately so. Sony came to us with an idea with massive potential, and not only did they deliver, they proved that not all potential ideas take many years to come to light. I hope to see more massively multiplayer first-person shooters in the future. If they’re even half as good as Planetside, and Core Combat, I’ll die a happy man. The 7-day free trial is available from many different websites, so rather than providing you with a single link to drain bandwidth from any one site, I’ll direct you to Planetside.com to find out for yourself. Don’t miss out on this title.