You're sitting on top of a mountain, overlooking a field. You're using your high powered sniper rifle to pick off enemy anti-air units to clear the way for an allied fighter squadron. Just as you kill the last anti-air infantry unit, the bullets flying past you allow you to realize that you've been spotted. With their jet packs roaring to life, enemy light assault units begin to rush up the canyon to greet you. Without hesitation, you activate your nano-cloak and begin to run behind some cover. Trapped by enemy troops with no hope of escape, your only chance is to ask for help. Your comm channel comes to life as you request air assistance and give your location. Shorty after, an allied gunship rises to the top of the canyon and mows down the light assault troops with heavy machine guns. After picking you up, the pilot thanks you for clearing the anti-air and you're off to your next battle.
Does the above scenario appeal to you? Well, then Planetside 2 is the game for you. Set on the Planet of Auraxis, three factions battle over territory, resources, technology, and more importantly, power. You'll have to choose a side, find a team, and then be thrust into action whether its from an orbital drop pod or a dropship.
The Factions
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| Hefty TR Heavy Assault |
- Terran Republic- The Terran Republic are the Militant organization in Planetside. To the other factions they are seen as oppressive communists and dictators, however, the Terran Republic sees themselves as a type of police force fighting for stability on the planet. They utilize weapons that are similar to modern day technology and rely on large magazines and a high rate of fire to destroy their opponents.
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| Agile NC Light Assault |
- The New Conglomerate are a separatists faction that decided to rebel against the Terran republic in hopes of one day being free men. Although they are called anarchists by their opponents, the NC believe that they are freedom fighters. The NC utilize older and used armor. To make up for that, their signature weapons are Gauss and coil guns designed for maximum damage.
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| Deadly VS Infiltrator |
- The Vanu Sovereignty are more of a religious cult rather than a faction, and their god is alien technology. They refuse to take part in the political battles on Auraxis and are simply after the ancient rewards buried on the planet. So, the Vanu uses brand new armor and state of the art laser/plasma weaponry with accuracy being their strong point.
Gameplay/Graphics
As said before, Planetside 2 plunges you into battle with thousands of players taking part. However, before you decide to go into an epic battle, you mat want to find a team to play with. Planetside 2 is NOT meant to be played alone. When you're alone, its actually down right boring. You have no comm chatter to listen to, no one to help you and no one to coordinate with. Fortunately, finding a team is relatively easy. You can join any public squad or outfit. Unfortunately, proximity chat in the game can be rather annoying due to people talking about nonsense or playing music. However, this can be solved by muting proximity chat.
Once you find some friends, your ready to deploy and take on some enemies. You do this by attacking other enemy bases and capturing them for your empire. After you've captured them, you can re-arm there and they generate resources for your empire. You can send these resources on land vehicles, infantry mech (MAX) suits, or air vehicles.
Planetside 2 has no single player or campaign, so multiplayer is an endless battle between the empires. The only actual "goal" in multiplayer is when an "alert" occurs. During an alert, empires will race tom complete specific goals, such as capturing territory or designated facilities on one of the three continents in a two hour time period. The reward for the winners is a huge amount of experience points and bragging rights until the next alert occurs. This is where Planetside falls short as well, many times during gameplay you feel as if the game lack a point or an objective, causing you to become bored with it.
The battles in Planetside are pretty great most of the time. Now remember, I said "most of the time". With so many players, some battles become a little cramped, causing lag and spawn camping. Not to mention the fact that there are tons of enemies in an enclosed space firing wildly, causing you to instantly die most of the time. But when you have breathing room in battles (which you usually do) Planetside shines. The infantry fire from trenches, the tanks bombarding, and the ships above leaving smoke trails in the sky is truly something to behold.
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| Just a taste of the world size |
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| 200 players in a dome = Bad |
Planetside has two types of "currency". There's "certification points" which are earned from earning XP and there's "Station Cash" which is a premium currency and can only be bought with real world money. Certifications points are used in leveling up the skills of your character and buying attachments for your weapons, such as scopes, extended magazines and foregrips. Stations Cash is used to buy anything cosmetic, such as camouflage, helmets, armor, emblems and anything else that doesn't necessarily affect gameplay. However, BOTH of these currencies can be used to purchase any kind of weapon. A large amount of people still use Station Cash to buy weapons because earning the required Certification Points would take a very long time. While Planetside does include an earnings system that I find fair and isn't a "Pay2Win" type of system, I do think that the price of micro-transactions is absolutely outrageous. You are able to buy a game card for $20 that gives you 2,000 Station Cash. Which doesn't sound bad until you realize that some guns cost around 750 Station Cash. I have no problem with micro-transactions, but $7.50 for a virtual gun? That's ridiculous.
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| A night battle |
The Planetside graphics engine when set on the highest setting is absolutely stunning. When you look at armor, you can see individual scratches, when you look at leather you can see the creases. Furthermore, the lighting system in Planetside is gorgeous, especially at night. There's nothing likes seeing plasma beams and tracers light up the battlefield overhead or see the blast from your gun light the forest around you in a warm orange.
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| Gravity sensitive Particles |
Planetside also enables Nvidia's one of a kind software for their game, Physx. With PhysX enabled, rocks will tumble away from bullet holes and explosions, jumps pads will produce particles and much more. PhysX adds to the immersion experience and the all around beauty of the game. Without it, the game wouldn't be the same.
In the end, if you like huge sci-fi battles that look beautiful and have the rig for it, this is the game for you. But if you want to look really awesome while doing it, then be prepared to fork out some cash for cosmetic items.
You're sitting on top of a mountain, overlooking a field. You're using your high powered sniper rifle to pick off enemy anti-air units to clear the way for an allied fighter squadron. Just as you kill the last anti-air infantry unit, the bullets flying past you allow you to realize that you've been spotted. With their jet packs roaring to life, enemy light assault units begin to rush up the canyon to greet you. Without hesitation, you activate your nano-cloak and begin to run behind some cover. Trapped by enemy troops with no hope of escape, your only chance is to ask for help. Your comm channel comes to life as you request air assistance and give your location. Shorty after, an allied gunship rises to the top of the canyon and mows down the light assault troops with heavy machine guns. After picking you up, the pilot thanks you for clearing the anti-air and you're off to your next battle.
