Planetside

John Gillooly joins the inter continental battle field in search of supremacy.

Few first person shooters have survived and blossomed in the online multiplayer stakes. On one hand you have the run-and-gun of deathmatch and later Counter-Strike and Battlefield 1942, on the other you there’s the depth of Tribes. Now, in a fresh twist we have a genuinely new genre. Planetside from Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) is the first massively multiplayer implementation of the shooter, and it takes the complexity of Tribes to a whole new level while moving away from its heavy focus on jetpacking and skiing.

Set on a planet known as Auraxis, Planetside pits three factions against one another in a constant war over control of the landmasses. Rather than setting the game on one huge chunk of terra firma, the designers chose to split the world into continents. This not only allows for definite spheres of control, but also helps to manage player numbers and minimise lag.

In order to control territory, you must progressively capture and secure the bases contained within them. This is done through hacking -- a clever ploy created to stop the game becoming a rapidly flip-flopping affair. Once you have fought your way into a base’s control room you’ll have to whip out your REK (Remote Electronics Kit) and access its console. If you can hold the room for 15 minutes, the facility becomes property of your faction.

This makes for defined battle fronts and coordinated pushes, further reinforced by the structure of the factions. Each individual can go it alone, but for mucho shared experience and the thrill of a coordinated attack you’ll want to be part of a squad. A squad is a group of up to 10 people that fight together either on their own or part of a larger group, sharing lovely experience points along the way.

There are also larger clan-like groups known as outfits, to which members contribute experience points. Outfits allow for better coordination of large battles and make finding a decent squad much easier. Plus you get a cool little outfit logo on your armour and vehicles.

As Planetside is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG), there’s a need for a role-playing element to reward time spent playing and to encourage players to keep on subscribing. This comes in the form of certifications and implants. As you gain experience points you increase in battle rank and gain a certification point. These can then be spent to access new armour types, weapons, vehicles and combat abilities such as engineering, medicine or hacking. This encourages specialisation and each new certification opens up new aspects of gameplay.

Implants are given after multiple battle rank increases, and add new abilities such as IFF (Identify Friend or Foe)-like targeting, enhanced weapon zoom and better running speed.

Implants and certifications can be traded in for new ones, with a time delay to stop you chopping and changing too often.

Graphically the game is very competent. The detailed undergrowth suffers from an annoying tendency to pop-up a few metres in front of you, but apart from that the view distance is huge and each continent has a distinct look to it. Units and vehicles look great, from the lumbering MAX exosuit armour to the stylish cloaking effects of infiltration armour. Slowdowns only really occur during big battles when there are 50 or more players on screen.

The only issue is lag. Seeing as Australia is a minnow in the MMOG waters there is no local server (don’t feel too hard done by, Europe only has one), so gaming needs to be done on a 200ish ping to the states. Thankfully, Planetside copes pretty well with latency, and even with these sort of pings you can still hit enemies easily, although the occasional dying from bullets fired at you five seconds ago does happen.

Planetside is a gift from on high for those looking for a deep, ongoing shooter experience -- Tribes players wandering the wilderness after the promising start for Tribes 2 died off and those wanting to try the MMOG genre but hate the though of smiting orcs. The best news is that because of the monthly fee, the dickhead factor that permeates Counter-Strike should be non-existent. The game costs US$12.99 a month to play, which is worth it if you want to avoid the horrors of the free-for-all on public servers. Planetside has a depth rarely seen in this type of game and offers one of the finest team-playing experiences out there. If only there was an Aussie server.