I got Beta, my little review...

[2coasts]

I finally broke down and paid whorespy 6 dollars for the fileplanet month membership to get it, I've never felt so dirty, but it was well worth it...

First I have to say that I was relieved that the game runs on my system, and runs fine on medium with little slowdown (i only have 900mhz), graphically its not Tribes2, but it gets the job done.

Which brings me to my second and last complaint, the handling of some of the vehicles. These are not finely-tuned pieces of equiptment, now I say this, and maybe I just havn't tweaked the controls enough, but it seems to me that the air vehicles dont work well with a joystick, and the fast ground vehicles down work well with the keypad. On the ground, things likethe buggy do not steer well because any tap of the left or right key sends the car far too much to that direction. Slower vehicles however handle fine.

The game is great in that, you can go into a huge battle, I was in one today with atleast a hundred people, probably much more, and you can hook up with a squad of any size, and have a fun social experience with them. In my experience, this is easiest and works best with small groups, maybe 3 or so. That way you can always tell where they are, perhaps even you can all go out in the same tank or something.
If your in a large squad, its fine and all when your out in the middle of know where attacking isolated bases, but when you get into a large battle you tend to get broken up, with the respawns and all. It just goes to show the versatility Planetside has in as much as even allowing the casual gamer to jump in and have fun.

The pase of the game is just right I would say. I was pleasently surprised to find that the bases are reasonably close to each other, you can drive from one to the next in under a minute. This means that travel is still an element, and is just to the point where you wouldnt want to walk, but it is not a huge part of the game. Battles can be small with just a few players fighting over isolated towers to massive battles, such as the one that raged in Cyssor (sp?) today over the center island base. This battle had been raging for a good 4 hours by the time I signed off for the night.

Battles tend to be either hugely compacted inside bases, with one team sieging and bombarding from outside and the other trying the fight the carnage from within, or out in the open field. Terrain certainly has a huge impact on how battles play out, and with 10 continents im sure theres lots of veriety. I have not yet seen battles between convoys of vehicles, I havent actually seen any convoys of vehicles yet, but I assume they will appear as squads and outfits become more organized.