Recent reviews by Furbag

Of all the survival multiplayer games currently available on the PC, Rust is definetly the best one by far. That doesn't make it a good game. It's far from perfect. All of the games in this genre play like unfinished, buggy piles of ♥♥♥♥. But if you had to pick one to play this one is the best choice.

When I think of games with so much wasted potential, invariably Planetside 2 always springs to mind. I played in the Beta a few months before release, and I can honestly say that the game I played during beta was great, but could stand for some serious improvements to the core gameplay mechanics.

To this day, I'm still wondering why the developers feel the need to fill the game with more *stuff*, rather than actually making the gameplay meaningful and engaging on a level beyond just "shoot everything except your own guys".

The history of the Planetside 2 development cycle is both tragic and predictable. The minute SoE go their hands on the title, it was game over. These are the same developers who are well known to produce low quality MMOs that never live up to their promises or expectations and are subsequently mismanaged and driven into the ground. Other than the fact that they made Planetside 1, which has suffered a similar fate as it's successor, I can't fathom why anybody would put trust into these people to develop AAA titles. The bright side to this is that SoE are now out of the picture, forever banished to the mobile development market where they belong, and Daybreak Games has come in to clean up the mess (and they are doing a remarkably good job at maintaining the status quo, rather than make the game better or worse than it already is). Same company, just a new coat of paint.

So the game is released and people complaint that there isn't enough faction variance. The factions all feel too "same-ish", and there are probles with faction imbalance on many servers. So they add a bunch of stuff to the game like new guns and new vehicles that just makes the balance issue even worse. Their solution to the balance problems are always "nerf it until harmless", so you never feel like you have an edge, even with force multipliers like tanks and heavy bombers, you die in seconds to infantry who are the most overpowered and versatile by a longshot.

The development team was incapable of balancing soloplay and teamplay at the same time. Every fight devolves into either a few scattered soldiers fighting over an inconsequential outpost in the middle of nowhere, or a massive zerg ball that steamrolls over everything in it's path without regard to strategy or tactics.

The implementation of the lattice system and mission objectives have exacerbated the problem with zergfests and noobtrains, as 4th factioning became more important than faction identity (one of the few things PS1 did correctly was not allowing you to play on a character that did not belong to the same faction as your current active soldier for 8 hours after you log out).

In short, the game is fun, but shallow. This isn't 2006 - you can't make a game that masqerades as "massive multiplayer" and not have anything you do ever matter or change the playing field. The game might actually improve a bit if DBG ever follows through with the creation of battle islands so that you can have small scale engagements with a clear winner and loser. Ideally, they should ditch the campy pseudo-MMO style and try to encourage teamwork, strategy and squad-based gameplay that rewards players with something tangible for completing a goal that could reaistically be done in a single play session.

Pros:

* Fun infantry battles sometimes, if you can find them. Play in a squad with friends who have microphones for best results.

* Excellent UI.

* Great selection of unlockables in their cash shop, and you can buy all non-cosmetic items with money you earn in game. The cosmetic items, especially the community created ones, are great and actually worth paying for, but are quite costly for what you get.

* Really good outfit/clan support structure - easy to manage and coordinate large groups of players.

Cons:

* Poor balance mostly caused by faction differences, but not always logical.

* Resource system is terrible and doesn't solve the issues it's supposed to (chain-pulling vehicles, spamming explosives, etc.)

* Spawn mechanics can sometimes be frustrating - both when you are getting farmed in your respawn location unable to push out and fight back, and when you are trying to take a base and the enemies hide behind their spawn shields and take pot shots at you.

* Lack of any sort of overarching goal or endgame objective. Nobody ever "wins" or "loses" anything, you only have personal victory to look forward to. This encourages the kind of player who derives enjoyment from useless metrics like "Kills per Minute" or "Most kills in a single life", and discourages teamwork.

* Gameplay these days is mostly dominated by MLG wannabes who cheese using game mechanics that really shouln't exist at all (sololibs, skywhales, rocket primaries, "redeployside", etc.). Extremely toxic community outside of the game itself.

* Aircraft have extremely unforgiving learning curve. Has always been the easiest way to farm infantry kills, but the skies are dominated by aces that have thousands of hours played and spent solely piloting attack fighters.

* Blatant hackers and cheaters are a serious problem. I'm talking about people who fly across the map, noclip through everything and have 100% accuracy with 100% headshots using an LMG. It takes the CSRs days to ban these guys, and since the game is F2P, they can just make another account and keep doing it until they get hardware banned.

* Buggy and glitchy graphics and LOD processing. You can be hit by players who haven't rendered on your screen yet - a problem that has plagued the game since day 1 and has never been addressed.

Closing Statement: The game is free, so you have nothing to lose, but I would avoid spending any cash in the cash shop if I were you. Don't get your hopes up that new features, new battlegrounds, or new *anything* will be released anytime soon. If you want to jump in a game and shoot things, Planetside 2 might be for you, but you could do that is just about any modern FPS without having to deal with the issue of learning where to go and what to do. A large time initial time investment is required before you fully understand how the game actually works, and when you do finally understand it you might already be bored or frustrated and want to quit anyway.

A very fun hack-and-slash side scrolling game that mixes impressive visuals with an engaging story. It's hard to believe the game was made entirely by one person (and a few friends who lent their voice talents). I would highly reccomend this game to anybody who enjoys sidescrollers, big combos, or swordfighting games.

Also furries :3

Probably the best F2P game you will ever play. An extremely polished product, the frequent content updates, and engaging hack-and-slash and shoot-'em-up style gameplay gives it a sort of charm that will make you want to jump in and play it again months after you've become bored with it