PlanetSide 2 Review

I've always dreamed of games like this as a kid; huge battles spanning large maps, rockets crashing into the ground, planes flying overhead, bullets whizzing past your head, and most importantly, explosions! But that's not what's so unique about PlanetSide 2, it's the persistence and character progression that makes it stand out from the average shooter. For those unaware, PS2 is an MMOFPS which means it maintains the sandbox feel and persistence of an MMO, whilst including the FPS elements of a Modern Shooter.

There are three factions in PlanetSide 2 engaged in total war against each other over a planet called Auraxis. They have discovered the secrets to resurrection, or rather 'nano reconstruction' as they call it, which means that the only thing they have to lose on the battlefield is their pride. All three factions differ in ideology and strengths and weaknesses, which is great in my opinion; having three factions that play and feel identical would be about as dull as a salad with no dressing. Once you pick a faction you will end up getting deeply immersed in its culture, which is a great experience for both new players and veterans who have been loyal for years.

The technology worshiping Vanu Sovereignty

The proud and free New Conglomerate

The ruthless and authoritarian Terran Republic

The game plays quite similarly to Battlefield 3, in the sense that you can pick between a handful of classes, customise their weapons, as well as spawn vehicles that can also be customised. But whilst the core gameplay is quite similar, the end goal is quite different. The objective of the game is rather simple, conquer facilities, bases and power plants in the name of your faction, owning this territory will in return gain more resources and bonuses for you and the rest of your faction. When you capture a base, it is yours until the enemy takes it from your hands, there are no map resets, whatever you own is yours to stay. This--coupled with the character progression you get via Battle Rank promotions and Certification Points that you use to unlock new weapons, skins, abilities, and pretty much everything else there is to offer--gives you an overwhelming sense of achievement compared to the average modern day shooter. It's almost as if *gasps* your effort that you put in to a video game means something! Of course this is entirely subjective, and mostly just an illusion of achievement, I'm just merely pointing out that PS2 is far from your average shooter.

Personally I feel like they could have increased the worth of owning territory in Auraxis. At the moment all you really gain from owning territory is an increased rate of gaining resources, which allows you to construct vehicles and the sort, so that you can go out and capture more territory. Of course you gain certifications by capturing or defending such territory, but that is just a bi-product of combat, you could be winning or losing and still be gaining certification points. I understand that they are trying to create a sort of scarcity model, in which you need to have X resource income to allow your faction to spawn a certain vehicle every dozen minutes, but I've never once felt like I've been in danger of not having enough resources, in fact most of the time my resources are all capped at their maximum capacities. I think this is due to the long acquisition cooldown timer after you spawn a vehicle, preventing you from spawning another one for sometimes up to twenty minutes, which is perfectly fine, but bringing it back to my point, I think if owning certain territory allowed you to gain Certifications faster, it would create a much larger sense of urgency to defend or capture that said territory.

An outdated beta version of the map, but similar.

The game's visuals are astonishing, unfortunately my PC is a little too old to be playing it on anything but Low during large battles, but it just looks fantastic. Do yourself a favor when you first start the game, spawn an aircraft at your faction's WarpGate and go explore the map, you won't regret it. The attention to detail, at least on this scale, is unrivaled. The same goes with the sound, although at some times overwhelming because of how much crap is going on at the same time, you truly feel like you're in the thick of a brutal war. I honestly don't think there's a better shooter out there that will immerse you as deeply as PlanetSide 2.

Unfortunately I find the core game mechanics of PlanetSide 2 to be a little bit lacking. Movement seems slightly under polished, as you will often get caught inside of objects if you're trying to traverse outside of flat surfaces. Moreover, crouching and jumping feels quite sluggish. Gun combat and certain weapons on vehicles also feel half baked, it's hard to judge where your bullets are going and sometimes you just feel like you're pissing in the wind. If you go and play Battlefield 3, Counter Strike or any other well tuned shooter, and then come back to play PlanetSide 2, you will understand what I mean. Some things are just not responsive enough and the 'feel' just isn't up to par in my book. Bare in mind that I am a shooter fanatic, and have played Counter Strike, Quake and many other shooter competitively for quite some time; so whilst I have acquired a taste for shooters, I am very finicky when it comes to fine tuning, I just can't accept sloppy gun control.

Lag is quite a large deterrent at the moment, a lot of times it will be fine, but there's just that off chance you'll come across someone with a terrible internet connection and they will literally be warping around everywhere. I created a short video illustrating such lag during the beta, and it seems that the same type of lag is also applicable as of this post. I want to believe that it will pass after launch, which I think is partially true, but since I've experienced this type of lag since the alpha I don't think it will go away any time soon.

