Recent reviews by Hinsonator

A fun classic, easy to learn and hard to master.

The Bad:

- An outdated default binding, change the arrow keys to the W A S and D keys for movement.

The Middle Ground:

=

The Good

+ As stated in the summery, this game is easy to learn and hard to master.

+ The game engine's art style really makes the game look good.

+ The game runs really well and stable on modern systems.

+ The game has alot of maps to play on.

I LOVE this game, it's everything i love about the simpler side of PC gaming with fast paced gameplay and alot of potential replayability thanks to the game being very simple.

The Bad:

- The game has a point near the beginning of a run where the difficulty suddenly spikes, around when the big hives and the big floating spider spawns that grabs all the dropped score crystals get introduced which IMO doesn't give anywhere near enough relative to the size of the score crystal on his face that you shoot and how much of a potential problem he can be. It isn't much of an issue when you play the game a few times but for newbies it will catch you off guard.

- Jumping in this game is pointless in this game, it basically acts as a way to move faster as there's very little vertical movement problem is though strafing side to side while moving forward works just as well and you won't get hit in the head by a stray passing skull. This is more of a personal issue than something i'd consider bad though.

- The simple gameplay sandbox and punishing difficulty has the potential to off put most people, especially thanks to that aforementioned spike in difficulty.

The Middle Ground:

= The game has the potential to be polarising, you either love it or hate it thanks to the simple design and punishing difficulty thanks to the fact you have only 1, yes 1 health point and when you lose that it's straight back to the start. The devs have thankfully given you the convenience of skipping the intro where you pick up the dagger at the beginning when you die but when you start from the menu you still have to pick it up.

= The game is really fast paced, stop moving for even a second and you could end up being eaten by one of the enemies that are tailing you.

The Good:

+ This cannot be stated enough, the game is simple, like, really simple, as a result it is really easy to pick up and play if you can get past the, again can't be stated enough, brutal difficulty.

+ The enemies have been surprisingly well thought out given how simple the game is, giving you a real reason to think about which enemies you take out first.

*DISCLAIMER* I have not played this game in a while so some of the information such as performance issues could be out of date thanks to the update to the Microsoft DirectX implementation.

I don't think the game is worth playing for fans of the first game or games like it as the gameplay sandbox lacks any focus and the incredibly toxic community, especially when you bring up the first game.

The Good:

+ The game is well thought out on a base level even when compared to Planetside 1, even if it is greatly simplified in comparison, the layouts of the bases feel more varied (you aren't fighting in the same feeling bases outside a certain theme (the regular and AT bases)), the gameplay is fast paced and has the potential (we'll come back to that in a bit) to be just as skill based as PS (i'll be calling PS1 just PS for this review and we'll talk about that further down)

+ The game looks and sounds good, from the texture work to the models for players, buildings and equipment to the sound design, with the music being just as good as the original.

+ The game feels fast paced with how the map flows with how unpredictable it can be, any base that's connected to one another can be captured. No, PS2 shills, we aren't acknowledging the attempt to pander to PS vets by introducing a lattice link system, the game was much better back then.

The Middle Ground:

= The flight mechanics can take a little getting used to, especially in combat. If you want to stay alive in flight be prepared leaving your flyers stock with the non-weapon modules is a bad idea and go engineer just so you can repair the damage when you land if the pad can't for you.

= The game is class based, while i have complained about it as when going back to PS as I prefer the loadout system from that game, it works well in the sandbox it finds itself in.

The Bad

- The gameplay doesn't have much focus for what it wants to be in some places and in others it has too much of a focus, an example with too much of a focus would be with the weapon part of the sandbox as it feels like there's too much of a focus as most of the weapons are minor stat changes with very little focus on unique weapons instead of applying those changes with mods and attachments. Another example would be the base building, while it is well thought out in it's own right it feels obviously tacked on and not in a good way especially with the desperate attempts to force team work by being very stingy with the building limits.

- The performance issues when running the game on higher details can be an issue if you want to enjoy said details, this condition as likely been improved as of the updated MS DX implementation.

- The community is really, really, toxic.

How so? You may ask given how the forums on Steam are. Well, you have people excusing the poor performance and trying to explain that it doesn't scale that well thanks to the fact the game used to use DX 9. They also seem to have an obsessive hatred for the first game for some reason, going so far as to refuse to acknowledge it's existence claiming that PS2 is truly the first of it's kind and even going out of their way to call PS2 simply PS, due to the toxicity of the console wars i blame the port for this issue. I also suspect the port beggers are also cheating to try and get people to try out the port, not realising that people that play this game aren't going to get a console to try out a relatively cheater free version of the game and they'll likely just play something else instead. They also like to defend the poor design choices and refuse to acknowledge the cheaters, even if there aren't many and they're really bad claiming that you just suck at the game.

- Time to kill is Way too fast, and Planetside had the opposite problem just not as bad and the solution is the exact same just in reverse and not as harsh of a correction. To make problems worse however, those exact same toxic shills just tell you to get good if you point it out.