Anyone who's played Tribes will be immediately familiar with PlanetSide, as it copies much of the gameplay style. That's not to say it's a complete knock-off; PlanetSide has plenty of unique features to set it apart from Tribes. If you've never played Tribes, here's a summary of what you'll be getting in PlanetSide.

In a war-torn future, three sides are fighting for control of the planet Auraxis. You have the iron-fisted Terran Republic, the freedom-loving New Conglomerate and the technology-obsessed Vanu Sovereignty. Each side shares vehicles, weapons and equipment from a common pool while retaining a few of their own special items. The Vanu, for example, eschew common track vehicles for anti-gravity transportation, which gives them a distinct advantage in heavy armor. A good example of this difference is the Vanu Magrider, an anti-gravity tank that can float across areas that would trap standard tracked tanks, giving the Vanu more flexibility when crossing mixed terrain.

When you launch a game on a server you haven't played yet, you'll need to set up a new character. All characters start out the same, pulling from a generic collection of facial features and voices. Your choice of side is the one option that can give you an immediate advantage depending on the condition of the server you're heading to. If a server is hurting for players from a specific side, you'll be given an experience boost during gameplay should you choose to play the underdogs. Once you've chosen a side, however, there's no switching, so be sure it's the one you'll want to play for months to come, since the only option for switching sides will be to start over with a new character.

PlanetSide is the first FPS to take on the qualities of an RPG. That is, your character will become better (hopefully) the more you play by earning experience from combat. The combat experience points raise your overall combat rank, and when you increase a full rank, you'll earn certification points. By applying these certification points to a skill, your character will learn to handle heavy weapons, drive vehicles, perform medic duties and/or act as a combat engineer. There are plenty of skills available in PlanetSide, and since there are no predefined character classes, you can make up whatever type of character you like, so long as you have the certification points for it. A commonly seen mix is the Stealth Hacker, which is a systems hacker wearing an Infiltration Suit (cloaking armor). This character slips invisibly into enemy bases and hacks their systems, converting them to his side. Stick around Auraxis long enough, and you'll see some wild combinations of skills, from invisible tank drivers to armored assault medics.

Outside of the character development system, PlanetSide plays as a pretty standard FPS, with you and your enemies hunting down one another in the quest to capture the most bases. It's a constant game of capture and recapture, which can get insanely tedious if you're a goal-oriented gamer. Since it's a persistent online world, you can log in one day and capture several bases, then log in again a few days later to find your entire empire is on the run. This game of give and take gets old after awhile, and is the key weakness in PlanetSide.

While the game has a richly developed character system, the basic premise of the game is a little too thin to keep most MMO players interested for more than a few weeks. I sincerely hope Sony will develop actual scenarios or battle campaigns for a more focused gameplay experience. If there was some goal-oriented gameplay, PlanetSide would find a much broader audience. As it stands, a good percentage of its players will probably drop off after a few weeks of "lather, rinse and repeat" warfare. Due to the lack of real focus in the gameplay, you'll find plenty of confused solo players hoping to join a Squad or Outfit assuming that such an action will give them some sense of purpose.

Speaking of joining Squads, it's an absolute necessity if you expect to enjoy PlanetSide. Being a typical online multiplayer title, PlanetSide practically requires that you form Squads and Outfits to get the most from the game. Solo players die quickly. Let me repeat that: solo players die quickly! You need to join a Squad ASAP when you enter the world of PlanetSide.

Squads, the basic group unit in the game, are groups of gamers who play together to share experience and help each other out. Anyone can form a Squad through the simple grouping interface, though it can be tough to find a Squad at times. Some games, I've had dozens of people asking me to join their Squads. Other times, I've spent two hours looking for someone, anyone, who's started a Squad. Oftentimes, it seems everyone wants to be part of a Squad, but nobody wants to start one. I cannot stress how important being part of a Squad is, as you share experience points from kills (helping you level up much more quickly than if you go it alone) and work to complement each others skill-sets. Without a Squad, you're a walking target in PlanetSide.

Squads are not persistent, which means the minute you log out, the Squad is disbanded. If you want something more permanent, you'll need to join an Outfit. Outfits are groups of players who may not always be in the same Squad but want to work together in a more coordinated fashion. An Outfit, unlike a Squad, stays intact, even when members are not logged in. Being part of an Outfit makes it easier to form new Squads and stay in contact with your favorite PlanetSide players. Outfits also can assign themselves a special logo, which will appear on all vehicles owned by members of that Outfit, which is a pretty cool thing to see. It adds a nice level of detail to a game that can often feel generic. A recently added feature called My PlanetSide allows players to go to a website (www.myplanetside.com) and check out the stats of their Outfit and their characters, which makes you feel more like you're part of a team, and less like someone just logging in for some cheap fragging fun.

