I'll start this off by cutting straight to the point.
It's absolutely bloody superb, it's completely free, and it's just as good as the original Starsiege Tribes and Tribes 2, if not better.
If your PC can handle Unreal Engine 3, play it for the love of god.
To anyone that's played Tribes or Tribes 2, welcome back.
To anyone that's not, here's the dilly yo.
It's a team based FPS that focuses on airborne combat, jetpacks, and skiing across huge open maps. You get to kick things off with a basic tutorial on controls and mobility, as this is pretty much what the entire game is about. Whenever you hold in the space bar, you lose all friction with the ground and just glide along it. You're trained to ski down hills and jetpack up, propelling yourself forward at breakneck speed.
While you've got Team Deathmatch options, everyone's in CTF and for good reason. Tribes is essentially built around CTF as it's core.
All players start off with three classes - Pathfinder, Soldier, and Juggernaut.
Your pathfinder is your light armor class. Extremely fast and armed with a disc throwing spinfusor, this is going to be your flag capping class. Zip around the outside, find an extremely fast route, capture the flag at 200km/h and laugh all the way back.
Soldier is your medium armor class. You've got yourself an assault rifle, and a handcannon grenade launcher style thingy. Slightly more HP, not so fast, generally quite good all around.
Juggernaut is your heavy armor class and base destroyer. Built like a brick ****house with all the mobility of a fat turtle, you're pretty much reliant on mortar cannons and heavy weaponry. Which works.
There are plenty of other classes to unlock either with experience (Currency won by winning matches), or with GP (Real money currency). It's quicker to get things unlocked with GP, but apart from cosmetic skins, there is nothing in the game that can't be unlocked just by playing. Big plus here.
Other classes include stuff like the Doombringer, a defense specialist that can use mines, heavy weaponry, and create force fields that damage enemies the faster they travel through it (Hello there, Pathfinder cap defense). Or there's the Infiltrator, a light armored and light weaponry class with big-ass grenades that can initiate stealth for a small period of time.
Here's where things get even more different - Each base is just that. It's a base. Turrets, defenses, power generators, rearming stations and everything. As you play the game and do anything that's beneficial, you earn credits. These credits are spent either by killstreak style moves (Orbital Strike, Tactical Strike, Supply Drop), or by upgrading base elements such as your radar, your base turrets, or your power generator.
This means Technicians can surround the base with turrets, Doombringers can work with forcefields, and you can get a very very solid base defense going, but one Infiltrator can get right inside undetected, plant a sticky grenade or two on your generator, take it out, and leave it all completely worthless. While everyone's grabbing repair guns to get it back up, the Pathfinder can swoop in through every single one of your turrets and take the flag. Teamwork is *essential*.
Another thing worth mentioning, is that the majority of the weapons are physics based, not hitscan based. In other words, lead your shots, don't aim *at* the enemy, or you quite simply won't hit anything. Especially important if you're using a spinfusor, where you're waiting for their energy to run out, wait for them to tap the ground, then smack them with splash damage.
It's fooking amazing.
It's absolutely bloody superb, it's completely free, and it's just as good as the original Starsiege Tribes and Tribes 2, if not better.
If your PC can handle Unreal Engine 3, play it for the love of god.
To anyone that's played Tribes or Tribes 2, welcome back.
To anyone that's not, here's the dilly yo.
It's a team based FPS that focuses on airborne combat, jetpacks, and skiing across huge open maps. You get to kick things off with a basic tutorial on controls and mobility, as this is pretty much what the entire game is about. Whenever you hold in the space bar, you lose all friction with the ground and just glide along it. You're trained to ski down hills and jetpack up, propelling yourself forward at breakneck speed.
While you've got Team Deathmatch options, everyone's in CTF and for good reason. Tribes is essentially built around CTF as it's core.
All players start off with three classes - Pathfinder, Soldier, and Juggernaut.
Your pathfinder is your light armor class. Extremely fast and armed with a disc throwing spinfusor, this is going to be your flag capping class. Zip around the outside, find an extremely fast route, capture the flag at 200km/h and laugh all the way back.
Soldier is your medium armor class. You've got yourself an assault rifle, and a handcannon grenade launcher style thingy. Slightly more HP, not so fast, generally quite good all around.
Juggernaut is your heavy armor class and base destroyer. Built like a brick ****house with all the mobility of a fat turtle, you're pretty much reliant on mortar cannons and heavy weaponry. Which works.
There are plenty of other classes to unlock either with experience (Currency won by winning matches), or with GP (Real money currency). It's quicker to get things unlocked with GP, but apart from cosmetic skins, there is nothing in the game that can't be unlocked just by playing. Big plus here.
Other classes include stuff like the Doombringer, a defense specialist that can use mines, heavy weaponry, and create force fields that damage enemies the faster they travel through it (Hello there, Pathfinder cap defense). Or there's the Infiltrator, a light armored and light weaponry class with big-ass grenades that can initiate stealth for a small period of time.
Here's where things get even more different - Each base is just that. It's a base. Turrets, defenses, power generators, rearming stations and everything. As you play the game and do anything that's beneficial, you earn credits. These credits are spent either by killstreak style moves (Orbital Strike, Tactical Strike, Supply Drop), or by upgrading base elements such as your radar, your base turrets, or your power generator.
This means Technicians can surround the base with turrets, Doombringers can work with forcefields, and you can get a very very solid base defense going, but one Infiltrator can get right inside undetected, plant a sticky grenade or two on your generator, take it out, and leave it all completely worthless. While everyone's grabbing repair guns to get it back up, the Pathfinder can swoop in through every single one of your turrets and take the flag. Teamwork is *essential*.
Another thing worth mentioning, is that the majority of the weapons are physics based, not hitscan based. In other words, lead your shots, don't aim *at* the enemy, or you quite simply won't hit anything. Especially important if you're using a spinfusor, where you're waiting for their energy to run out, wait for them to tap the ground, then smack them with splash damage.
It's fooking amazing.
Fun times.
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