PlanetSide Updated Hands-On Preview

Sony Online, famed for its success with EverQuest, is working to complete another massively multiplayer online game in time for this summer. However, unlike most other persistent-world games, PlanetSide is a first-person shooter with a futuristic, sci-fi theme. At first glance, the game looks very much like a massively multiplayer version of Tribes, with similarities in the form of bases, large maps, and drivable vehicles. Closer inspection reveals that there's a lot more depth involved in PlanetSide, with its elaborate skill system, much larger bases, maps that seem to extend for dozens of miles in every direction, and a lot more choices in vehicles and weapons. That level of depth is to be expected, as the challenge for PlanetSide's designers is to convince multiplayer action fans that there's enough that's unique about the game to justify paying a monthly fee to play it. After getting a chance to play the online press beta, we're intrigued with PlanetSide's potential.

PlanetSide features three playable factions: the Terran Empire, the Vanu Sovereignty, and the New Conglomerate, each with its own style of weapons and technology. The world is divided into several large continents, each of which has about a dozen or more bases scattered around them. PlanetSide's gameplay centers around the three factions' struggle to control the bases and hold territories from enemy attacks.

Bases are massive in size, dwarfing the largest ones in Tribes 2. Even with a few hours of gameplay under our belts, we still found ourselves getting lost inside some of them. A base filled with defenders who are manning gun turrets, creating vehicles out of the vehicle station, and guarding the vast interior architecture is extremely difficult to take over. It's pretty safe to say that lone wolf players or even a small band of three or four would have very little chance of capturing a well-defended enemy base. Raids require a concerted effort from many players with different skill specialties.

When you first start in PlanetSide, you'll appear at your faction's home sanctuary, which is a safe haven where weapons cannot be fired and you can take a breather. The sanctuary is the place where you can recall or warp yourself, should you find yourself lost out in the middle of nowhere, without a vehicle to get back to a friendly base. At the sanctuary, you'll find various stations to outfit your character, including equipment stations to pick up weapons and items, as well as certification and implant stations.

The certifications in PlanetSide are the central way in which you specialize your character and earn the right to use certain weapons and items and to drive vehicles. Unlike Battlefield 1942, where you can pick up and use any weapon off the ground or hop into any open vehicle, PlanetSide requires that you first gain certain certifications to use those weapons or vehicles. Basic certifications in areas such as assault, hacking, repair, vehicle use, and armor use are available. Once you're certified in the basic categories, more specialized options are available.

For example, you can pick sniper certification under the weapons category, which opens up the sniper rifle for purchase in the equipment station. Heavy-weapons fans can pick up heavy-weapons certification and a "max" suit, which has the most inventory capacity and damage absorption. Or you could choose repair skills and certification for several vehicle types to become a pilot and engineer. Another popular set is the cloaked infiltration suit (it bends light around it like the Predator's, making you practically invisible while stationary) and hacking skills, a combination that allows you to slip almost unnoticed into bases and hack the control point. There's a wealth of possibilities for you to create your own classes, depending on how you spend your certification points.

Versatile Skills

As you gain levels through experience, you're awarded more certification points to spend at the station. The best part is that it is possible to reverse certifications and get points back to customize your character in a different way. Simply deselect the certification and wait a 24-hour period per reversed certification to get the points back. Though it could involve a lengthy waiting period if you try to reverse several certifications, it's comforting to know that you can always change your mind if you end up unhappy with the first choices you make.

PlanetSide also lets you equip your characters with special implants that enhance abilities. These include an audio amplifier, which exaggerates the sound of footsteps around you and highlights the position of enemy soldiers on your radar screen--something that's particularly useful against cloaked infiltrators. Another implant is the personal shield, which adds another layer of shielding over top of your character for protection. Others range from enhanced zoom capability to advanced targeting, which shows the health level of your opponents. The nice thing about implants is that they're immediately reversible at the implant station, so you don't have to wait a day to switch, unlike with certifications. Currently it's only possible to use one implant at a time.

Once you've picked out certifications, implants, and weapons, it's time to head out to battle. From the sanctuary, special shuttles are constantly leaving for and arriving from the shuttle station. Boarding a shuttle pops up a view of the world map, showing the various continents. Once a continent is chosen, a zoomed-in view of that landmass is given, showing the location of the bases on that continent, which faction controls them, and flashing hotspots that indicate where battles are being fought. You pick a point on the map you want to land on, and you're dropped in by personal dropship. It's not possible to drop right into a base, even one that your faction owns.

