PlanetSide 2 Review

[AldUK]

I've been playing this for almost a week now, I'm usually not a big fan of shooters but I'm having a hell of a time here. When the big 3-way fights break out I don't think I've ever had so much fun in a multiplayer game and I've been playing online for over 10 years. There are definite moments in PS2 which feel truly epic and you just don't get that in many games these days.

Having said that, it does have some flaws, as others have mentioned, you need thousands of certs to play equally with the beta crowd and to get them takes months of play. Or you can simply shell out some cash and skip the line. Also, there are some balance issues.

Vanu Sovereignty - Very accurate default weapons, high rate of fire, no bullet drop-off and strafing tanks.

Terran Republic - Very high rate of fire, very high clip size and best basic air unit.

New Conglomerate - Huge recoil, slow rate of fire, short range guns and somewhat clunky vehicles. (Oh and their sniper rifle has to reload after each shot, the other 2 factions can fire multiple times before reloading.)

I play NC. I just like their feel a lot more than the other 2, but my God I feel gimped sometimes as a free player on the faction the devs hate.

 

[Ashley Blalock]

Loved the original Planetside until the patches made it where infantry could no long do anything against vehicles. Every tower and base having the same layout also made the game rather dull and repetitive once infantry could only fight indoors.

Since it's free to play I guess I'll have to give the sequel a chance. With the mixed reactions I've read it's really hard to say if I'm going to like it or not. I was more of the sneaky type to cloak and plant mines around spawn points so I'll have to see if sneaky is still rewarded or if it's all just guns blazing.

 

[Ashley Blalock]

Update:

I tried to play. But even with the graphics turned down the game crashes on me, often after getting killed but it's crashed other times as well. The lag can almost make it totally unplayable as the frame rate drops to a horrible level if too many players are around.

I'm sure it might be fun but I really don't feel like I can pump several hundred into a new computer just to play a free to play game.

 

[ash12181987]

First of all, I refuse to listen to any video produced by NC Scum...

On a more serious note: The game really isn't that bad.

I don't play FPS games. I just don't, ever. I almost exclusively have played RPG, RTS, and City building games. The last FPS game I got into was Battlefield... 1942. That said, I absolutely love Planetside 2.

I don't understand people who say that the game is unbalanced to people who don't spend money. I would advise trying another server, or playing at a different hour. That is the problem with a persistent world, if you aren't on the same time as people of your faction, you tend to get owned. The starting guns are rather good, I used the starting sniper rifle for the TR all the way up to battle rank 10, and it didn't hinder me in any significant way.

As to Tank Rushing, Zerg attacks, Liberator camping... Yeah, people want to get kills. Tank Rushes are easily stopped using a bridge. Zergs can be ground to a halt if you have a well organized platoon and a well placed defensive perimeter, and Liberators are great, but while they can cut through large swaths of the world (I would say they are the most unbalanced currently, of anything in the game) they can still be downed with a max suite.

All you get if you spend money is guns, and the guns you get don't put you at any advantage over other people. They don't turn bullets around corners, or instakill on hit, they require you know how to use it IG. The gun I have been killed by the most, is the starting sniper rifle for the NC. Not the one that requires 1000 certs. Heck, the 1000 cert guns I have seen, aren't significantly better than the guns you get at the start. They have a few stat points greater, but functionally there is little difference in any of the bolt action rifles.

 

[PxDn Ninja]

Having played the first Planetside for a long while, I am disheartened by what has been released for Planetside 2. Everything that made the first Planetside great has been striped and replaced. The simple fact that ANYONE can pilot ANYTHING and use all the suits really damages the feel of the title, and the art style feels generic.

To clarify what I mean by that, the three factions all look similar just with a color swap, instead of genuinely appearing unique. The vehicles are better, given that they are spawned from Planetside 1, but the infantry suits are depressingly bland. That, and the MAX suits are awful looking compared to PS1.

