668 - Neighbor of the Beast

So, I can finally talk about the game... and show you a good batch of pictures to whet your appetites.

A week ago, I got the notice in my email that I had been accepted into the beta. I was quite excited about that, as this was one of the games I had been really looking forward to for the second half of this year. Needless to say, I wanted to see whether the game would live up to the hype, or if it was just pretty with a coat of paint.

The answer, dear reader, is that right now it's more paint than polish... for now.



Make no mistake, the game is gorgeous on high-end hardware, but they're going to try to make it run on systems much older than that - the current minimum specs for this thing is a C2D E8400, 4 GB of RAM, and a GeForce 8600. That's... well, surprisingly low. Of course, with stuff towards the minimum end of the specs, there's no doubt going to be problems with framerates, but for the large part, this is what's currently being tested - optimization and stability, not gameplay so much. However, the gameplay will be coming in soon, and that is what will make this game into a game of its own, as opposed to how some may feel it's "MMOBF3" with a coating of sci-fi paint.



After all, when you've got a couple dozen planes, tanks, and so on on the screen at once... you definitely could need some good hardware. That said, response from those with lower-end systems is pretty good so far... assuming you're an Inte/nVidia user. AMD... has some improvements to make.



Having gotten in perhaps a dozen hours or so over the last week, I'm still learning a lot of things. One is that flying is hard to do. My sole time with trying it - which this screenshot is from - I ended up flying out of the map. To be fair, this is something pretty normal. These vehicles can do full barrel rolls, loop-the-loops, and pretty much any aeronautic maneuver you can think of. They can also really turn the tide in a fight... so I think that I'm going to start putting in more time with them soon.



Fighting on the ground, of course, is naturally satisfying. In short, you're given six different types of classes. You've got your Infiltrator, who can cloak to get behind enemy lines, and of course, blow some heads off. You also have your general Engineer and Combat Medic roles, who are able to heal structures and make people not dead yet respectively. Then you got your more combat oriented classes... Light Assault who is an effective flanker, and able to use his jetpack to be where people don't look. Heavy Assault, who is able to bring some nasty guns to shoot you in the face and has anti-vehicle weaponry.

Then... there is your friend and mine. His name is MAX.



MAX, or Mobile Assault Exo-Suit, is a huge hunk of metal that, quite frankly, will whoop any non-MAX or vehicle that it finds. Other classes run from a MAX - and for good reason, because if they don't, they wind up dead. However, you'd be foolish to think that all they're good for is stomping out infantry - all classes can be customized for your playstyle, so you can make a MAX who's absolute hell on earth to any fighter pilots up over your head, too, or one who can make vehicles into hunks of twisted scrap.



Planetside 2 also has a full-blown day and night system... and fighting at night has some definite advantages, and disadvantages, for the three factions constantly warring on Auraxis. Of course, this is a detriment to your ability to fight at night... until you invest in things like Flashlights, or IRNV scopes for your guns, that will make people in them as clear as day.



Yeah, something like that. Needless to say, this guy couldn't see me very well... but I had no problem seeing him. That's why he was dead, and I wasn't.

Fighting at night is actually a very stunningly picturesque thing. The sunrises and sunsets here are actually really gorgeous, and the day/night cycle definitely adds a strategic element to fights. For example, one empire - who insists on calling themselves the "Vanu Sovreignty," but let's be blunt and call them by their correct name: Barneys - have a nasty habit of coming out at night... mostly. This means that anywhere where they're knocking in the middle of the night should be careful... because when you hear PEWPEWPEW, you know that Barney is out there, and he's about to love you.

So naturally, you'll want to deal with him the nice, swift way.



After all, them pretty light shows ain't very good for stopping massive explosions and fireballs. And if they insist on cloaking, or sneaking... well, Mr. IRNV scope saves the day (night?) once again:



It didn't go so great for them. However, this attack on our base lasted for hours on end - and eventually, as the sun began to rise, and the silly Barneys retreated to lick their wounds, the "Terran Republic" as they call themselves - but in keeping with honesty, we'll call them "Elmos" - came to play.













We held the base in several, successive, waves of assault, from Barney and Elmo alike, until the server closed at its usual time of 1 AM Eastern.

Not only that, it really reminds you of how big some battles can get to be. Every friendly - and foe - you run into is someone else. It was a glorious battle - and it helped my K/D Ratio nicely, too. :P



Three sides, 2000 players to a continent, 3 continents per server... meaning that, in theory, if every side combined for a single battle, at a single place, we could be talking a three-way fight with over 650 people to a side.

Where are the other 50? Well... those are reserved for the llamas.



...Oh. Okay. I guess no llamas for now, then. Maybe in a later patch...

Anyway! I'll leave you with some other screenshots I took that I couldn't weave into a quasi-narrative, and since the NDA is now lifted, I'm free to discuss anything and everything regarding the game. If you're interested, ask away!

Here be a bunch more screenshots