PlanetSide 2 is one of the biggest free-to-play shooters yet, and after months of beta testing it’s finally live. Like with IGN reviews of other online games, such as Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, a review-in-progress will run after launch until a full scored review is ready. You’ll find impressions below of what it’s like to drop into PlanetSide 2’s massive battles between tanks, aircraft and soldiers on the ground.
In case you haven’t been following along with PlanetSide 2, it pits three factions against each other with the goal of capturing and holding territory. You can play as a jetpack soldier, a sniper, a heavy weapons soldier, a medic, an engineer and even jump into a mech suit. You can also take control of tanks, assault aircraft and transports to help push back an enemy assault or thin out entrenched defenders.
Battles are set on open, gigantic maps where progress is persistent, so fights over territory can span multiple days. PlanetSide 2 is also free, so if any of this sounds interesting, you can play right now. You can also check out IGN's PlanetSide 2 starter guide to get an idea of what you're supposed to do in the game in aside from shoot people.
After a brief character setup process, I was dropped into chaos. I spawned into one of PlanetSide 2's three huge maps, the snow-coated territory of Esamir, walked outside the spawn-in building and found myself in the midst of a firefight between at least 50 players. In front and behind my position tanks pummeled enemy positions with fiery shots and hostile tanks set on a nearby ridge fired right back. Above me, multiple attack craft zoomed and looped around each other, trading bullets and blanketing the ground with fire. Some soldiers on the ground set up turrets, some charged forward in damage-resistant MAX suits, some stood back and blasted green healing beams at the injured and resurrected the fallen. Most of us died, but somehow we held off the enemy and pushed forward. More players bought tanks and we surged against our foes and drove them back into their base, overran it and eventually took control of the entire facility. I bought up my map and the territory that had once been blue was now red, the color of my Terran Republic. It was a small victory, but it felt tremendous because of the sheer scale of the effort.
Despite the bewildering frenzy of PlanetSide 2's huge encounters, players seemed willing to play their roles. Medics routinely revived and healed. Engineers walked behind tanks to make repairs and also used the vehicle for cover while entering enemy territory. Infiltrators cloaked to disrupt enemy positions or sniped if they couldn't get close. PlanetSide 2 seems to demand this kind of play because trying to do anything by yourself is pretty much instant death. You'll be killed in seconds if you try to sneak forward from your front line in hostile territory. You need to communicate and you need to work together.
Though the game provides a few tutorial graphics when you open up menus for the first time, if you're new to PlanetSide 2 expect to be a little overwhelmed at first. Sure you can get to the action fast, but it's going to be a while before you really understand where you should deploy, why it's important to join a squad, where you should stand and how each class' special abilities work. It makes the already fast, hectic battles feel even more chaotic, but since this is a player-versus-player game only, you'll have to learn to play in live battle scenarios or by watching YouTube videos of others.
Considering just how much is going on onscreen, the fact that PlanetSide 2 isn't a slideshow is impressive. Performance still isn't ideal in big battles, but the framerate hasn't dropped into unplayable territory for me on a system with a GeForce 580 GTX. Though I'm not very fond of the generic sci-fi uniforms of the character models, PlanetSide 2 can be startlingly pretty at times as you drive up a dune and, upon rounding its crest, discover a vast valley glittering in the light of a dying sun with the bright pops and bursts of battle erupting over a colossal structure in the distance.
Anyway, I'm still starting out. So far, it's a very promising game. Go play it. It's free.
My team took over a Bio-Lab facility last night. In a pack 30 strong we charged a jump pad and soared up to one of the the Bio-Lab’s air vehicle spawning pads. We surged into the interior of its spiny, sky-high dome and mowed through the hordes of desperate New Conglomerate fighters frantically trying to push us back. I healed the injured and revived the fallen and our attack never faltered. By the time their aircraft swooped in and circled the Bio-Lab’s roof to reinforce their defense, we were already too entrenched to care. We’d secured all the capture points, and after a few minutes the base and surrounding territory were entirely under our control. It was a clear victory, and even more thrilling because the victory was exclusively a result of our effort, teamwork and skill.
Sony Online Entertainment only provides the framework for battle. It’s up to the teams to figure out how to most effectively conquer ground. The stories that emerge from each session of combat are so much more interesting to share than in other online games because each fight contains so many human-controlled and therefore unpredictable pieces. You never know when an enemy ace pilot might blast you from the sky or, while healing a group of injured, a hostile tank shot might detonate at your feet and kill everyone around you. These moments stick in memory more in PlanetSide 2 than other online games because you never know if you’ll ever see them again. To play in an active battlefield is to witness a constant stream of potentially one-of-a-kind events.
Maybe these moments will seem less unique the more I play. Maybe by the fiftieth time I’ve captured a base alongside tens of others and seen rookie pilots slam their planes into the sides of mountains and played a key role in reviving and healing to defend territory, the back-and-forth of battle won’t seem nearly as novel. I’m nowhere close to that point yet, so that even PlanetSide 2’s lingering technical issues don’t seem as significant as perhaps they should.
It’s not rare to see character models run through walls, corpses float through the air and live players shake and shudder like someone overcharged their power armor. It’s not game-breaking, but in my experience it’s disrupted my play sessions a few times. Is that weird jittering guy alive or dead? His weapon is firing seemingly up into the sky, but I’m taking damage. Oh, I seem to be dead. Respawning is easy, but still, events like this are irritating.
