Login to claim your own characters. Find your character and press the 'Claim Character' button at the bottom of the character page. Click here to Register for PlanetSide Universe. Claiming a character provides: The ability to link your twitch.tv account to your character. You won’t need to skill this ability up too far unless you really feel it is needed so level 2 (150 cert points) should do fine. When it comes to the defensive slot you have plenty of choices you can make Generally speaking I recommend nanite auto repair level 5 (880 cert points).

The lightning can be a very versatile weapon in the field. It has a strong AA platform that will keep enemies away for over 1000 meters and the agility and speed to keep up with them. It will cost you 3363 cert points to get a fully functional and highly effective skyguard to keep your opponents out of the sky.

As usual you will want to level up the acquisition timer to at least level 7 (541 cert points) for your lightning ensuring that you have little downtime when you lose it. When it comes to the utility slot you have two primary options either fire suppression or IR smoke. I would recommend getting IR smoke because as a tank you typically take fire from ground troops who have lock on rockets. The IR smoke will help prevent some damage from incoming infantry, which is usually the majority of incoming fire. You won’t need to skill this ability up too far unless you really feel it is needed so level 2 (150 cert points) should do fine.

When it comes to the defensive slot you have plenty of choices you can make Generally speaking I recommend nanite auto repair level 5 (880 cert points). There is a valid argument for mine-guard as well, though you should be able to see mines before you run into them. When it comes to the performance slot on the lightning I recommend racer chassis level 2 (300 cert points) at least, when fitting a skyguard turret, and a rival combat chassis when fighting other tanks with armor-piercing rounds.

For the skyguard turret you should get increased ammo capacity level 7 (541 cert points). Level 7 will give you 1120 rounds of flak which is more than you will need 95% of the time, and the other 5% you will have an ammo tower nearby. I recommend getting the standard zoom optics to level 3 (201 cert points) because this is for killing aircraft and night vision and thermal don’t have the range to see them when you need to engage. You should get several levels of reload speed at least 3 (750 cert points), this will allow you to reload quicker when fighting enemy aircraft and it does make a huge difference when the enemy air is retreating.

When it comes to strategy for skyguards there are a couple of options.

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1. Find out where the enemy air is going to resupply/repair and place your skyguard between the fight and their resupply point. This can be very effective especially when you only target the weak aircraft. Make sure you find cover as you make a target if you are sitting out in the open. Generally look for towers or nearby bases as that is where aircraft congregate. Remember you don’t need to get right on top of them to do some serious damage, though the closer you are the more damage you will do.
2. You can follow fellow tanks and sunderers into a battle. If you decide to fight in a tank battle make sure to stick to the rear of the fight because you will make an easy target for enemy tanks. This allows you to provide air cover while staying safe in the back of the pack.
3. When you are forced to fight the skyguard is not really weak when attacking other vehicles or infantry, but it does have a light tank. I have seen one take out a sunderer single handedly, even if it did take a bit of time. They do more damage than most players realize and you can use this to your advantage. Make sure to use your speed to circle your opponent so that he cannot get a good hit on you, meanwhile you will be constantly damaging him.

When Fighting aircraft do not fire at them as soon as you see them appear in the sky, generally you want them to get close enough where they will not survive once you start shooting. This can require some patients but it will allow you to get more kills and do more damage. It also does not help when friendlies start shooting at anything that moves, but if you join in and strike too soon you not only give away your position but you will miss an opportunity for a kill. That being said if an aircraft is about to die then you should fire away, just don’t fire at something that’s 2,000 meters away and has full health….

With the Lightning’s agility and speed you should not sit in one place. This is a general rule for almost anything FPS, but it should to be stated in Planetside 2 for almost everything. Once you take out an opponent be aware that they will come looking for you, and if you relocate you can either avoid them, or flank them because they will not be looking for you to be somewhere else. By constantly moving players have a better chance of making kills and avoiding death, so try to keep on the move.

