Review of Planetside: Core Combat

Expansion packs provoke a certain dark dread in the heart of a hardened gaming veteran. Despite their enthusiasm for more stuff, anyone who has suffered through a buggy release shudders with horror recalling bugged skills, missing items, and servers that crash every few minutes as everyone signs in to see all the new stuff. While most expansion packs are nothing more than a round of bugfixes with some nifty new art, a few actually manage to bring completely new life to their mother game. Core Combat is in the middle: not quite earth shaking, but a step above the usual "new coat of paint" release.

At its soul, Planetside is still the same. Battles are still about hordes of soldiers in colorful uniforms shooting at each other. The vehicles are still a heady mix of function, form, and firepower. Charging a base packed full of enemies with a hundred of your closest friends, gunfire roaring through your speakers, aircraft zooming overhead, is still the best shooter experience known to man. Fights for individual bases still swell to epic proportions. Were there still warrior-poets, bards would sing of the glorious Battle for the Chac Technology Plant, even though it may change hands a half dozen times over the course of the day.

The core formula is still intact: kill people, break things, and take stuff. Combine that tasty original recipe with just the right herbs and spices-in the form of new vehicles, new weapons, and new war zones to fight over-and you have a succulent dish with all the flavor of the old and the added zing of the new.

The "Core Combat" name comes from the new killing grounds: six huge underground areas at, presumably, the "core" of the planet. These new areas also include underground cities, a drastic change from the open-field nature of above ground play. While in most expansions, old areas empty quickly as players flock to the new areas, that is not the case here. The aboveground game is still packed with players fighting over bases. Core Combat is more a supplement than a replacement and Planetside is all the better for it.

New vehicles based on spooky-ooky alien technology are the most exciting addition. With the addition of the Flail hovertank-cum-self-propelled howitzer, combatants can experience the thrill of mobile artillery bombardment. Artillery has been a neglected concept in the MMO market and it is nice to see the cannon cockers finally get their due. The most nifty new vehicle is the Switchblade, a fast moving ATV type vehicle mounting an energy cannon for hard-hitting, fast-moving strikes. In its other mode, the Switchblade can be deployed in one spot as a fixed turret, which increases its rate of fire, and then undeployed and driven to the next battle. Lastly, there's a teleport pad vehicle called the Router, which allows for rapid deployment and makes all the tromping across the landscape less tedious.

Three new weapons round out the package. A new energy pistol charges in intensity as the trigger is held down, making for some wicked surprises. The Radiator shoots a radiation grenade that irradiates a particular spot, making players who move through it take damage. Finally, there's a taste of Ghostbusters in the Maelstrom Heavy Assault rifle, which shoots a stream of nasty stuff that does damage as long as it is in contact with a bad guy. Just don't cross the streams. It would be bad.

Overall, it is a satisfying and delicious addition to the game, with one downside. The new underground areas are ghost towns. A tumbleweed rolled through while I was sauntering around, checking out the beautifully designed, but completely empty areas. The occasional friendly or enemy would pop up, but it was far from the packed battles above ground. This may be remedied as players move in later, but the reason to buy the pack now is for the new weapons and vehicles.