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82%
PROS
Great detail, awesome graphics, instant action button.
LOWS
Huge learning curve, it will take newbies a while to get good, weird offline training bug.
OVERALL
If you are willing to invest a whole lot of time into getting good, you will probably end up enjoying Planetside. Otherwise, stick with Battlefield so you don't have to get frustrated.
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Ugh. I hate being a newbie. Especially when it comes to MMORPG's. The first part of the review is based on my experiences as a newbie to Planetside. The second part of the review reflects my opinion on the game as an intermediate player. So come my friends, and lets take a journey to the complicated world of Planetside.
Like a standard MMORPG, Planetside has you select a character from a race, and then hone your skills, abilities, and in this case, weapon and armor capabilities. There are three civilizations to choose from: New Conglomerate, Terran Republic, and the Vanu Sovereignty. Each race has its own advantages and disadvantages; for instance, the Vanu can get better armor then the NC at an early stage. Characters can be male or female and have a wide variety of faces and hair color. The character selection process is flawless, all except for that fact that you can't select a personal outfit. For each race, there is only one color themed outfit for each gender. There is no way to personalize what your character is wearing. I didn't mind too much, on account of the fact that you will always be in different armor and your main outfit color won't matter in the slightest. Once you have created your character's appearance and given him/her a name, you are off the to the Planetside world.
One thing that I thought was excellent about Planetside was the offline training option. There are missions entirely devoted to helping you learn how to play Planetside offline. This whole experience would've helped me more if it hadn't of bombed out every time I loaded a mission on how to use the HART transportation system. Nonetheless, a patch would be able to fix this problem in an instant. Too bad it wasn't here when I was around...
By raising your characters battle rank, you receive certification points. Certification points allow you to buy better upgrades for your armor, weapons, and give you permission to drive different vehicles. Planetside lies certification points as the building block for the game. By fighting in battles and killing people, you raise your battle rank, therefore raising your certification points. Being a newbie to this game, it took me awhile to finally understand the point: kill people. Get certification points. Get better equipment. Kill more people. Yes, it may sound boring and dreary, but this a concept found in most MMORPG's.
Planetside does however differ from most MMORPG's because it is a first person shooter.
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You get to use guns, select special armor, drive vehicles, and even 'hack' into bases to get control. The last feature sounds very Battlefield; and it is. Using a standard chat interface, you and your teammates can communicate with one another. This is your strategic planning option. You can start a squad or an outfit and begin assaulting an enemy compound. To capture a base, you use a 'hacker' player to hack into the enemy base and take control of it to make it yours. Once you die, (like in Battlefield) you choose a location to spawn back to.
The chat interface helped me to leave my 'newbie' status. There are a lot of nice folks out there in the Planetside universe. There are a few people in particular that helped me greatly to understand this game better. Sigh... moments like these make me teary...
The Planetside world is huge; action spans across 10 different continents. This may sound a bit intimidating... How are you going to know where everybody is fighting!?
