Planetside
We preview one of the year's most ambitious and original releases.
Most of you will of heard of this game by now. It’s number three in our Top Ten for 2002 here at Ferrago.co.uk, and rightly so. We have been waiting with fingers crossed for almost a year now; the time is finally nigh. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Ferrago.co.uk’s Planetside preview…
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Planetside should be completely different to anything you have seen before, being a MMOFPS with a strong RPG streak. This game, in theory, should have something for everyone. With Verant, the team behind the ever-popular Everquest at the helm, we are all expecting great things of this title. Well, I am anyway. Verant have apparently taken the most popular aspects of Everquest and mixed them with Team Fortress Classic in a bid to create the ultimate online experience. The question is though, will they succeed? They will be up against strong competition from many titles other popular online offerings; their own Everquest is still going well and Dark Ages of Camelot will still be around putting up a good hard fight, not to mention the possibility of Final Fantasy XI on the PS2 or the new Phantasy Star Online for the Xbox stealing some thunder from this game (the last two seem pretty unlikely I know, but stranger things have happened!). Though, despite their online foundings, none of these games would seem to offer quite what Verant are attempting with Planetside.
If you are interested in this game solely as an RPG (a la Dark Age of Camelot, et al), it would seem you are likely to find the going incredibly tough. This game is first and foremost a first person shooter, so expect to die. A lot. We are not talking Quake III-style ‘frags’ here, but an action-packed, and diverse, ‘war’ experience. Verant have stressed that dying frequently in Planetside is quite normal, all that happens is you lose the equipment you were carrying and get re-spawned in a safe location. This may seem quite unfair to you if you where carrying your prized rare item, that took you weeks to claim in a bloody battle, only to have Nigel from Aberdeen shoot you up the nether regions with a rocket whilst you were distracted, therefore losing it. Hence Verant have solved this problem by eliminating ‘rare’ items altogether (no items that take huge amounts of time and energy to get, or anything likewise), not to say that you still wouldn’t be annoyed to lose your favourite gun, but at least you can go and buy another one or loot a corpse. There should be no more mental anguish over lost ‘treasures’ now, anyway. Of course you can ‘steal’ weaponry from dead enemies, therefore expanding your personal arsenal, but you will find no weapons of mass destruction; Verant thought it unfair if you could wipe out an entire city with one shot. Here, my friends, it’s up close and personal.
You are not just limited to travelling by foot in Planetside either, there are Buggies, APC’s and Aircraft to toy around with, and Verant’s model system appears to be very good so expect to see Aircraft overhead, raining molten-lead-death onto you (unless you have a rocket launcher to defend yourself with!). An idea which seems to hold much promise, as a richer and more interesting experience.
Comments
Nice review can't wait for this game!
I've never played a MMORPG, due mostly to the fact that I enjoy clan matches and the friendship that it entails. Will Planetside have a system in place to form clans and have wars against other clans ? It would seem that joining an alliance would be similar to a clan but on a larger scale, is there any place in the game for smaller clan based wars ?
JB
This game looks so high-tech. Its going to be uber when it actually comes out. I've been wanting to play something like this eversince EQ, and now its finally in the making. Ah, this is gonna be sweet.
It would seem that you can join smaller 'teams' within each empire... this could lead to two teams from the same empire fighting, although there will most probably be a penalty for such actions.... but the option is there if you choose to take it!
An elitist comment but it is about time that games stopped pandering the lowest common denominator of connection. Games like Planetside need adsl / cable and it owuld be a better and braver game if it was specced up to 1ghz and broadband
This is all arse-kicking goodness. I've been following the game since it's announcement and I'm still hooked.
It's not a Mmorpg, it's a Mmofps
;)
PLANETSIDE!!!
I've been watching this game grow since 2000 and still can't wait till its finished.
Got 1 thing to say. It is going to be in my computer game stockpile the second it comes out!
Yes. If you visit the PlanetSide website and check out the FAQ, you can see that you can group together a small group of ppl, and group this with other groups, or even start you own erm... Forgot what it's called. Same thing as a Clan or Guild, but they call it something else...
Also; team based competitions - like Capture the Flag...
If you fight someone within your own empire, this is known as grief play and is punished. Manouvering around the place in vehicles it made slower (hence making you easier to shoot at), weapons take longer to reload and so on... Continous grief play leads to a suspension or complete ban from the game...
cool
this game is awsome
Planet side looks VERY GOOD and I am thinking about getting it, I belive MMORPG's are the best type of games, what you think
If anyone here plays Gunbound try and find me.