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At this time I will not go into details on the other types of lightning turrets simple because the heavy tank offers a better option in most cases when it comes to AI or AV turrets. It would also require a great deal of pro’s and con’s using weapons that are not necessarily worth getting at this time.

War in PlanetSide 2 isn't hell, though your first experience of it probably will be. You create your character and pick a faction. Then you're unceremoniously dropped - literally, from space - right into the biggest battle the game can find, surrounded by enemies and tanks and anything else that happens to be around, with a life expectancy measured in milliseconds.

Somehow beat the odds and things don't get better. You stagger from death to death in a haze of confusion and unexplained icons, not as some elite soldier of legend, but simply one more fleck of gristle in a planet-sized meat grinder that never, ever stops churning. At some point, you will be run over by a tank. Probably driven by someone on your team.

It's nothing personal, of course. PlanetSide 2 is far too busy for that. In most shooters, 16 players counts as a party. More advanced ones might push the limit to 32, or 64. In Sony Online Entertainment's free-to-play massively multiplayer game, you're dealing with 2000 players per continent - thankfully not all on screen at once - locked in a three-way tug of war that doesn't simply take cues from the likes of Call of Duty and Battlefield, but has a good go at stealing their thunder.

Those games ultimately win out in terms of feel, but PlanetSide 2 even being comparable is a stunning achievement when compared to the standards of your average action MMO. This is easily one of the most ambitious online games ever - and setting aside some launch issues, one that lives up to its impossible promises.

Fighting in an open world feels strange - not as intimidating as you'd expect, but far more than just a gimmick. For the most part, standard first-person shooter rules apply. Shooting is skill-based rather than reliant on arbitrary levels. If you don't want to be shot, you get behind cover. Returning fire can be done from the hip, but you generally want to take advantage of iron sights and sniper scopes to deal out more accurate shots and hit distant enemies. It's a shooter. You've played shooters before. The twist here is that, instead of existing as isolated maps, battlegrounds emerge organically as boundaries shift. Today, that bridge over a canyon is simply a handy route between outposts. Tomorrow, it might be a sea of tanks, with infantry crawling all over the scenery like ants.

Being in an open world, anyone who wants to take part can do exactly that. There are no lobbies, no queues, no arbitrary restrictions on numbers or how much you're allowed to bring into battle - not overt ones, anyway. An Instant Action button will spirit over anyone who requests a teleport, but you can just as easily spot something happening and head over under your own steam.

'The sheer scale of the battles is stunning - to the point that, while it makes sense for PlanetSide 2 to be a free-to-play game, it takes longer for that to fully sink in.'

The longer fights go on, the more people will be drawn to them. Sunderers (APCs) are brought in as mobile respawn points, planes strafe the ground and battle for air superiority, tanks take up positions and all hell breaks loose until one side seizes victory. If you're outnumbered, too bad. Reinforcements may arrive, or not. War isn't always fair.

The sheer scale of the battles is stunning - to the point that, while it makes sense for PlanetSide 2 to be a free-to-play game, it takes longer for that to fully sink in. Sony hasn't so much embraced the model as given it a back-breaking bear-hug, almost to the point of creating a hidden mini-game called 'What's the Catch?' Without paying a single penny, you get - deep breath - all five soldier classes and access to mech suits, full access to all three continents, all of the vehicles, no equipment restrictions, as much fighting as you want and the ability to join and start your own guilds (Outfits).

Never are you made to feel like less of a player for not paying a subscription fee or for earning any equipment you need by saving up in-game currency. It's a similar system to League of Legends and Tribes Ascend, only on an MMO scale and with less in the way of boobs/jetpacks.

The most important purchases are, as ever, boosts that speed up your in-game resource generation and guns with which to shoot people in the head for the crime of wearing the wrong colour armour. These are expensive, with new guns costing around £4 each (500-700 Sony funbucks) and each class having several slots to fill up with new weapons.

Your starting load-out is respectable though - and while I'm sure it's not deliberate, any temptation to spend a fortune in the store is swiftly dampened by most of its gear being bland variations on stock themes like 'assault rifle' and 'pistol'. There's nothing as iconic as the Tribes spinfusor, and nothing particularly sexy if you're not into efficiency. In a nice touch, you're allowed to borrow any weapon for a half-hour field test before investing your cash/points.

