Van Hemlock

Sure enough, Planetside saw the previously mentioned Halloween rules applied to one of the Battle Islands last night, and I did indeed get to have a go. A curious experience, to say the least.

The only equipment allowed in play consisted of the following: Infiltration Suit, Med Kit, REK, Nano Dispenser. The only vehicles were Wraith, ANT and AMS. This made the Knife and running people over, the only forms of attack. Each of the three bases on the island was set to one team, and if another ‘captures’ it, it instantly reverts back to the pre-assigned team automatically, making a quite literally unwinable three-way battle. Normal rules applied everywhere else in-game.

It was certainly different and quite fun, and most surprisingly, I did quite well, finishing with about 17/8 K/D, a far higher ratio than I’ve managed in a very long time. Even during my golden days as a top-notch TR Sniper, I’d rarely manage a 2:1 ratio or greater. The simple expedient of drastically limiting all players to a set load-out, with equal capabilities, seems to have done wonders for my averages. As a Reservist, I only have access to one implant, rather than three, and took Darklight, allowing me to see the invisible people better, at the cost of stamina. Combined with the knife’s secondary, powered-but-noisy, mode, and much hectic circle-strafing, I was actually doing quite well, and far better than I expected, and was even getting streaks of two and three kills at a time at one point. Clearly having The Music going in my head helped immeasurably. KHAAAAAN! Of course if any of the people I was in these turning-battles with had had a gun of any sort, I’d be dead pretty quickly though, and often, so I’m not sure going full-time Invisible Knife Commando is such a good idea after the event is over.

Quite satisfying, although one minor oversight did mar things a little - the AMS is an extremely well armoured truck, with about the same hit points and damage reduction as a Medium Battle Tank. These mobile spawn points take quite a lot of pounding by dedicated explosive-based Anti-Vehicular weaponry. Not having Advanced Hacking (to steal it), I ended up stabbing at one for at least ten minutes before I gave up, and the thing looked no worse for wear, making them effectively indestructible under these rules. All good fun though, provided you abandon the usual goals of pushing forward via control of spawn-points, and just go for kills.

Before I pat myself on the back too much however, it’s worth noting that although I enjoyed it, by the look of the population stats windows, I seemed to be in a very small minority. Throughout the time I was playing, (a little before European Peak), the list was showing only 5% of players on the island of Extinction, where the special rules were taking place. The rest of the players were trying to continue with business as usual. I say ‘trying’ – it seems that the event introduced a bug to the bases on the non-event maps which had bases being captured from, say, the TR by the NC, and turning purple (VS) – or vice versa - and then going completely uncapturable altogether, which didn’t impress too many people. Tough crowd. I missed this, being on the one island where the bases were supposed to be acting strangely. Through all this, I didn’t see any of these ‘Assassins’ mentioned in the blurb, and nor has anyone else, by the sounds of it, so I'm not sure what that was all about. No Halloween Merit for me, I guess.

A different kind of day out, and one which I liked for the few hours I played, netting me a good push of points toward the difficult-to-achieve Hand to Hand Combat Merit, but I do somewhat think that this current Planetside Events Frenzy SOE seem to be on is a bit of a lost cause, and unwelcome effort. Those people still prepared to play at this point, are pretty much content with the basic game. This is self-evident because they’re still playing, and to be honest, it’ll take a lot more than something like ‘Knife Night’ to generate fresh interest in the old girl these days – getting it on Steam, or a port for one of the console internet services, perhaps - XBox Live, or similar.

A damp squib then, and a shame, because for just one night, I was more than just fodder! Stabbity-stabbity!