With it being F2P, I'll continue giving it a shot (full disclosure, I haven't played it since it went live), but unfortunately it has let me down in nearly every aspect. Base layout feels off, art style/animation feels a bit incomplete, and the cert system is a bit "everyone is everything" without a tradeoff that was present in the first title.

 

[phoenix352]

every thing i think of the game is covered in this thread so ill
just do a quick recap for how i feel about it:

- does not feel like any shooter we have around (in a bad way).

games like call of duty and battlefield have a specific feel they evoke.
even tho you're little in the midst of 16-64 people playing what you do matters.
capturing a point on your own or taking out a group of people from a side.

PS2 just makes you feel lonely and insignificant, unless you join a WELL
commanded and VERY active guild it just degenerates to you wondering around
bases often getting shot from an angle you cant see.

- controls feel very stiff and unpleasant for an FPS.

what i mean is the fact that running is awkward if you hold down the button you
take away your finger from other important buttons,having the toggle run button just makes you
run indefinably instead of on press meaning when you jsut want to move a little you still run.
strafing is non existent.
you can strafe but at such a slow pace its virtually useless and forces you to turn
your view around to do simple turns when you need to assault a base or run away.
this causes many deaths due to simple not seeing your enemy.

these combined with a bit of lag and some performance issues create a very frustrating FPS experience.

- just plane confusion.

as you start the game for the first time the amount of things you are never told is astonishing.
i literally had to /yell every 2 minutes asking how to do obvious things i could do in any other MMO.
things like squad , any basic function you would expect is either on a different key or demands a command
in the chat that you need to guess at.

for example: writing in chat to your squad mates is command /s , /squad doesn't work even if /squad
is the more obvious and logical choice.

bombardment of different icons and indicators on the map/mini map half the time the minimap is going to be
of no use because you cant see the actual map underneath all the markers that are too not explained.

overall too little information with no source to obtain meaning you have to learn by doing which is frustrating.

- game performance.

lets face it its just not good, it takes a massively powerful machine to run this game at a decent graphical level
during a medium to large battle, constant fps drops and bad model rendering makes it harder to see enemies when playing at low graphical levels.

- the servers

well i have to say personally i HATE when developers cant get the idea that bars of any kind are not a good indicator of your latency to a server. i cant know my ping at any server they have so i cant tell if iam going to have a stable experience or not.
leading to many deaths because the enemy simply couldn't be killed due to him being laggy.
same thing happens in other FPS multiplayer games, you spend 2 magazines n your enemy but don't do any damage and the then you die in 1 hit .



so overall i think the game had potential but some very basic aspects keep it from being a great game
but its not a good FPS game at any stretch i feel, it misses a lot of the core things that an FPS game needs to feel right in MY opinion.

 

[Ickorus]

Really love the game, but the F2P model is totally broken in my opinion. Some things are insanely expensive to unlock: It costs up to 7$ to unlock a single weapon for a single class or 1000 cert points (and you gain cert points at a rate of about 15-20 an hour... if you're very lucky. My rate is more along the lines of 10-12)

Given that on a good day I can make in excess of 50 points in an hour I feel I must question the validity of your claim, then again, I fly a mosquito and play as an Engineer primarily. (Both are brilliant at earning certs)

 

[Elate]

Wanna know something fun? I bought a sniper, with real money. It was pretty expensive for a single weapon. Usually about 1000 certs or something.

It has basically no recoil, stupid range, and can kill any infantry other than a max in 3 shots, including heavies. Using body shots, not head shots mind you. Take into account you don't have to go out of scope to reload and I was camping a biodome by myself getting 1-5 kills every few minutes by just cloaking, flanking, popping a few shots and repeating at close range.

That is pay to win. Considering it would have taken me roughly 2 weeks to get that single weapon. Now I wouldn't mind that, but the pricing is also stupid, I spent around £5-10, $10-20. On a gun and a few cosmetics.. Considering I can get whole games for that price, what the crap is with that pricing? No.

I've stopped playing after realising this. It just isn't fun.