PlanetSide First Look

Dang! And I was actually beginning to wonder about this game; if it will ever come out or not. Well, rest assured dear Action Trip readers, Sony Online is hard at work at this puppy and the game itself has never looked so good! In fact, I would be inclined to say that visually, programmers have made huge strides in the positive direction since the game was initially announced.

Let's kick some asses, team!

Nice environments.

There are a couple of things you need to know about Planetside (or you can just read our massive hands-off report): First of all, it's a MMOFPS (massively multiplayer online first-person shooter) set in a persistent world covering approximately 10,000 square kilometers of terrain (divided in continents), which ranges from deserts to canyons, to deep forests.

Sony Online is known for their fantastic work on MMORPG's like Everquest, but Planetside is both visually and conceptually a totally different ballgame.

It is an action game, rather than an RPG; I feel it is very important to stress that point. As evidence of this, Creative Director Kevin McCann has gone to great lengths to explain to us the simplicity of the character creation process and the emphasis the designers have placed on skill, rather than RPG elements. For a MMOFPS, these are pretty-much two crucial aspects that should differentiate it from Sony's MMORPG games. Sony Online is not expecting the same crowd of gamers that play Everquest to just switch to Planetside once it's out. No sirs, Sony is looking to cater to the general FPS public; those of us who haven't really been paying much attention to Everquest and have been busy with games like Tribes 2, HALO, and the likes.

As I said, character creation in Planetside is easy and it's a simple matter of choosing your team. Once that is out of the way, the war can begin. This is a persistent world, so things will constantly change. There'll be huge scale wars where armies will conquer continents and there'll be smaller-scale battles where players will hone their skills and acquire experience points. But when I say experience points I'm not exactly referring to combat skill points, but equipment points. Sure, players will be able to gain ranks and advance, but that will most likely only give them command over a squad or unlock additional equipment. Once it comes down to it, you could be shot by a newbie in RPG terms, just as long as he or she can shoot and move better than you. And once you die, you don't lose any of your exp. points, or "vocation points" as they are called, you just lose whatever equipment you had on you.

Oh yes, the exp. points are called "vocation points" because they will ultimately provide you with a chance to specialize in certain skills. Still, since this an action game, and not an RPG, you will be able to change "classes" at any time in the game by re-allocating your vocation points to a different set of specialized skills.

Need backup.

Ouch!

I was actually able to sit down and carry out a base assault, and also to travel around the continents and see the dense forests and the desert "levels." The in-game action is fast and rather smooth, but it will take you a respectable PC to run this game, not to mention a girthy net connection. The designers recommend a 1Ghz, 512MB RAM, GeForce2 with 64MB RAM, and a broadband connection to boot, so have that in mind when you're deciding if you wanna sign-up for the monthly subscription or not. Visually, I was especially impressed by the sky and vegetation textures: they are artistically appealing and very sharp. Just look at the crust on some of the trees in the shots. It looks awesome. Massive firefights look very impressive, as the engine supports all the right bells and whistles that should appear to rabid action gamers (with gun flashes and trails of smoke painting the sky). Player models have a rather high poly-count, for a MMO game, so that partially explains the rather steep minimal hardware requirements.

Anyway, from what I could tell during my rather short playing time, the inclusion of vehicles and the whole feel of the action reminds me a lot of Tribes, though visually, this game borrows quite a few things from HALO, like the player suits and some of the environments. Bear in mind thought that Planetside is conceptually a lot different from Tribes 2, or HALO (naturally). This is a game set in a persistent world, and it has all the of a MMO title. Massive battles, player interaction... but in it's heart this is an action shooter, with rather simple controls and a streamlined character creation process.

If there are enough interested players to support all the above-mentioned gameplay concepts, Sony Online could score big here. Still, this one is far from done, as these MMO games take a bit more time to balance out, both technically and gameplay-wise.

My best bet is that we're looking at Summer 2003 release date. Hopefully, Sony will have a good enough server support once the game is done and ready to ship.