User Reviews (11 - 21 of 86)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

be a zergling, a soldier, support-trooper or a general

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: June 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have been playing PlanetSide for a year now.
Obviously I like it. I used to play RTS games.
This game has some RTS and some FPS elements.

Best thing are the pretty environment
(i switch flowers on) and the big battles.

PlanetSide is a wargame. Three Empires fight
for 100 bases. Each Empire has thousands of
soldiers. Each soldier is a person sitting
behind a computer just like you.

You dont have to be a good shooter to be
able to play this game. If you are not a
very good shooter, you can still lay mines,
transport people, be a medic, repair the
base wall turrets, drive a mobile base, etc.

Usually I am a sniper or drive a mini tank.
A month ago I was an outfit leader (General)
of 160 people. It seemed just a tough a job
as running a small country.
So I am back to grunting...

Its hard to coordinate things like fighter
wings, tank squads or multiple transports
dropping paratroopers at the same time.
It takes practice. Usually these are
prepared a week in advance. That means
getting to know the other people.
But when this happens, to me the game shines.

So for most the game ususally ends up
as a zerg: hundreds of people (troops,
air, tanks) storming a base defended
by hundreds of other people, each
person doing his own thing. Which is
not bad, since that is like a normal
FPS with 30 times the number of players.

Planetside-A Revolution in online gaming

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 22
Date: December 25, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Hi all! The game Planetside is the first MMOG(massively multiplayer online game) First person shooter. It is going to be realeased in Q1 2003. Ok this is basically what its about...
You are a part of 1 of 3 empires of the planet Auraxis, all fighting for control over the planet. Play with thousands of people over control of continents, military bases, and more. Be a sniper, medic, a heavy weapon specialest, or even a hacker! With tons of weapons to choose from, Planetside is going to be the game of the year! visit planetside/stratics.com to ind more information.

SO Much Fun.........Then boring as hell

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: June 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have owned this game for 2 months now and I thought when I got it, it was the most fun ever. Then after doing the same thing over and over and over the game goes downhill.

Pros:
-Lots of different things to specialize in.
-If you mess up your character you can fix it
-Vehicles are fun to use
-Great PVP

Cons:
-Lots of downtime waiting for things to happen ie. Waiting for the capture of a base... takes 14 min for each base capture.
-You NEED 512 Ram and a decent processor
-Vehicle controls are hard to use
-Very Repetitive... Get Group..take base..take base...take base..take base..take base..take base or Get group..die..die..die..die..
-Not a lot of awesome battles
-Races are not evenly matched Vanu are extremely at a disadvantage

If youýre looking for quick fun then buy this game, but as a long term game.. This isnýt going to get far.

Massive Halo with a bit of RPG mixed in

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: December 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'm not gonna rave to much about this game. I can't, really. I only played it for one day (it sucked me in for about 5 hours) at a friends house. Still, I'm gonna rave a little.

The game is great. But before I state what I like, let me shoot down what other people dislike.

Graphics- Yeah, the graphics aren't incredible, though they're pretty good. The vehicles could use a few touch ups and some other stuff needs a bit of improvement, but that can be fixed very quickly with patches. Remember, this is a MMOG, and it has to work for a lot of different kinds of computers. The graphics can't be perfect because not everybody's computer is perfect.

Size- Somebody complained that there were never big fights, "Like sony promised." I played for five hours and got into fights with at least 100 other players. That's incredibly huge. How big the fight is depends on where you are, what time you go online, and what your definition of huge is. If you're expecting a thousand people to be online at all times, ready to fight over one base alone and battle grimly to the death several times, you're going to be disappointed. But that's the point of the game. Those thousands of people are spread throughout a vast world and you can choose where you want to fight. The game doesn't have to be a brute war. It can be a dogfight in the air, an artillery battle between tanks, a 1 on 1 hunt through a base, whatever you want it to be. But be realistic- 100 people all fighting each other is incredible, but 1000 would be too much to ask.

My turn to rave: Great graphics (considering), great gameplay, great idea, great execution. Your character improves when you do, so the game doesn't become a click fest. Those who are good at first person shooters will be very useful, but anybody can be a useful member of the team, even by having something as simple as the necessary points to fly a transport. The game revolves around teamwork (not as much as I'd like, but enough).

The only turnoff is the price. The standard fee is around $180 a year (sorry if I'm wrong, last time I checked it was), plus $45 for the game and expansion.

The other problem is that the game may be a little TOO massive. It took me a long time to get where I wanted to go, so I ended up waiting for a ride a lot. Because of this, the masses of people were spread out in a huge world, and I rarely found a good gigantic battle. This problem is remedied by the Instant Action button, which transports you to the biggest fight on the map. Also, it became a little redundant because many of the bases use the same map.

Overall, it's a great game and a lot of fun.

Good while it lasts, I recommend it.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: December 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Let me start by saying most of what the other reviewers have said is true.
The requires at least 512mb RAM to run, and you must have DSL (or cable). 56k users can stop reading here.

