I try the Planetside 2 Beta

 Coming soon for the PS4! I decided to try this since it's run by the same company that runs Everquest. Unfortunately, the company that runs Everquest these days is a bit shady, which is ironic considering their name is Daybreak. Still, I'm going to spend a little while with this game and give it a quick spin.

The three selectable factions all pretty much look the same. I think the Vanu might be an alien race, but since everyone is fully covered-up, who knows. One of my peeves in modern games is the way they let you create a character's face, then fully cover them up right away. This one is no exception, with a face selection that seems 100% pointless.

My first choice of name is "profane". What's really profane is the war crime taking place in the background! Yeah, the first-person shooter genre has really passed me by in the last decade. Aside from the occasional brilliance like Bioshock, of course.

I go with something notably more profane, Penuseus (Peen-us-EE-us) and the game is all "I'll allow it!"

Returning to the background for a second, is there some kind of rule that modern battlefield-style shooters have to have lots of war crimes taking place? I'm pretty sure there's some violation of the ethical treatment of POWs happening here. Then again... this is The Future, and we have to be brutal with the aliens because... 9/11.

The game itself is fairly standard. Reminds me of Halo or Destiny. It has the all-important lasers, but only on sniper-type weapons. The rest of the time you're using boring ballistic ammo. As far as I can tell it consists of a number of zones that are constantly at war. So rather than traditional battles that end after 10 minutes or whatnot, these battles are continuous and you drop in and out of them. It's a bit like a PVP MMO... sort of. The zones don't seem very big and exploring isn't emphasized at all.

The game is free-to-play but has a fair amount of microtransactions, plus you can become a full member for a monthly fee and gain access to a lot of stuff. It's more or less what Everquest is these days, which is pretty standard for MMOs.

Whoa, I found some sort of Predator camo. Not sure how much this actually helps against other players, though. All of the enemies seem to be players, with no computer-controlled foes. I'd like to see a 1P story mode here to ease into things, but no dice.

One of my first quests is to find an equipment terminal, but that's turning out to be an ordeal. You'd think there would be one nearby at the start, but there isn't. I finally found one (seen here), but...

...I can't figure out how to interact with it, and the longer I stand here the greater the odds that I get sniped. I've got basically no health, which seems to be the case for most of the other players. A couple good shots will take out anyone, from what I've seen.

Speaking of, I sneak up on a Vanu sniper and she doesn't realize I'm there. One good blast later and...

...whoa, I reach level 2 from my first kill. That's cool, I like when games start rewarding the player early and often.

I stop to admire the view from this perch. Wonder what planet that is. It's likely that this takes place on the moon of a gas gia-

NO SOMEONE JUMPED ME THE SAME WAY

I WAS JUST LOOKING AT THE PLANETS

Penuseus sets out for vengeance. That'll do it for me though. This game seems very standard, even a bit generic. The graphics are some of the lowest-res I've seen on the PS4 and, no joke, look like they belong on the PS3. I was hoping that this beta would wow me quickly right out of the gate by giving me some interesting alien climates/terrain to run around in, but instead I got... a field. Going to pass on this one, I think.