The first thing you'll want to do at this point is head to a friendly base and log into the matrixing panel at that base. Once that's done, if you die, you can simply respawn at that base instead of having to start over at the sanctuary. Matrixing panels are also available at the mobile bases known as advanced mobile stations, or AMSes. The AMS allows you to spawn near the site of base raids and equip yourself, so you don't have to start all over at your own base, which can be a great distance away from the site of a battle.

Continental bases conveniently include respawning tubes, medical stations, and the same equipment, certification, and implant stations available at the sanctuary. They also come with vehicle stations where players armed with the proper certifications can create the game's many different vehicle types. Gun turrets decorate the tops of outer walls, and you can man these turrets to fend off incoming attacks. An interior generator powers everything. If the generator gets knocked out or the base's central control room gets hacked by an enemy, none of the base's critical equipment will work until the generator is restored or the control room is taken back by a friendly hacker.

Before heading out in the field to fight, you'll want to join up with a squad or create a squad of your own by inviting people. Being in a squad offers a number of advantages that make it easier to organize a group. To begin with, you can see your squadmates on the minimap radar and on the large world map, which have squadmates' positions marked with numbers corresponding to the ten squad slots displayed along the top of the screen. The ability to see your squadmates' locations and health levels makes organizing an attack en masse much simpler, because you can quickly see if everyone has rallied to the same points and if anyone is low on health. Squads also have their own chat channel, so all the other chatter going on in a busy area can be easily filtered out in favor of more important messages.

Big Battles

Raiding a well-defended base takes a lot of concerted effort. You need a couple of people to drive an AMS out to the site and park it near the base. Some players also need to stick around and defend that mobile base, because even though the area around a deployed AMS is cloaked, it won't take long for smart defenders to learn of its location, making it a prime target. It's also helpful to have a certified transport pilot or two to quickly ferry players from friendly bases to the site of the action. Other pilots, such as pilots of small mosquito fighters and the basilisk and harasser buggies, are useful for getting around the flanks of the enemy base and drawing attention away from the entrances. Antivehicle weapons experts are great for taking on the vehicles that spawn out of the base and for attacking the turret defenses, which are extremely powerful. Hacking specialists are needed to break into the outer doors of bases and actually capture the interior control point, and of course general soldiers and weapons experts are needed the most, to efficiently take down the opposition and protect the specialized classes on your side.

Once the outer defenses are breached and you actually make it inside a base, there are dozens of rooms and corridors and multiple floors to navigate before you can find the control room, where it is possible to hack and capture the base. But even once that point is hacked, invading forces have to hold that area for 15 minutes and keep the control point from being hacked again before the base possession actually changes hands. The base raids we've been playing in the press beta have involved several dozen players, which creates a hectic, sometimes confusing, often-exhilarating battle environment.

We usually assumed the role of a general-purpose soldier with sniper capability and found it natural to change out ammunition types and rearm at equipment stations to adapt to the changing battlefield challenges. Sometimes we'd be up against vehicles and max soldiers, which are more vulnerable to armor-piercing bullets. But after a switch, we might suddenly be swarmed by light infantry, who take more damage from standard ammunition. The balance that plays out between the various classes and equipment types means that you have to be versatile, or at least surround yourself with teammates who can collectively handle multiple threats. The need to choose the appropriate equipment and certifications adds an extra layer on top of needing the twitch skills to be good in combat.

The drive for versatility over pure specialization will push you to gain experience--from kills, exploration, or other specialized actions--in order to gain more certification points. However, even if you do have all the certifications, you're not always going to be prepared to face any threat at any time. Even though equipment is free, you'll be limited by your inventory space. No armor suit allows you to carry more than four weapons. If you want to carry a lot of grenades, you're sacrificing space that can be used for extra ammo clips. If you want to carry several types of ammo, you'll find little room for grenades, hacking tools, or medical items. Thought about being the ultimate camper by equipping an infiltration suit and a sniper rifle? Not so fast--the infiltration suit allows for light weapons only and has extremely limited storage space.

There are seemingly dozens of choices in how to be an effective soldier in PlanetSide, and from the brief taste we've had so far, we're eager to try out more of them. We'll be bringing further updates on PlanetSide as the beta test progresses. In the meantime, enjoy the new screenshots and the gameplay movies.