PlanetSide 2: The charge of the Sci-fight brigade

The first thing that hits you is the scale. During our time on the planet Auraxis we’ve surged forwards as one part of a hundred-strong army, charging into the flak of an enemy stronghold. We’ve held tiny mountain passes against outnumbering forces by firing a single sniper headshot into their midst and allowing a fellow reinforcement squad time to scarper across and fortify the area. We’ve crashed a Galaxy airship into a mountainside, killing 12 fellow soldiers and possibly causing our empire to lose ground in the vast, always flowing three-way war for territory.

Ok, so that last one wasn’t one of our proudest moments. But it illustrates the pervading sense of meta-purpose threading throughout PlanetSide 2’s epic, potentially thousands-strong battlefields. You do your bit, but as part of something much, much bigger.

As such, playing the game solo is not how you want to go about things. With PS4 party chat easy enough to dip into, and the in-game squad system functional if not quite smoothly implemented during the closed beta there are opportunities aplenty to group up.

“You do Your bit, but as part of something much, much bigger”

Auraxis of power
But PlanetSide 2 is a very different proposition to most console-based shooters, and it demands a lot more from its players in terms of prep than, say, Battlefield or COD (or even Destiny). To ensure the ongoing success of your army, you’ll need to carefully assess the situation, and then think about your strength in numbers and where you reckon you can be the most effective for the game overall. The beta has suggested that PS4 players might need a little more help from the game itself when it comes to handling this side of things.

The main problem we encountered (aside from the occasional spot of lag, which should get ironed out before launch) is that the tutorial system which took ages to implement in the PC version seems to have been entirely torn out here. In its place sits a newbie-friendly starter map, most-likely intended to show how PlanetSide 2’s larger, more group-orientated battles flow. It doesn’t work, frankly.

If Daybreak can get this one relatively minor issue sorted in time for release, though, we reckon we’re in for a fresh and very meaty shooting proposition on our tellies.