E3 2012 Roundup

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Awards

GamerLive.tv - #1 in Top 5 PC Games of E3

PlanetSide 2 made its big debut during E3 and we couldn’t get enough of the game. Graphics are top notch, scale is massive and the amount of content you’re getting is staggering. There are so many options you can attack it’s almost absurd

Massively - MMO of the show

Sure there were fancier booths, and shooters may not be your cup of tea, but PS2's gameplay nonetheless stands out from the crowd.

Game Informer - Best of Show

I already knew I was on board with Planetside 2’s persistent warfare that puts everyone in the same world without splitting up into 16-, 32-, or even 64-player matches. The foremost question on my mind was whether it could deliver the kind of pixel-perfect shooter gameplay that any Call of Duty or Battlefield player expects. My hat is off to Sony Online, because I wouldn’t have known I was playing an MMO-scale title, with hundreds of players fighting dozens of skirmishes in a three-way war spanning multiple continents, from how good it felt to vaporize my enemies with hand weapons, vehicles, and aircraft alike.

Gamespy - Best Shooter, Best Free-to-Play, and Best PC Exclusive

PlanetSide 2 made such an impression on us from the first moment we laid hands on it that we've declared it the Best Shooter, Best Free-to-Play Game, and Best PC-Exclusive Game of E3 2012. How did it become our most-decorated game? Simple: where most shooters go to great lengths to create the illusion that we're part of huge war raging around us, PlanetSide 2 actually creates the war.

MMORPG.com - Game of Show

There were also nominations from Destructoid, Machinima, G4TV, Ten Ton Hammer, GamingExcellence, Original-Gamer, GameRant and GamingXP.

Beta

Curse and FPS General had an exclusive interview with Josh Hackney, Executive Producer for PlanetSide 2. Josh talks about their various external data services and apps. He also reveals that in the next few weeks they will start letting folks trickle into beta.

E3 2012 Trailer

Live Stream Recordings

SOE PlanetSide 2 Demo

Interviews

PikiGeek Interview with Matt Higby

What began as a conversation about his favorite part of Planetside 2 became an in-depth discussion about the his own breakthrough into the games industry, Sony’s culture of fostering internal talent, and the importance of involvement from the fan community in game development. Read on for some insight into the one of the main men bringing you Planetside 2, or if you just want to read about a director who’s doing it right.

IGN Interview with Matt Higby

Gamespot Interview with Matt Higby.

Josh Hackney Interview on the iOS App

Previews

Game Zone Preview

Besides being free to play, one of the more unique aspects of this game is the customization offered in both cosmetics and gameplay functionality. You have the options to make your character’s armor look how you want it to from a design point a view. Once you’re comfortable with how it looks, you can change the colors and patterns. This level of cosmetic customization doesn’t end with your characters though; you apply paint jobs and patterns to your vehicles to make them stand out. Everyone fears the giraffe patterns on the battlefield after all.

The Verge Preview

I cannot remember the last time I was so hesitant to get up from an E3 appointment than I was when my hands-on PlanetSide 2 demo came to an end.



It's partially because I had just gotten my loadouts the way I wanted them — much like a beaten-down piece of college-era furniture, I had worked myself into a "groove" of sorts, and I was reluctant to abandon it. Mostly, though, it's because my PlanetSide 2 demo was instantly and incredibly fun. The learning curve for controlling each of the free-to-play FPS's classes took only a few deaths, but even more surprising: The curve for actually becoming pretty good at the game took just a few more.

GameTrailers.com E3 Hands-on

Vagary.tv E3 Hands-on

After I dropped from orbit in a robotic mech suit to unload a heavy machine gun and flamethrower on the enemies supressing my buddies, I remember how much I missed the original Planetside.

GameSpy.com Free to Play Version 2.0

With PlanetSide 2, a sci-fi shooter in a persistent online world where hundreds of players will simultaneously do battle, Higby and his team will attempt to raise the F2P bar even higher. It all adds up to a seismic shift in gaming that's great for gamers and developers alike.

Game Review.com Preview

On top of these three different empires with their six different classes, you have a multitude of vehicles you can also use. The maps are quite enormous and getting around quickly is quite beneficial. You have small ground vehicles that will take you around the map quickly as well as massive ground units that can move many of your teammates at once. Less mobile but more damaging are the battletanks. It is this vehicle where you can best notice how each empire has different units. The Terrans have a standard military tank, where the New Conglomerate has a more agile but more piecemeal tank. The Vanu use their alien tech to have hovertanks which gives them access to a tank that can strafe while firing.

MMORPG.com Hands-on Preview

I mostly ran around as a Heavy Assault class. The Heavy Assault is basically an assault rifle wielding class that also carries a heavy weapon, in my case, a rocket launcher that can lock onto enemy vehicles. I did try flying for a bit, but it takes me awhile to get used to inverted controls and I didn’t want to waste my time crashing over and over, so I decided to just run around on foot and take out any air vehicles that I could lock onto and hit. Fortunately for pilots, it’s not a simple task for a single infantryman to take out an air vehicle. Lighter vehicles like the Mosquito can turbo-boost and dodge some of your missiles or outright avoid them by deploying countermeasures. Massive dropships, such as the Galaxy, can outright take a full payload of your rockets and truck along.

Curse.com Preview

PlanetSide 2, free-to-play shooter/MMO hybrid, is being worked on by FPS professionals, including some of the experts behind CoD. Here's what's cooking over at their E3 booth this week! Maps will span up to 64 square KM and boast a high focus on territory/node control. These control points are fluidly lost and obtained, and benefit a faction by generating resources, allowing vehicle spawns, and essentially producing in-game currency to be spent by a faction on gear, upgrades, etc.

Gamebreaker.tv Preview

For a lot of people the wait for Planetside 2 has been a long one. And it’s not over yet. But GAMEBREAKER’s Gary Gannon is at E3 and managed to get some hands-on time with the game.

PC Gamer has posted a PlanetSide 2 Preview that touched on many different points. They also talked about seeing a mobile iOS app that will allow you to view realtime data from in game as well as join voice channels.

I say this as someone with a general distaste for mobile tie-ins and parallel apps, but SOE showed off a genuinely impressive PS2 iOS/Android/web app that, in addition to serving as a wiki for weapons and faction information, shows territory control in real-time and allows you to join VOIP channels without being in-game.

Check out the full preview here.

Giveaways

The PlanetSide 2 Facebook page has launched a new Recruit Center Application! In the application you get to choose your empire, character name, and then you can invite friends and work on various missions. Some of which include sharing screenshots.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over to Facebook and start your outfit.

SOE is giving away beta keys on Facebook and Twitter!

Make sure to like us on Facebook and Twitter and then come back every half an hour on the hour for another chance to win!

Be sure to like PlanetSide 2 on Facebook and follow @PlanetSide2 on Twitter for your chance!

SOE also has a contest open for E3 Swag on Facebook!