Tag Archive

Planetside: The 1%

Written by Quintin Smith on September 5, 2008.

Planetside, then. Do I have any veterans in the audience? At ease, gentlemen.

It might not have dredged up the subscribers Sony were hoping for, and you personally might have found it a disappointment, a bully, a bastard, or most unforgivably, a bore. The developers were perhaps overambitious, and in any case they managed to screw up both on paper and in practice. But their game has achieved one beautiful thing, and that’s the creation of the same invisible veterans’ club that results from a real life war. If you played Planetside you might have already encountered this phenomenon- the mutual respect that instantly exists once you find out someone’s an ex-Planetside player. Since I can’t think of a name for this whole process, I’m going to dub it “I WAS THERE, MAN” syndrome.
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Brave Old World: Remember Huxley?

Written by Alec Meer on June 3, 2008.

Back in the dim and distant past, anyone who was anyone and had a (for the time) pornographic amount of RAM was playing Planetside - the MMOFPS that was surely surely the bright future of PC gaming. Actual FPS, not vague cursor aiming and damage based on your stats - it was about reflex and precision, and military tactics.

Four years later, we’re not playing it any more. Well, some of you probably are, but we Men of RPS at least lament for a dream lost.
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