All of this points to a rushed release. About three months ago this game was no where near ready for a release. Even though they did a pretty bang up job adding that last minute polish, I feel like if the game had been in development for another solid five months then it would literally be on the top of the shooter holy grail. Let's be real here, Sony doesn't exactly have the best track record when it comes to MMORPGs, and I believe this was just a move from 'corporate commander' to get the game out of beta so that people would start purchasing stuff from the cash shop. Fortunately I'm fairly certain they will be adding a lot more to the game, more content, bug fixes and overall polish. So who knows? Maybe this game will eventually become the best shooter known to man, or maybe it will just stay within its niche market.

Some people seem to have an issue with the cash shop, which is essentially a way to pay for shortcuts in the game (like any other F2P cash shop). I think they've done a decent job of balancing it, you're not 'paying to win' so to speak, I have not payed a single dime and can confidently kill those who have payed for weapons and equipment they do not have an advantage over me in any manner, they just have a different type of weapon with different strengths and weaknesses. In an ideal world I think a subscription or even one time fee with expansions would have suited PS2 bettter, but we don't live in an ideal world. PS2 requires a high number of players to keep the game playable, it relies on huge amounts of combat, everywhere. When you restrict your playerbase to those who only pay money, you in turn reduce the population. As such, I think F2P was definitely the right way to go, and applaud Sony for the attention to balance they put into the cash shop on release. Let's just hope they keep up the good work and it doesn't turn into a pay to win game.

With all that said I really do enjoy PlanetSide 2, and can appreciate how hard it is to emulate un-instanced persistent warfare on such a large scale. I think what it loses in core game mechanics gets carried by its unparalleled immersion and sheer scale.

Pros

• Unparalleled immersion.
• Visually amazing.
• Persistence, scale and a sense of achievement.
• Free to play.
• AUSTRALIAN LOCAL SERVER (Yes, that's goddamn right)

Cons

• Core game mechanics are not quite up to the standard of modern shooters today.
• Lag and performance issues will cause some headaches.
• Rushed release.
• Could have been a greater incentive to conquer and retain territory.

Verdict

8.1/10, with more polish from the devs I believe this game will turn out to be something amazing.

Should you play this game?

Yes. It is free after all, you will either enjoy it or you won't. So why not give it a try?

Natural Selection 2 Review

Introduction

Natural Selection 2 is finally out, and what a journey it has been. I've been following this game since its inception. I've always loved the FPS/RTS genre--whether it be C&C Renegade, Giants: Citizens Kabuto or Savage--it combines two of my most loved genres into one delightful treat. There's something about it that just strikes a cord with me, I always seem to play these types of games for much longer than just another FPS or RTS, and the fun factor is just so much more intense.

For those who are uninitiated, FPS/RTS is a mix between both FPS and RTS (you don't say). Games usually follow the same pacing of a popular FPS whilst including the elements of base building, defence and offence. Most FPS/RTS games have one commander, that literally gets a top down RTS style view of the map. The commander gives orders to teammates--which are mostly player controlled characters--whilst also building the base, snatching the hotly contested resource nodes scattered throughout the map, and using those resources to provide tech upgrades; improving their respective team's weaponry and utility. It's all pretty basic when you think about it, but these type of games usually offer up an insane amount of depth. Which upgrade should I get for my team first? Which side of the map should we push towards? What should I do after that one Onos snuck past our defences and killed our forward base? These are all questions that a commander has to potentially face when in an average game of NS2.

Natural Selection was originally a mod for Half Life, and although it wasn't picked up by Valve like Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat and Team Fortress was; it still received wide spread success, GameSpy even hailed it as "...possibly the most ambitious user-made modification ever brought to fruition..."  - GameSpy's 2002 Mod of the Year Award. The Natural Selection Universe features a war between the Marines (aka Humans) and the Kharaa (aka Aliens). It is very reminiscent of other popular Science fiction, namely the Alien and Starcraft franchises, but we're not hear to discuss that, let's move onto the damn game already.

Explosionzzzzzzzzzz!

How it Plays

Now that we got that little introductory spiel out of the way, let's get down to matter at hand shall we? As I said before, I've been following this game since its inception. Initially I was hyped, but it soon fizzled out after I preordered and got my hands on the Alpha. Unknown Worlds Entertainment, the indie developers of Natural Selection 1 and 2, sought fit to create a whole new engine for NS2, quite an ambitious feat. All throughout Alpha and Beta there were huge glaring issues, as with any new engine. Graphically it looked amazing, but it suffered in performance, even those with the best of machines couldn't play without FPS drops, freezes and crashes. Playing the game was a bit of a chore at some times, quite frustrating indeed, but of course it was both a legitimate Alpha and Beta, not the usual demo Betas that most gamers are used to these days. But nevertheless, that's all in the past, and what really matters is what the game is like in its release state.

