Review: Planetside 2

A new Massively Multiplayer Online First-Person Shooter enters the Free-to-Play market, and it’s out to make a big bang. Planetside 2 features high-end graphics for an MMO, and boasts a persistent world where thousands of players fight for territory on the world of Auraxis. Unlike most FPS games, you can often find yourself playing part in battlefronts with hundreds of other soldiers, sieging enemy bases, or defending important objectives. Unfortunately this also means the game will run computers with lower specs into the ground. Overall, Planetside 2 can be quite fun and addicting for FPS lovers, but not without its own issues and shortcomings.

When creating your character, you’ll first be asked to join one of three factions, each with their own perks and variances in equipment. In terms of standing out and individualizing yourself, it’s just like the military - you’ll look much like everyone else. The only character customization available is being either male or female, and a handful of faces tied to skin color. It’s alright though; you’re basically covered from head to toe.

Now comes the rough part. Planetside 2 has no onboarding what-so-ever. You’re dropped directly into battle, sometimes in the middle of enemies, and will probably die before you can even understand what happened. Once you’ve figured out how to respawn at a deployment location, you are then left to your own devices. From resource management to the logistics of territorial conquest, you face the burden of trying to understand the detailed UI and even fundamentals of the game.

Once you trudge through the frustrations of learning on your own, Planetside 2 yields some solid FPS gameplay. You have a choice of five distinctly different classes to freely switch between upon respawn – Infiltrator, Light Assault, Medic, Engineer, and Heavy Assault. You then also have your choice of a handful of ground vehicles, and a few airships. This allows for a nice diversity in gameplay, but you’ll often find yourself fighting against the piloting controls unless you unlock the upgrades to your vehicles.

The actual combat itself is your typical FPS game where people can take a fair beating, but still be sniped in two shots by a bolt-action sniper rifle, or a single sniper shot to the head. Planetside 2 adopts the modern trend of regenerating shields and a health bar which gives a nice bit of self-managed survivability. Bullet travel, however, isn’t instant like in most FPS games. With bullet travel time, you’re forced to lead your targets, and even account for bullet drop if you’re not part of the Vanu faction. This adds an annoying layer of complication in an already chaotic FPS, where the individual kills don’t matter as much as the strategy behind the fight.

The whole world is open to you as soon as you start playing, leaving nothing new to look forward to in terms of exploration. The only progression in the game are the upgrades, weapons, and abilities you unlock through attaining Certs from gaining experience. The rate you gain Certs is fairly slow, which will require you to put in a lot of hours if you want to purchase a lot of upgrades.

Overall, while Planetside 2 has its shortcomings, I found it to be a very fun and addicting game. Anyone looking for some mindless killing or large-scale warfare should definitely give it a try – after all, it’s free! The lovely thing about having so many people in the battle is that people are less likely to notice how well anyone is doing individually, so less adept FPS players may feel more comfortable in Auraxis if they don’t want to be scrutinized because they aren’t performing too well.