PlanetSide

Title: PlanetSide
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: May 20, 2003
Date Played: Summer 2003
Time Played: 10 hours
Completed (Y/N): N/A
Score: 3/5


 

Opinion:
PlanetSide was a pretty big sensation when it came out. As a pretty hardcore Counter Strike and EverQuest player I could not wait to see how this game was going to merge the MMO and FPS genres.

You start PlanetSide by creating a character. After choosing a faction you spawn at a base, ready to kick ass and chew bubblegum. There isnt much of a tutorial, or direction. You are given a vague idea of where to go to get some action.

For me personally MMOs at that point in time were associated with a PvE environment, although I have dabbled in Dark Age of Camelot with its Realm vs Realm mechanics, my enjoyment of MMOs came from running quests and raiding huge bosses. That being said it was weird to play an MMO and not being able to do any of that.

Instead of dungeon crawling and slaying crypt bosses PlanetSide is all about territory control. I remember opening the map and heading to where the action was. BAM... dead... What just happened? Ok whatever, check the map and take off for the hotspot again... BAM... dead... OK this sucks... Ill head this other way... oh look a tower... I'll head up the stairs... BAM... dead.... This basically sums up my experience with PlanetSide. And even when I did get a jump on someone, the terrible network lag would make it a bunny hopping cross your fingers and pray your bullets hit them type of encounter.

Even when it launched PlanetSide's graphics already looked a little dated. Majority of the landscape was flat and deserty, with muddy textures and polygonal environments. "Boring landscapes" would be a good way to describe it.

My entire experience was basically a single player experience. None of my friends were big gamers and I would be surprised if they even knew what an MMO was. Now and then I speak with someone that played PlanetSide, they say that traveling as a group was the best part of it. Thats something that I unfortunatelly did not get to experience.

I have spent roughly 10 hours with PlanetSide, most of that time was spent running from the spawn point to the battle, just to get sniped or killed in an unfair network lag battle. Needless to say it would be generous to say that I had even a little bit of fun. The idea of a huge FPS world, with hundreds of players battling over territory and every battle actually making a difference was intriguing; however in practice it was nothing like that. PlanetSide was a great experiment, but perhaps it was ahead of its time. Games have evolved since 2003, and a lot of progress has been made in game design. While PlanetSide was a good idea poorly executed, I have really high hopes for PlanetSide 2.