I’ve also experienced quite a bit of difficult even getting the game started. Sometimes the PlanetSide 2 launcher doesn’t start up. Sometimes it does and then the game crashes out on its initial loading screen. I’ve received a number of error screens, the most common being an error code G37. Sometimes logging in and playing seems to be no problem at all, but it seems SOE still has many issues to resolve. So far the issues feel like they’re worth putting up with, though, because the sense of reward derived from victory in PlanetSide 2’s battles is so significant.
There’s always a danger in free to play games of publishers and developers locking too much content behind a pay wall to make it feel like playing for free doesn’t actually feel worthwhile. It’s a tricky balance, but so far with PlanetSide 2, I haven’t felt the need to pay for anything.
All three of the game’s continents, all the classes and all the vehicles are available for free. So if you want to log in and jump into gigantic battles with tanks, you can without paying. If you want to buy stuff, well naturally there’s lots of stuff SOE wants you to spend money on, but it’s implemented in a way that doesn’t feel annoying or intrusive. If you want new turrets for tanks or rocket pods for aircraft or sniper rifles for your Infiltrator, you can buy it with Station Cash, a virtual currency bought with real money, or with Certification Points, a virtual currency earned by playing the game. This way, you’re not forced to pay actual money if you want a new gun. You can just play the game to get it.
I also haven’t seen an obvious god-like gun. Some have better ratings for aspects like damage and reload speed, but usually at the expense of weakness in another category. My impression of that might change as I continue looking through the gun list, but for now it doesn’t seem like you can purchase a kill-everything gun that gives you a completely unbalanced advantage.
For each weapon, vehicle and class you’ll also find sub-menus that let you further enhance and customize their function. For the jetpack-wearing Light Assault class, for instance, you can purchase upgrades that boost fuel capacity and regeneration of the jump jets, or let you glide more easily. These can only be purchased with Certification Points, so some rich player can’t just log into the game, drop a ton of money and from day one have the best-equipped version of a class possible.
Though you can’t directly buy Certification Points with Station Cash, there are ways to pay to boost Certification Point accumulation. There is a subscription option in PlanetSide 2, and by signing up you get 500 Station Cash each month as well as boosts to experience gain and passive Certification Point gain. Though this option exists, it really doesn’t feel necessary.
So far, with my character at Battle Rank 10, I’ve managed to secure a few unlocks with Certification Points, but nothing that I’ve felt has dramatically altered my performance in battle. I think that’s because death is often so fast and unexpected in PlanetSide 2, and because one solo player really doesn’t mean much against a group that’s even remotely coordinated. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been shot and killed by someone I couldn’t see even when I thought I was completely safe, so my impression so far is that there’s no way to pay your way out of the need to be skilled, cooperative and attentive.
Aside from the weapons and things that directly impact gameplay, there are a number of items that can only be purchased with Station Cash, though none affect gameplay. They all seem to be decals and character skins and other cosmetic alterations that change the look of your weapons, characters and vehicles, but not the function. In my mind, this is the best way to do it. So while it’s certainly possible to buy the most elaborately decorated tank with real money, it’s not necessarily possible to buy the best tank.
So far, it seems like SOE’s built the right kind of payment system that doesn’t make it seem like free players get a worthless experience.
For a resource cost, PlanetSide 2 lets you easily swap loadouts at weapons stations, so it’s never too much trouble to switch your class and fill a role your team needs. If the enemy continues to roll tanks at your base, swap to a Heavy Assault class and pelt them with rockets. If the enemy keeps blowing up your base turrets, switch to an Engineer to repair them into an operational state. Though PlanetSide 2’s classes take on familiar roles, there’s actually quite a bit of depth to them when used as a team and in different environments.
The MAX suit, for instance, is a player-piloted mechanized frame with powerful weapons that can only be repaired by an Engineer. So while an Engineer could spend time repairing tanks and turrets, the class could also pair up with a MAX suit much in the same way that a Heavy pairs with a Medic in Team Fortress 2. This isn’t exactly useful out in the open, but in close quarters where the MAX suit can duck back behind a wall after taking damage and get repaired back to full health by the Engineer, it can be especially effective at pushing back attackers or clearing a hole through defenders.
Combine this type of approach with effective use of the Light Assault class’ jetpack and your team becomes so much more deadly. The jetpack isn’t simply a tool to boost you through the air and make you more difficult to hit. It’s a way to hop over walls and invade enemy bases. It’s a way to jump out of destroyed craft and actually survive instead of splat against the ground. Inside a base, the Light Assault class becomes a platforming menace. It can jump up onto the ledges and joints of spires and struts between structures. The jetpack is a familiar element of first-person shooters, but feels far from conventional in PlanetSide 2 because of how useful it is.
I’ll need to play more to get a feel for all the classes, but so far I’m very impressed with how versatile each is and how each role changes when transitioning from open field combat to more traditional close-quarters firefights.
The vehicles also serve an important role, which can be as basic as using tanks to blow up enemy tanks to more sophisticated like using a Sunderer to transport teammates to a battle zone then deploying it to set up an alternate spawn point. Controlling tanks and other land vehicles is very straightforward, so there’s really no learning required to jump into a tank and blow up enemies.
The aircraft take a little getting used to, but flying really isn’t prohibitively challenging. If you get a good group together to man the multiple weapon systems of the Liberator, you become a formidable weapons platform with the ability to take on air and ground targets simultaneously. Even if those cases, with MAX suits and turrets and the rockets of the Heavy Assault class flying around, it’s tough to truly lock down an area with one single, expertly controlled vehicle. As seems to be true of everything in PlanetSide 2, the size and coordination of an assault force matter more than individual skill.
I should also point out that while the login issues seem to have cleared up, I'm noticing more and more bugs while playing. At this point, I feel comfortable saying PlanetSide 2 is not as polished as it should be for launch.
Source : ign[dot]com
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