Dumped Planetside (2), time to get revenge

Ever wanted to take part into a continent wide battle for control of an entire planet? PlanetSide 2 (released November 2012) the revamp of the succesful MMOFPS PlanetSide allows you to do exactly that! It revolves around the control of the mysterious planet of Auraxis.

Featuring a gigantic map, which is divided into hexagonal areas where the three different factions vie for control. While in effect you can spawn anywhere on the three continents, you will only be wanting to spawn in to where the actual action is taking place. This is easily done using the direct spawn in (which has a 2 minute cooldown), or spawning in from your local base. This allows for quick entry to gaming which is quite satisfying. The maps themselves are beautifully crafted and even on the lowest settings, quite detailed. This makes flying, driving or just walking through the world very enjoyable.

When joining the game for the first time, you are confronted with a choice of a faction that you will represent. There are the Terran Republic (the industrial faction, which uses bullets and heavy metal stuff), the New Conglomerate (a freedom fighter faction, using a mish mash of technologies) and the Vanuu Sovereignty (the high tech faction, which utilise laser and plasma tech). While gampeplay is virtually the same within the three factions, the developers have made enough changes to look and feel, that you do feel like there is a significant difference.

The different classes themselves are also really fun, and each individual one makes for a completely different gaming experience. I myself preferred the Light Assault class due to the addition of the pretty useful jetpack! However due to the modifiability of each weapon and ability, it is possible to play one class almost like another and do so quite successfully. The most fun class is the MAX class, which is basically a Iron man type suit which you can add different loadouts to. This suit is quite overpowered, meaning that if you do it right you can mow down enemies!

The gunplay in this game is quite realistic, meaning that for the bullet based guns you will have to account for gravity and the like (however the laser based tech of the Vanuu does not have this factor). However I found that due to the size of the map as well as the large amount of people on the server at the time that it was actually quite laggy. That meant at some points I would die even after I had killed my opponent. This was very frustrating, and even setting the graphics settings to the lowest didnt seem to solve that problem. I really hope that this is solved soon as possible, because when the game play is actually lag-free it is really good and fun.

However there are pros to there being so many players on the server. Since this game is a multiplayer game, there is the reasonable expectation that you will be spending quite a bit of time playing online with others. Howevever it is perfectly fine playing solo, and it will not really impact your gaming experience. On the other hand, it is when you join a squad that stuff goes really well. Usually you will be added to a squad on a random basis (e.g. some random dude will invite you to join a squad), and the quality of them can vary but when it goes well, it goes really well!

This game follows the fremium model, meaning that you can play for free, however have to pay for additional content. The developers have pledged that you will not be disadvantaged if you do not pay, as the content that costs is for the most part cosmetic/time saving. At no point in the game did I really feel that I needed to pay money, and it did not really hamper my ability to play.

This is a well crafted game that is quite fun, and the fact that you can enjoy the most of it for free is excellent. If you are a fan of Halo type games, you should really look into this. I mean, you might as well!