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Planetside 2


Site: www.planetside2.com
Platform: PC Windows XP/7/8 high end PC recommended. Approx size: 15gb. Also available through Steam.
Overall: 3/5
If you have a high end PC this is an interesting squad based FPS with a large variety of tactics and things to do, however it is marred by battles which are often completely uneven and players who have the better equipment have an often insurmountable advantage and as almost all weapon upgrades and boosts are purchasable this seems very much pay to win. The game is also very demanding and often crashes on exit.
     

Introduction:


Planetside 2 is an ambitious multiplayer squad based shooter from Sony online entertainment, allowing for battles with sometimes hundreds of players over one of the three continents of Auraxis. Joining either the Terran Republic, New Conglomerate or Vanu Sovereignty (each with some custom equipment) you try to help your faction win control of key locations for victory.

Initial Impressions:


A Large download, and running from Steam launches the SOE game launcher where you will have to make a free Planetside 2 account. The art style is futuristic/military and looks pretty good though the menus can be difficult to navigate. The sound is also quite good and you can generally tell where things are and terrain affects it, music is OK and varies by faction.
There has recently been a tutorial added which is welcome and will explain the basics.

General play:


You will find yourself at the faction warpgate after you have created a character and you can either autojoin a squad (or create or join a squad if you have enough friends online) or look at the map overview which will show the current state of play and you can choose instant action, putting you in an active combat zone, or select an objective. This is where I found a major fault with the game, it seems to almost never put you in an interesting starting point. My advice is if you click instant action and you see your faction has under 40% of the players in that area, cancel it and choose one manually. Mostly this will happen:
The enemy has parked a large number of vehicles and air units and is just spamming the doorways to your spawnroom/base, they will win in however long the objective timer has left. or:
The reverse of this, your team is doing the above thing, doesnt really matter what you do, your team will win. Or:
There is a stalemate with players just spamming at each other. After a while one team will get more players and win.
This is kind of a shame because some of the more tactical play such as capturing an adjacent territory, hacking terminals etc is just not as effective as some tedious tactic such as shooting ground units with rockets from an air unit. In case you are wondering, free players do not have any anti air weapons to start with.
As a new player it is probably best to play support like an engineer repair things, drop ammo boxes and spot enemy units (all of which you get points for).
There are a lot of unlocks and upgrades which can be purchased with either Certs or station cash. Certs are earned by capturing or defending objectives, getting kills or assists or assisting your team with various things like repairs, revives, resupplying ammo and spotting enemies. Bizarrely if you cant find any winnable battles a lot of your certs will come from just logging in. The other alternative is station cash which you have to buy with real money, you can buy pretty much all equipment with this which is not good. Upgrades for your classes have to be bought with certs, but paying players get more passive certs and can more likely earn certs in game. This is a major reason for a 3/5 rating.



Review is the opinion of tilemap.co.uk Return to free to play game reviews