Out of the two playable races, although they have the same goals as each other, they play very differently. Marines rely on a more defensive style in the early game, and arguably requires more teamwork than Aliens in general. The Marine commander has to put down buildings that the player controlled Marines then build, the general flow of a game is to start out with an Armory which can provide Health, Ammunition and Weapons to the Marines, and then to expand outward into the map and get the Mineral extractors throughout the map. The thing about Marines is that because players have to physically build stuff the commander drops down, they have to stick together and push as a team. Marines require power for their buildings to function, power nodes are all around the map and there is one for each sector, Aliens can attack the power; taking out the lights, resulting in a spectacular graphical darkness, and also disabling the nearby Marine buildings. Because Marines are relatively slow, they can get around the map via Phase gates, which are basically two way teleporters all interconnected to each other.

Aliens on the other hand have no such 'teamwork' handicap. The Alien commander can give commands to the Alien players, he is somewhat free to do as he pleases seeing as buildings complete on their own, similar to the Zerg in Starcraft. Aliens require cysts--again, similar to the Zerg's creep in SC--to plop buildings on, so the commander must spread a lot of this stuff to nearby extractors and the like in order to gain control of the map. Aliens rely heavily on sneaking, harassing and disruptment. If you rush into a Marine head on with a skulk (the base line unit for Alien), the skulk will almost always die, but if they sneak up behind the Marine and get the first few hits off first, the Skulk will almost always win. The benefits of Aliens rely on the pure speed that they can achieve with the Celerity upgrade. They can zip around the map and cause all sorts of chaos for any unprepared Marine team, taking out power nodes and extractors that aren't defended and generally being a nuisance. Alien units rely on evolution rather than the passive upgrades that the Marines have, every time you spawn you have to pick what perks you want (e.g. Celerity for increased speed, deception for silence in your movement and attacks and Carapace for increased armor). Of course any perks or upgrades rely on what your commander does, you don't have access to any of these until your commander has enough resources to research them for you.

A win is considered when either all enemy units are dead and there is no way for them to respawn (e.g. the Aliens destroy all of the Marine's Infantry Portals and then seek out the remaining Marines around the map) or more commonly, one side kills all of the enemy's command centers or hives.

The end game unit for Marines, the Dual Minigun Exosuit. You'll need a handful of marines to back this baby up with welders to keep you topped up, but with a few of these you can easily plow through an Alien base.

Critique

I'm a veteran to this genre, it didn't take me long to pick it up and learn the mechanics, but I can see how someone who is both new to RTS and FPS/RTS could find this quite overwhelming. This game lacks a tutorial, which is a pretty necessary thing in my opinion. Fortunately there is a Rookie mode and some use of hints for some of your abilities and base mechanics. Rookie mode highlights your name in Green, indicating to other players that you are new. From what I've experienced most people are quite friendly, and veterans are quite helpful if you need to ask questions and will happily teach you how to play. Along with Rookie Mode there are also Rookie servers which offer a friendly environment for new players to learn rather than being yelled at for being terrible.

I think Unknown Worlds have done a fantastic job at bringing in the community on their game. From day one they have listened to the community on bugs, balance issues and all sorts of things. They even implemented the Steam Workshop so that community modders and mappers can provide endless amounts of content for the game that they love. I feel like the community is the most important thing for games like this, and it's what drives Indie titles into the spotlight.

Whilst I'm amazed at how far this game has come, there are a couple of issues with mouse movement and still some times where the FPS starts to stutter a bit (generally in large fights). Granted, I have quite an old PC, but it would be great to see them improve on this even more, and I think it's totally possible, considering where they came from to where the game is now.

Playing pub games can be a bit disheartening sometimes, if you get a bad commander that doesn't have a mic or lacks communication you will usually lose. There's nothing that the developers can really do about it, it's just an inherent problem with the FPS/RTS genre. This game heavily relies on teamwork and communication,  and for the most part people are pretty good in those fields, but it's just that off chance that you get a bad commander or unresponsive teammates and you lose because of it. Like I said, this is just the nature of the game, and it's the same in pretty much every team oriented game. The moral of the story is to play with friends or a clan and you can avoid this problem every time.

