by Brian - June 22, 2003

Developed by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), Planetside is boasted to be the first ever Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter (MMOFPS). I guess they forgot about World War II Online, but then again, so has everyone else.

The Basics

In Planetside, players assume the role of mercenaries in a distant galaxy and can advance through one of three opposing factions in a non-stop battle for the planet of Auraxis. The three factions are the Terran Republic, New Conglomerate, and the Vanu Sovereignty, each faction, while similar, having their own unique weapons, vehicles, and advantages. The game does have a story, but its so vague and unimportant that its not even worth mentioning. The story is never mentioned in the game itself, so I had to go to the official web site to read it. All you need to know is that the Terran Republic ruled in peace for years, the Vanu Sovereignty broke away from the Terrans and started producing new technology. The Terrans responded with threats and cease and decist orders and when Vanu ignored them, war broke out. Vanu is fighting for their sovereignty from the republic, and New Conglomerate joins the fold later with their powerful weapons to take Terran out of control for good. Although it seems that Vanu and New Conglomerate were fighting a common enemy, they are not allied and are at war with each other as well.

The object of Planetside is to capture towers and bases that are scattered throughout the continents for your empire. When you capture a base, you get experience, and when you get enough experience, you gain levels, which in turn gives you certification points. Capturing a base is not an easy task, however. It requires lots of teamwork, lots of man-power, and lots of time. In fact, once you and your team finally reach the control terminal of the base and hack it, there is a fifteen minute timer until the base is actually turned over to your empire, during which time, the other team can no longer spawn in the base (unless they have an AMS) or use the purchase terminals, unless they hack into them. Often times, battles will rage on for over half an hour before the attacker is able to reach the control center. Any longer than that and the base would have lost power and become neutral. Whenever a functional part of a base is destroyed, such as a spawn tube, purchase terminal, or medical pad, the base's generator automatically fixes them. This takes time, but it also costs power or NTU's. Spawning and purchasing also drain the bases power. Once it loses all of its NTU, the base is neutral. Nobody can use any of the terminals, and nobody can spawn there until it is filled up with power again and taken over. To fill a base with NTU, you use a vehicle called an Advanced Naninte Transport, or in short, the ANT. It's not as easy as just buying one and driving it over from a nearby base though. To fill the power, you must first go to a warp gate, deploy the ant, it will then gather NTU's from the gate, and then drive it back, and deploy it in the base. Now, that might not seem so hard, but with battles raging, and the shear distance it is from a base to a warp gate makes it very time consuming. Once done properly, however, the trip could earn you lots of experience, because each second the base is filling up, you get 20 experience points. That adds up.

The most important part about the game though, are the certification points. Every character starts with 4 certification points, and can easily gain another one or two just by doing the in game training. You gain one certification point each level, and after you get enough, you can exchange them to gain certification in certain vehicles, armors, guns, or special abilities. Most certifications cost 3 points, but some cost 2, like the Advanced Mobile Station (AMS), Medium Assault, Infiltration Suit, and a few cost 4, such as the Reaver, and Heavy Assault. All the special abilities (hacking, engineering, and medical) cost 3, but are 2 to upgrade. One of the advantages to this system though is that you can "un-learn" certifications and get your points back to spend on something else. You can only do this once every 24 hours though, to prevent abuse.

Graphics - Nothing special

Planetside's graphics are good, but not great. The advantage to average graphics of course, is that the game can be played by a wider range of people on a wider range of systems. Take me for example, I ran the game on a Geforce 2 MX. Pretty bad for today's standards, but it ran good considering the age of the card. If you have a newer card though, it will run great and you will be able to tune up the graphics all the way. It looks good on max detail, but again, its no Doom 3 or Unreal Tournament 2003.

Some of the graphics look terrible though, like the explosions. Explosions in Planetside are just a barrier of fire, nothing inside it, and spread out uniformly as the splash. It's also about 50% transparent. While that may have looked good three years ago, it looks really bad now. It really drags down the feel of the game when you fire a cannon at an enemy and you see the fire from the explosion go right through him and he barely got hurt.

Sound / Music

One of the great things about Planetside is its music score. In fact, the very first thing I noticed when I loaded up the game was the excellent music. They couldn't have done a better job with it, in my opinion, because the music gives you a real feel for the game while playing.

Also, the game features integrated voice support, meaning if you have a microphone you can talk to your squad mates in stead of typing. It's built in so there is no need to be running voice programs in the background like GameVoice or Teamspeak. This makes team play exponentially better because, unless your team mates have their speakers turned off, they won't miss important orders.

The sound effects however, are sub par in my opinion. Most of the vehicles and guns sound too alike, and after a while of driving around the continent, or fighting in a huge battle, they just get annoying and repetitive. There should be more variation in the way the vehicles sound, although most of the weapons don't have that problem. After a few days of playing you can tell what gun is firing at you just by the sound it makes.

Fun Factor

It took a while for me to figure out what to write here. Sometimes I would be so disgruntled after playing that I want to break something, and other times, I end on a rush, wishing I didn't have to stop. Let me explain.

First of all, the best way to play Planetside is with a group of friends or with an outfit (a.k.a. clan). This way you can turn on the in game voice and have a great time coordinating attacks and defenses with each other knowing people will actually listen. To me, this is the only way to play, because its a lot more fun than playing by yourself or with a bunch of people you don't know. For one, its always good to have someone who you know can use a turret well to gun in your vehicle. I've seen numerous people who couldn't hit the broad side of the moon manning the turrets, and it definitely ruins the game when you get killed because of it. That's the funnest part of the game though, working with friends or massive armies to capture a base or lock a continent.

One thing that Planetside desperately needs to implement though, one way or another, is a feeling of accomplishment. Sure, theres a bit of it now and then when your squad captures a base for your empire, but I'm talking about globally. When you log out, and back in several hours later, all that you fought for will likely be gone and as of now, there is no way to completely wipe out the opposing empires. You could, theoretically, lock every continent and then have nothing to do. SOE has promised sanctuary strikes to be implemented in the future, however. This could make the game funner 10 fold because if you locked the three continents surrounding an empire's sanctuary, you would be able to attack it. Once this is implemented, it will be a whole different game, because the feeling of accomplishment after attacking a sanctuary would be enough to make you keep playing, but as I said, it's not yet implemented.

Is this game for you?

One question a lot of people ask is this. Is Planetside worth the monthly fee of $13.00 a month? Well, yes and no. It really depends on what you are looking for out of this game. If you are looking for a typical FPS where you can "own" tons of people, you will be greatly disappointed. If you want it for the blend of two genres, RPG and FPS, you may like it, but unlike most RPGs, a level 20 character could just as easily be defeated by a level 1 player as he could someone his own level. If you are looking for a game to play with friends and have a lot of teamwork, I'd say this is a sure thing for you, because thats what its all about.

However, if you are looking to play for a long time, you may be out of luck. Sure there are plans to add new content to the game, but there is a level cap at 20 for battle rank, and 5 for command rank. While command rank 5 will take a long time to achieve, battle rank 20 can be achieved in about a month if you play almost every day. Eventually, everyone will reach level 20, and then whats left to do? Nothing. Thats one of the major flaws in the system of the game, but theres really nothing SOE can do about it unless they add more things to get certification in.

In closing...

All in all, Planetside is a good game. Not great, but good. I can see this game having a future if certain things are changed or added, but if you're not a hardcore gamer, I'd advise against getting this game for several reasons, as stated in this review, but mostly because even if you're not playing, you are paying.