If you meet all the minimum requirements the game is awesome. Massive battles. The 3 factions are well balanced. *most* players are quite friendly. Other reviewers have said it gets boring after a while. Well...to most people it does. But the 1-2 months of fun you get out of it are worth it. XP users can download a free 30 day trial period from www.planetside.com.
Do not buy the expansion though, its just not worth it. A recent server merger has increased the population quite a bit. Their are 4 servers currently: Emerald-East Markov-West Werner-Europe and the test server, I forget the name.
All in all a great game, and the only one of its kind,

Nice Idea, lukewarm execution

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 12
Date: May 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Planetside is a refreshing idea from the classic mmorpg. Instead of just pressing "attack" and letting your character's statistics to do the fighting, you actually point and click like a first person shooter against "thousands" of players. However, Planetside is fraught with issues, both technical and content-wise. Planetside demands a huge system requirement (beta recommends around 3 gigs of space, 512 ram, and 64 video ram); and even with this the computer struggles at medium graphic settings. Lag is also a issue -- even with verizon dsl, I experienced 100-150 ping on their east coast server, which is decent but becomes a problem for potential snipers. As to content, Planetside is mostly about grabbing land and holding it until you move to the next patch of land. After a while, this becomes a grueling chore as you take and lose and take and lose bases for hours until you begin to wonder, what's the point? There is no storyline, no epic quest, none of that additional element that makes mmorpg interesting to play. After a week of beta, I feel I have played Planetside to exhaustion and experienced virtually everything that the game has to offer. For those wanting some heart-pumping action, I would recommend Counterstrike or Unreal Tournament. For those wanting a colorful storyline and interesting world to explore, I'd recommend Anarchy Online or Asheron's Call 2. Planetside comes somewhere in between, but fails to balance it right. At least Tribes 2 (from which Planetside borrowed much of its ideas along with the programmers) had jumpjets and spinfusors... Planetside feels mosre like work than play.

Why Planetside is Awesome

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: May 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

aka, Why All Other MMORPG's Continue to Suck

Planetside is an MMOFPS, but that's not important. The format of the combat isn't the big issue for me.

The important part is that I can log in, join my team and take actions, either solo or in a group, that will directly impact my team.

I can do something that I know is going to help potentially hundreds of my teammates or harm hundreds of enemies.

For example, last night I logged in and checked out the action. My team (all players are divided into 3 teams) owned a continent called "Hossin". It was under massive attack by an enemy team. Or rather, it was being grabbed for free because it had absolutely 0 defenders on it. No doubt there were multiple hundreds of my teammates online, but they were all busy elsewhere.

So I go there. 1 member of the Terran Republic team vs about, oh, 150 members of the Vanu team.

But it's not just mindless PvP. "Here's a big field, go fight". No, Planetside did it right. There's options. There's stuff I can do that will ultimately be better than a head-on charge with a machine gun into 150 enemies.

So I land on the continent near a bridge I know the enemy will have to cross at some point as their attack progresses across the continent. I drop mines all over it. Because the Vanu know there's only 1 Terran on the planet, they're all running around care-free. So sure enough, a bit later I start getting kills and check the map. Hey look, some of my mines are gone. Most likely, I just set the enemy back by 2 or 3 minutes because I blew up an AMS: a vehicle that's critical to progressing the frontlines. That guy is going to have to go get another one and probably will drive slower across that bridge next time!

I run back to a friendly base and jump in my plane. I don't go to the front lines, where all the enemies are. I can't hope to stop them, but I might be able to slow them down some more... So I start touring the back roads.

Sure enough, I catch the odd Vanu soldier here and there. Forward scouts who were hoping to get a head start on the backline bases. Unchecked, they could have captured towers and ran inside the base and blew up generators and equipment stations and make it that much easier for their team to roll through. But by my presense, I was able to catch these people with their pants down and kick them away.

I went to our most backline Tech Plant. This is a critical type of base necessary to the production of tanks and serious combat aircraft. Some Vanu guys had set up camp there, parked a portable respawning station there and were destroying equipment. So I go in there and blow up their portable station and start blasting anyone I can see.

Be delaying the enemy just a little bit here and there and struggling against the forward scouts to just keep a Terran Republic pulse on the continent, I think I helped save the place. Eventually the rest of my team noticed what was happening and flooded in to fight, and thanks to me, rather than showing up to an utter wreck, they still had a toehold.

My tales of Planetside are full of things like this. Things where I felt I was able to make my little push and really impact things. Sometimes a base gets saved and I can say, "This base would have been lost if not for this thing I did".

That's why I keep coming back to this game.

SWG has teams, Empire and Rebels, but there's nothing I can do there to impact my team or the enemy team in any meaningful way. I can shoot rebels from here to eternity and blow up all the rebel faction bases in the universe and it still doesn't help the Empire. I can make General as a faction rank and build my own faction base and complete 50,000 imperial missions from mission terminals and it still doesn't help the Empire.

In Planetside, I can see John Doe Terran running around in his tank and think, "He has that tank because I showed up just in time to defend our Tech Plant from being taken over." He's not in my group, he's not in my guild, he's just some random guy I've never seen before who happens to be on my team and actions I have recently taken have helped him. MMORPG's just totally lack that.

