What an absolute shame this is. Already I am having to say goodbye to Planetside 2. I was really starting to like the game, and was playing this morning and having a good old time in an abolutely massive battle defending the Allatum Bio Lab from both the TR and the Vanu. Then suddenly some jerk TR player starts mowing us all down even though we can not see him and even though we are standing in our shielded spawn area, supposedly a safe zone. The chat box goes into action as people realise the guy is running 3rd party cheating software.
So I look on the web and discover that cheaters using these tools are all over the place in this game, and spoiling it for everyone. I even found some Youtube footage of several of these arseholes using these tools, which automatically aim for them, allow them to run incredibly fast, and allow them to shoot through walls. Fully explains some of the things that I thought were bugs yesterday, though.

Apparently Sony are working hard to combat this, hunting down cheaters and banning them, but in a free to play game there'll be nothing they can do, as those players will just start another account. The only way this will be stopped is to patch the game with updates that will no longer allow this kind of thing to happen. In fact I'm shocked the game was even released in this state, as these same types of software were also used in the beta test. I fully blame Sony for this, not the cheaters. They should never have put this game out there in such a vulnerable state, and until they fix it, there is no chance I'll be going back to it.

Well done, fools.

Last few days have been playing a bit of Planetside 2, and am quite enjoying it. Getting used to it is taking a great deal of effort, though. I've just never really been into FPS-type games that much, and can count the FPS games I've played on one hand (Duke Nukem 3D, Dark Forces, Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament 2004), so am not really that skillful at them. The first few times I logged in it was just for 10-20 mins each time, just trying to get used to the game and failing miserably. This is because the game is much larger in its scope and scale than the typical FPS I've played in the past, and there are many new mechanics to learn that I've not had to deal with before, even simple things like aiming down sights and sprinting. Add in that the majority of other players on this game are very good, having probably played it through beta and the last couple of weeks since the game's release, and you can see why I had trouble to begin with. Indeed, I ran around like a nutter and got killed 22 times before I even killed anyone in return.

Since then though I've slowly been picking it up. Been playing mostly as the heavy assault class, as the shield gives me a little bit more survivability and stops me from dying so fast (sometimes). Even so, going head to head against most enemy players leaves me a bloody pool on the floor, as I just haven't got used to the recoil on the guns yet, and my accuracy is total pants (currently 14%). Most of my successes have come from out thinking and out positioning the opponents, and in some cases I've been the sneakier sneak when in combat with enemy infiltrators. Again though, even when I sneak up on them, many good players can react and gun me down faster than I can kill them, something which is getting rather annoying.
Never mind though. I am currently on 80 kills and 152 deaths, which is a much better ratio than the 0 and 22 I started with.

The game is far from just running around killing enemies though. It's mostly about teamwork as you try and wrestle territory from the opposing two factions, something which my faction, the NC, do not seem to be very good at from what I've seen so far. We mainly just run around in mobs of various sizes and hope we do something useful. Personally, I have most trouble with TR players. They kill me til I'm dead so fast it shouldn't be allowed. And they always seem pretty organized too. Bastards. The Vanu so far seem much easier to take out.

It's hard to get interesting screenshots when you are in the middle of a firefight:

Like any game, it is not without its bugs. The ones I've seen have mostly involved the Flash quad bike. Several times I've seen them wizz passed me with invisible riders, and in one case I accidentally flipped mine over then stood back and watched with amusement as it flopped around like a fish out of water. Weird.
Also, people with laggy connections jump around all over the place making them very hard to aim at, and many times I have been killed when people have shot me through solid metal walls or rocks. WTF?