Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Tribes: Vengeance

Last week, I finally got my hands on a game I've been waiting a long time for--Tribes: Vengeance. The original Starsiege Tribes was one of the first multiplayer games that I ever participated in, and in fact was the beginning of my association with the August Knights. I was a full-fledged member by the time Tribes 2 was released, and I got many, many hours of enjoyment out of that one. T2 was my first experience playing organized ladder competition--we had a ladder team that did fairly well, especially considering that we only practiced once or twice a week. The first two games were a very unique blend of action and strategy, with a myriad of potential kit loadouts, vehicles, deployable objects, and an atmosphere that, to me, was more like a sport (Capture the Flag was the most popular game variant) than an actual shoot-'em-up. The maps were huge, and some servers had 50 or more people playing on each side.

T:V is actually a prequel, and for the first time, there's an expansive single player mode. It does a good job of giving you a chance to practice various skills ang game types, and the story is pretty good so far, if a little cliched. But of course, T:V is first and foremost a multiplayer game, and that's where it really shines. The maps are a bit smaller this time around--it's designed to have fewer players and faster paced play, and it certainly delivers on that count. All the classic variants are there--Capture the Flag, Capture and Hold (similar to the Conquest game type in the Battlefield series of games), Rabbit (when I was a kid, we used to play a game similar to this with a football called Smear the Queer), and, for the first time, a football/soccer hybrid sort of game. There are lots of new weapons and vehicles, and a lot of old favorites are back. The graphics are great, and it doesn't require a big honking hog of a system to run nicely.

The only major negative for my money is the lack of deployable objects. In Tribes 1 and 2, setting up a sensor web and turrets was a key part of flag defense. There are deployable mines and turrets, but I've really missed the deployable objects that have been removed. Fortunately, it looks like the mod community will be able to operate full-force on this game; hopefully they'll be able to add a bit more of the complexity that made the first two games so great. I'm also not crazy about the way the backpacks work (each one has a passive mode and a VERY short-lived active mode that can be triggered on demand), but I think I'll get used to that in time.

This one's definitely worth a look.

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