In a straight fight between two players of equal skill and time played, it's true that the one who's paid will usually come out on top - if only because upgrades can only be bought with in-game credits, and outright buying a gun leaves many more of them to spend there. The sheer scale of PlanetSide 2's battles does a lot to prevent any slide into pay-to-win territory though. Whatever your gear and however many upgrades you have, you're only ever one soldier in a rock-paper-scissors throwdown - where paper and scissors are represented by the sniper over on that hill and his friend in a tank.

Whatever role you're playing, the action is very solid - a touch floaty perhaps, and made a little stop-start by the way PlanetSide 2's body armour usually makes tissue paper look like mithril dipped in adamantium, but more than adequate. Its only significant failings are in accessibility and readability. There's no tutorial, for instance: just a link to an hour or so of YouTube videos in the launcher and a UI that comes across as a mess of unlabelled icons, blinking lights and labels apparently harbouring an active grudge against the colourblind. It's a staggeringly bad new player experience for a game that does have a tricky learning curve, but whose raw basics really aren't that complicated.

'As a mix of shooter and MMO, PlanetSide 2 is nothing short of a triumph.'

Similar confusion sneaks into the graphics. Textures are often very busy, which combined with the oddly muted faction colours can make it hard to spot enemies at even mid-range, or to react fast enough to sudden threats. The Vanu are particular offenders here, with their purple colours blending into much of the scenery, though the Terran Republic's combination of powerful red with murky grey comes a close second. (If you play Terran, they also earn bonus confusion points for internally using red to flag up enemies. Cognitive dissonance can kill, people!) I'd like to have seen PlanetSide 2 take a few more cues from the likes of Tribes Ascend and even Team Fortress 2 in terms of its general readability, colour choice and silhouettes.

Back to the war itself. Out in the field, combat unsurprisingly varies dramatically depending on your class - which you can change at will, either at reload stations or between lives if you get bored or your team needs something. A Heavy Assault soldier's life is one of explosives and endless streams of hot lead, while Infiltrators work the shadows with sniper rifles and Light Assault troopers bop around on jetpacks. The more points you put into each class and its gear, the more efficient you get with it, so it pays to focus.

Lone wolf players are likely out of luck, though not entirely. It's certainly possible to play solo. You can join pick-up groups as you travel, be added to squads at the touch of a key, and contribute to base assaults and defence along with everyone else. PlanetSide 2's epic-scale battles put tight limitations on what any individual can accomplish, though, and being a cog in a silent machine is rarely a rewarding career. To make the most of PlanetSide 2, you really have to gather some friends over voice-chat and set your own goals. When your group single-handedly kicks all kinds of arse by air, land and at least APC, you get more than just smug satisfaction from a base capture - you get a war story.

Long-term, of course, the novelty of PlanetSide 2's scale will wear off, and it's too early to guess how well it will adapt and evolve. Right now, players are still advancing their characters to the point of being able to take command, and it remains to be seen to what extent emerging leaders will get to to run their factions instead of simply fight for them. As the action moves away from simple massed battle, there will need to be a much more interesting metagame or progression system than the current feuding over hexagons in an inherently unwinnable campaign. There's a limit to how often victories can be unceremoniously reset before they start feeling hollow.

PlanetSide 2 is much like Guild Wars 2 - a game that will live or die based on its ability to keep its server populations buzzing. For now though, give or take some nasty server problems, it's worth putting those fears on the back burner. There'll be time enough tomorrow to worry about the grand game and its future.

What matters today is that as a mix of shooter and MMO, PlanetSide 2 is nothing short of a triumph: not quite the best of both worlds, but certainly the best attempt anyone has ever made to fuse them together. Alone, it's worth checking out just to witness its epic scale for yourself - and with the right friends by your side, PlanetSide 2 is an unforgettable experience.

9 /10