PSO: When Four Battle as One

When I first played PSO on my Dreamcast I was convinced the world had moved on. Gaming had advanced one more step into the online world. Now the consoles were getting in on the action. The wave of euphoria as I teamed up with a couple of others and raided a Hildebear enclosure was unsurpassed. For months afterwards I classed PSO as an EQ beater. Better than EQ was the highest accolade I could give it. PSO is based on action. It is a team based role playing game, with lots of arcade style action. Admittedly the team can only ever number four. And the action is limited in as much as the game world has 4 areas, and a set number of monster types, culminating in battles with four bosses. However, the buzz remained for around 3 months. Solid playing. Every night. I never once logged onto Norrath in all that time.



Imagine, landing on a planet, with a hunter who is learning the art of the light sabre, with a brightly coloured force character, resembling a circus magician, who can summon a mean fire ball or two, with an enormous mechanised robot ready to dish out some punishment and me, a ranger with a laser pistol. Imagine, finding a world inhabited with strange bear/dog like creatures who take a swipe at you and you land on your backside. Imagine, said creatures ganging up on you and pounding you into the ground. But, finally imagine, the four of you, each slotting into a niche and covering each other backs. Working together to eradicate the planet of these menacing hordes. Pumping laser rounds into the back of a Gobooma, enough to knock him away from the magician he is currently pounding - giving the magician the breathing space necessary to let a fireball from hell toast the furball.



Although set in a "phantasy" world, the combat is pure action. Sci Fi action. With guns and light sabres.

The first boss you meet after a lot of carnage is The Dragon. In my opinion, he is the best of all the bosses available. He is beautifully rendered, his attack patterns are just stunning to watch, and of course, he IS a dragon! Each boss has a different attack pattern and often requires quite careful planning to avoid party wipeout.

The ability to quest offline and then go online with the same character - gives PSO one the most flexible approaches to character development. However, this does not come without a price. The Gameshark kiddies have found that you can use codes to tool up your character with all sorts of items and powers. Sega tried to stomp on this heavily. With character banning and other measures. The Gamesharkers also found ways to kill other players (yet PSO is strictly co-op), to use jumping tricks to get past locked doorways amongst a number of other cheats and scams.

All in all, PSO is one of the brightest online games I've played in a long time. And although the content is limited, it still draws me back to it - searching for that teamplay buzz once again.