How To Murder Time

1.8GB of patient downloading later, Game Update 4 for Planetside 2 arrived. I have to say, SOE are really earning their wages with the update schedule of this thing, cracking on with many and significant improvements month by month since release, to a game that didn’t even launch that broken in the first place.

You can find the full patch notes here:

PS2 Official Forums: GU4 Patch Notes

Loads of things there as usual, but the big headline item is the new VR Training Area, which I’ve already had a run about in and think is genius. Accessible from the Warp Terminal screen as a small button beneath the islands, this takes you to a Star Trek Holodeck inspired mini zone containing terminals, shooting ranges, a large bit of Indar-Greenery style terrain to drive and fly about on, and even a practice Watchtower structure in one corner. Apparently, it even has a Quad Bike racing course, which as yet is incomplete, but Soon…

Continue reading →

Two guns for my newest favourite Planetside 2 vehicle, the Galaxy. The Galaxy is a highly situational choice; a twelve-man troop transport VTOL aircraft and is very iconic, being a firm favourite from the first game. Unless you just want to use it as a flying kamikaze bomb to burn up otherwise unwanted Aerospace resources, you’ll want at least five crew for this plane to get the most out of it; a pilot and four gunners. Seven additional passengers can be loaded for the full 11-man paradrop on target facilities, and the whole paradrop thing is the Galaxy’s primary purpose – rapid redeployment across awkward or distant terrain. Everyone except the pilot is protected from falling damage when jumping from this plane, at any height. Static and regular squads should be looking to have a few members practice and pimp their Galaxies to increase squad mobility in general. To beat the Acquisition Timers and Resource Costs, have several Galaxy Pilots work in rotation.

The secondary purpose of the plane is a bit more hit and miss; the ‘Galaxy Gunship’ concept from PS1. With all armaments upgraded from the stock M20 Drake average-at-everything heavy machine guns, can the Galaxy become a potent offensive unit in its own right?

Continue reading →

Planetside 2 continues to entertain, and like most of these MMOs for me these days, seems to shine as a venue for good friends to have quite casual social hijinks of an average evening. Some of us are better than others at the whole shooty shooty thing, but there’s a good general atmosphere on Mumble in the Fire Rounds Rapid outfit of which I seem to have become somewhat in charge of.

We’re there to have fun, of course, but there is an actual game going on too, and I’m slowly learning what is involved in leading a squad in PS2. One of the great and unique selling points of PS2 over, say Borderlands, Halo or Battlefield 19-whatever is the sheer scale of the fighting. These are really large maps, with a LOT of participants, dozens at any given base and likely thousands overall. Making some kind of sense of it all is very much part of squad leading. Continue reading →