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Game Review: Planetside 2 (video)
In this video (with transcript), we review Planetside 2, a new MMOFPS game from Sony Online Entertainment. The game is a true first-person shooter, using its MMO nature to bring a persistent world into play, with battles sometimes involving hundreds of players, and it does so without trying to shoe-horn in ill-fitting MMORPG tropes like questing, story development, or insurmountable gear disparities. The combat favors relative realism (you won't be rocket jumping around, and nobody gets to be Rambo), but it's mixed with vehicle combat in a way that manages to be entertaining without being unfair. Planetside 2 is free to play, using microtransactions to support itself. It wisely avoids selling gear you can't acquire in-game (aside from cosmetic stuff), and doesn't require purchases to be competitive. Hit the link below to see/read our review.
I thought this game looked pretty good (never played the first one), however I won't be touching it because it's Sony. I wish more gamers would make ethical decisions when purchasing games (no, I don't share the feelings of Stallman, I'm just against a company that spies on you as a reward for being their customer) so that companies would actually be punished for their evil practices.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Are you on crack? The game is free to play. After playing it for a few hours at the weekend I can safely say that tactics matter way more than equipment. Get into a MAX suit and you'll still be taken out in seconds if you don't know what you're doing yet (ahem).
which is totally what she said
Having played Planetside 1 from beta (sill have cd's!) and for a few years after launch, a lot of the people I used to play that with were pretty excited about planetside 2, until we actually got to play it. The summary about it was pretty much this:
Everything you hated about planetside 1? We took it out.
Everything you liked about planetside 1? We dropped most of that too!
Things you thought were missing from Planetside 1? We put some of those in.
This one feels like pretty much a large map rip-off of all the other fps's out on the scene now, and I've taken to calling it Planetfieldfall2: modern agenda.
Graphics are pretty good, maps are still huge, but all the things that would make us get 20-30 people together to storm around and kick some butt together are gone. Thanks for nothing and you won't be getting any cash from me.
01:36AM up 426 days, 2:46, 1 user, load average: 0.14, 0.11, 0.05
God forbid you actually trust people to use their own money the way they want to, rather than tell them they're the village idiot for enjoying something you don't.
You're telling me that allowing people to play the game for free, then to make their own decision whether they want to put money into it, is vampirism? You'd rather pay $50 or more up front for a game you've only seen through advertising or reviews? What if it sucks? You're out $50 and you never play the game again. Here, if the game sucks, you're out $0. It gives the company incentive to make a good game, because they have to do more than get your foot in the door - they have to keep you around and make you happy. And it means they don't throw as much $$ behind bullshit piracy suits, because they can't claim they're losing money to piracy when their game is free. Everyone claims piracy is the result of a broken business model, then attacks the industry when they update their business model.
Everything is better with chainsaws.