Reader Reviews
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PlanetSide (PC)
by Nerdhater, who says "sorry for the grammar mistakes, I'm Dutch".
Nerdhater is thrilled. Hundreds of soldiers are storming the enemy base, tanks rumble past, ships scourge over our heads. Out of Nerdhater's speakers comes a cacophony of gunshots, rocket explosions and death cries. It is war.
PlanetSide is about war. There are thousands of players online at any time fighting it out over the control of continents in first person view. Players can use the experience points they gain from this to gain more skills: to ride new vehicles, to shoot better weapons, and whatnot.
All the pieces of the game fit. But they don't all the time. In fact, Nerdhater estimates, only one per cent of the game is truly enjoyable. Or perhaps this gamer doesn't understand it all. Could be. PlanetSide is extremely hard to get into. And the dynamics of the game are not entirely transparent from the outset.
But still one per cent of the game has been enjoyable this far. The rest of the time has been spent in respawn, doing resources or, when no vehicle is nearby, long, long walks. Being a soldier is apparently very hard work.
PlanetSide suffers from the lack of something all massively multiplayer online RPGs suffer from the lack of: a point. The goal of all is the goal of one. Everybody wants to conquer a base, because you as a soldier gain experience points. And then you gain more skills to conquer bases more easily. So it really isn't about conquering, it's just the quickest way to gain experience.
PlanetSide is about war, yes. But it is also about cold, nerdlike, stat-building to show off your character to your friends. And Nerdhater hates nerds, and he has no friends that care about these sorts of efforts. Hopefully one day massively multiplayer game developers will stop trying to addict gamers to their games and start entering the realm of real fun. If it were objective-based this game would have been so much better.