And there's no excuse for it. They spend so much time on character development and leveling and grinding that they forget to include a game world.

If you want a Massively Multiplayer gameworld and not just a Character Builder with graphics, well, here you go.

Has the promise of being a gfreat game !

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: July 29, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game having only read about it once or twice on websites and having found it released at my local gaming store I bought it. I installed it (3 discs) and spent 30 minutes or so patching it. Once I got into the game I chose my server (Werner) and then had to make a future changing desicion, Which race should I choose. The mighty Terran Republic, The Futuristic Vanu Sovreignity or the freedom fighters, the New Congolmerate. I chose the Terran Republic and arrived in our race's sanctuary, or our safehaven if you will. With the choice of instan action I could have propelled myself straight into a warzone but it would be too risky. The basic premise for Planetside takes ideas from MMORPG's (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games), When you begin you are a lowly Battle Rank 1 and have 4 certification points to spend on access to weapons, vehicles, armour, or support gear (such as used by medics, engineers or hackers). As you rise in Battle Rank's you earn more certification points, so the higher your battle rank the more you can specialise in. The main objective is to capture bases on each of the ten continents of Auraxis, each base capture will reward you with experience, which you build up to up your battle rank. The battle never really ends, with the developers adding new content every few weeks and patching it so it can become a superb game. It requires patience and teamwork to become a successful Planetside player, but if you posess these skills you will find yourself worthy of this game. The reason I only gave this amazing game a 4 star rating is that the graphics engine it uses, is not as powerful as, say Star Wars Galaixes and that requires a less heavy graphics card, the second reason is that with every patch that the developers install serverside and clientside the mroe problems they generate for the players. These problems often involve sound problems, crashes to desktop, exploits in the game etc. However as a MMOFPS, possibly the first of its kind it is an amazing game. To walk around as an invisible character and shoot the opponent in the back from point blank range whilst a battle ensues around you, is indeed breathtaking.

Great game? Well.... It could be, but it's not.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: August 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've had this game for about 2 months. I've played to battle rank 20 and command rank 5 (the highest levels possible). I've played all three factions and used all the skill sets and equipment. After literally days of my life spent on this game, I can honestly say that it was worth playing it for about 20% of the time. The rest, wasted.

This is a game with an identity crisis. It's a RPG and a FPS. I love both genres, so I thought combining them like this would be great. Oh well....

It does the FPS part very well (very VERY well), but the RPG elements actually take away from this game rather than add to it. If it was just an FPS, the players would act accordingly and live only to fight. With the RPG rank system, players often do things only for experience. For example, a team of players may take a base through stiff opposition in order to capture the experience. Then they will actually fall back to allow the other side to retake it so it can be recaptured for the experience again. Players seek experience in order to don differrent armor or a bigger gun or pilot a air or ground vehicle, but the new abilities really don't add to a player's capacity to kill. You can't get strong enough to really become a power player, and while that's fair, it means that there's really no reason to attempt to do things for the experience. After weeks of playing and climbing ranks, if you get wasted by some noob who just logged on 5 minutes ago, why bother?

So people play this FPS like they would an RPG, but they don't get RPG rewards. The RPG element directs how people play, but its never more than a really massive FPS. It's a nice idea, but before I'd recommend people buying it, I'd have to see Sony solve their identity crisis. Either strengthen the RPG elements or eliminate them. I applaud Sony for trying to make the first MMORPGFPS, but it's a weak, WEAK effort. Just enough to claim the title.

I'd recommend Battlefield 1942 or Star Wars Galaxies (an acutal effort by Sony) long before I'd recommend this game.

Server Lag

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: May 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Planetside is an amazing game with great groundbreaking ideas that will hopefully lead gaming by leaps and bounds to a new level.

There are reasons why, though, that the reviews are divided. There are the people who love it, and the people who don't like it (and all those in-between):
For some people, gaming for one goal (world domination) is extremely fun, and constantly taking back bases and capturing new ones doesn't get repetitive for them as battles are almost always unique in their own right.
Then there are others who grow quickly bored of doing the same thing over and over again.

There are also reasons for the reported lag. Being a fan of MMO games, I know that when a new expansion is released, such as the Legacy of Ykesha, the first downloadable expansion for EverQuest, there was a definite new height to the lag. Server hiccups, so-to-speak. That is where mass people get disconnected at the same time. This is probably the case for PS, though, instead of a new expansion coming out, there are hundreds of people signing up and logging on for the first time, causing the servers to get stressed out.

I agree that the monthly price for PS is too high, though it will probably drop down over time. However, with the steep monthly price, we are almost guaranteed constant updates for bugs fixes and new material. I do not believe that Sony Online will fall asleep on us.

>> Expect lag to die down dramatically.
>> Expect constant updates.

But it wont happen over night, and it will take a bit.
A suggestion if you want to be careful: I would wait for the price to drop for PS and watch specific PS gaming sites (ex. ps.crgaming.com, planetside-universe.com, 3dactionplanet.com/planetside/) for updates on how the game is progressing or the PlanetSide.com forums

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next 

Actions