I understand the need for lowering the amount of weapons and variety to increase the game's balance, but I think there could really be just a few more weapons for Marine. At the moment the Marine's only have a choice of about 6 weapons. This is no big deal though as I'm sure that Unknown Worlds will be releasing more content for this game, in either expansions or DLC. It's really a minor issue but I can't wait for some more weapon.

The top down commander view for Marines, it actually looks more polished than this in the release build.

What I like

• Community involvement via Steam Workshop and design choices.
• LAN. People can create a server at the click of a button, that means there is LAN. This is something sorely missed from many modern triple A games these days.
• A seamless integration of FPS and RTS.
• Excellent price. $25, come on, you can't not get this game.
• Replayability. There's just so much depth you'll be playing it for months to come and will still be finding new strategies.
• Graphically great.
• Audio works the way it should, you can hear Aliens in the vents above your head, and can triangulate exactly where they are with enough practice.
• Amazing atmosphere. When you're a marine and you can hear the skittering of a handful of Skulks in the vents whilst in a pitch black room all by yourself, you can't help but feel scared for your life. Even though the horror aspect is not the most glaring part of the game, it does it better than most dedicated horror games out there.

What I dislike

• No tutorial. If you are completely new there is a steep learning curve with little help from the game itself, you will have to rely on friends, guides or strangers in games to help you out along your way.
• Performance drops and mouse movement issues.
• It could use just that extra bit of polish in the UI and other areas of the game to tip it over to the triple A status it deserves.

Verdict

8.9/10

An all around amazing game. I think it's a must buy, just be aware that if you're new to the genre you maybe be in for a bit of a steep learning curve.

Like what you see? Feel free to follow my blog and share with your friends, I plan to be more active and write more stuff, so stick around.

A mod for Arma 2 - DayZ

So let's get this blog underway, shall we?

Arma 2--a relatively unknown two year old Military Simulator FPS--has been shoved into the spotlight as of late, all thanks to a mod named DayZ.

What is DayZ? To put it short it's a realistic Zombie Apocalypse mod (in Alpha stages) set in a fictional post-Soviet country named Chernarus. Players join in on one of the many sanctioned DayZ servers, where their characters are saved on the DayZ database, meaning when you quit or join a different server, their characters and their items are persistent. When I say that it's realistic, I mean it; you will have to eat food as you get hungry, drink water to quench your thirst, and traverse the 225km² zombie-ridden landscape for supplies in order survive for as long as you can. Zombies are not the only threat either--PvP is fully enabled, so players can and will fight each other over supplies and other such disputes. Oh, did I mention there is permadeath? You die, you lose everything, and have to start all over again.

There is no overall objective in DayZ, as it's a sandbox game. You make your own rules, morals, and objectives--some choose to be friendly, get into groups of people and have safety in numbers, others choose to go it alone, opting to give strangers little trust, and some seek out to kill others and take the loot for their own.

In games like DayZ, it's hard not to get immersed. When you spend hours on a character, getting the best gear you can find, it's a real wake up call when you lose it all to a Sniper in the hills. Some hate games like these, but personally, I love them. Games with high risk and reward ratios give you a feeling of accomplishment like no other. In any normal game there's no real risk reward, maybe you'll lose some points if you die or you'll miss out on a piece of gear if you can't complete a dungeon, but when your loot and your life is on the line it's a whole different ball game.

It's quite hard to critique a mod, seeing as it's free, made by people who aren't payed in any way, and the majority of the game mechanics are tied to the game that it's made for, however, I'll give it a shot anyway.

As I said before, Arma 2 is a Military Sim, meaning it focuses on large scale combat rather than tight knit skirmishes like Battlefield 3 or Modern Warfare does. It's nowhere near an AAA title's amount of polish, and as such it shouldn't be treated like it. Sure there are some glaring game mechanic issues, but it's to be expected with any low budget MilSim. DayZ does suffer from Arma 2's buginess though, as I've died many times by clipping in and out terrain and objects--which either severely injures me or fatally wounds me. The Zombie AI could also be coded a lot better, seeming somewhat random and almost nigh on impossible to shoot at until they are in your face biting it off. I also dislike the unrealistic night time darkness, where from about 8pm till 1 am it's nigh on impossible to see a thing unless you have night vision goggles or some sort of light source. The inventory system could also be handled better, especially in regards to backpacks.

You see, I was able to find some problems with it at least. But seriously, this mod has so much to offer it's mind boggling. This has never been done before, and the devs really nailed it as far as I'm concerned. It is probably the mod of the year, and provided you're even remotely interested in Zombie/Survival genres I recommend giving this game a go.

If you're interested in playing, it's gonna set you back about $30 to get Arma 2: Combined Operations from Steam. Then you'll have to download the mod files from here.