PlanetSide is still suffering from the growing pains you see in many new massively multiplayer online (MMO) titles. Frequent disconnects, lag and abandoned players can make the game terribly frustrating at times, and while Sony's working furiously at squashing all the bugs, it's still annoying as hell to suffer a freeze-up in the midst of a heated battle. During one extended review session, I was killed no fewer than 10 times in four minutes (yes, I timed it) due to freeze ups as soon as I entered the game. Since my connection runs buttery smooth in all other MMOs and online console titles, I can only presume it's a problem with the game itself. And judging by forum posts and discussions with players worldwide, I'm sure this is a PlanetSide issue.

Also, while strong on the teamwork side, PlanetSide still needs a method for quickly gathering up your Squad mates for battle. As it stands, you might form a Squad only to find out its members are spread over four continents. This causes you to spend the better part of an hour gathering everyone together. The game could really use a "recall and regroup" option, perhaps something that instantly sends all the Squad members to a safe haven chosen by the Squad leader.

During the Beta phase, PlanetSide wasn't the prettiest game around, and that caused a lot of people to pass it up. Now that it's shipped, it's definitely a looker. Where once there was a flat, flavorless world, there's now a shadowed, textured and fully fleshed-out landscape of hills, mountains, valleys and forests. I was surprised to find that the developers have added a few new touches, such as potted plants inside bases, which serve to amp up the realism. Weapon effects have also been greatly improved, allowing you to realize the difference between a bullet and a laser blast as it tears through your armor.

Due to the increased graphics, PlanetSide will suck up all the power your video card has available and keep asking for more. While the requirements state you only need a 32MB video card, you'll really need at least 64MB of video memory to get the most out of the game. Don't try playing it with anything less, unless you like throttling the graphics settings to "low" and playing in a polygonal, texture-free world.

I do wish that the developers had taken the time to increase the realism of the world by adding some living elements. While there are trees and water, there are no fish, birds or other animals that would make you feel like you were fighting on a living, breathing world. Birds, for example, could serve as an early-warning system: as an enemy unit moves through the forest, flocks of birds could spin wildly overhead, giving your spotters some tactical info. Sadly, this doesn't exist, so a forest stands as nothing more than a way to slow down armored units.

Zip! Bang! Boom! All the classic FPS sounds are evident in PlanetSide, and they're none too shabby either. Every weapon and vehicle has a distinct sound, so it's pretty easy to tell what units might be headed your way, or what weapons the enemy is using against you. There are, however, only about a half-dozen voices, all limited to pre-set phrases such as "I need a hacker," which can get annoying when you play with the guy who just can't stop firing off the macro for it.

The musical score moves between action and drama, both of which are good, but nothing you'll go crazy over. The developers were wise enough to limit the appearances of the music, so you don't hear an overture when you're trying to dole out commands to your Squad.

MMOs are designed to be infinitely replayable thanks to the changes brought about by thousands of gamers playing in a living universe. While this works for most online titles, it's not as well implemented in PlanetSide. Due to the lack of any goals (besides "go take that base/tower"), the game gets tiring after a few weeks. It's fun to form Squads and go capture some bases, but you'll find that you can only retake a base so many times before you can't stand it any more. Since all bases are generic, there's no reason to capture them in any sort of order, so gameplay consists of you hopping between continents and capturing any base that suits your fancy and can exist within your system of command and control. If the bases actually meant something to the controlling empire, it might be more enjoyable. Just as an example, many bases can be used for vehicle construction once captured. It would be far more interesting if only certain bases could build certain vehicles, while other bases functioned as repair and refuel centers, and others functioned as troop barracks.

For those players who just like to jump in and blow things up, PlanetSide has plenty of replay value. But if you're a goal-gamer like me, you'll probably give up after a few weeks of the frustrating "capture-recapture" gameplay. When you're just capturing for capturing's sake, you'll find yourself soon longing for some sort of scenario.

As a whole, PlanetSide shows a whole lot of promise. For FPS fans, it takes their favorite genre and throws some RPG elements in. The variety of vehicles, skills and armor certainly help to deepen the overall game, but the shallow "take that hill (base)" gameplay can get tedious. The technical issues can really drag down the gameplay experience, but it's obvious that PlanetSide is a work in progress and getting better every week, if not every day.

Sony's taking PlanetSide very seriously, and as such, we should see overall improvements to the gameplay balance, technical issues and, I hope, the gameplay itself over the coming months. I would love to see a special server/world wherein gamers could team up to accomplish specific goals and build structures that serve a purpose greater than that of a capture target. I'd also like to see the gameplay beefed up to the point where there's a real strategic feel to it, rather than people just joining Squads and shooting at one another.

To Sony, I say this: "Give us supply convoys to protect, refueling stations for our tanks and some animals in the environments, and then we'll stick around for more than a few weeks." Buy I could be wrong; heck, there are thousands of people playing this game as your read this, so there's obviously a market for the current gameplay in PlanetSide. I just think it could be better.