Hello everyone, I hope you all had a great week. First off, lets cover the News Of The Week!! Arena.Net has announced that on April 10 everyone will be allowed to pre-order Guild Wars 2. There are three options to choose from that you can check out at buy.guildwars2.com. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have been looking forward to this game for years! Once the pre-order is placed you will have access to all up coming Beta weekend events as well as a three day head start before the game is officially released. If the pre-order turns out as good as the beta sign up did, they will have one million pre-orders. Is it April 10th yet?
OK, now back to business. Tribes: Ascend is a multiplayer only first person shooter developed by Hi-Rez Studios and is part of the Tribes franchise. Tribes was first developed by Dynamix back in 1998 and consists of several games. Hi-Rez is currently developing another Tribes game called Tribes Universe. Tribes: Ascend is, however, my first experience with the Tribes franchise.
OK, first off I had no problem downloading it and signing up and making an account was pretty straight forward. I first downloaded it on my desktop, which is older but built for gaming. When I first opened the game and let the update complete I noticed one thing immediately. Lag. My mouse was really behind my hand movements. And anyone who has ever played a first person shooter before knows, that means death. But I went ahead and tried to push through it anyway.
The first thing you will want to do is the training, because you find out quickly, while playing, that if you stand still, you will die rather quickly! So know how to use your booster pack, and "ski" to stay alive. Skiing is a great way to move quickly while your boost recharges. The tutorial explains that it is best to boost uphill and ski downhill. The problem with skiing is that you can not steer very well, if at all. So the training is good at exercising those abilities. And OK at target practice. But that is about the extent of your training. It appears that Hi-Rez just wanted you to get in there and get after it.
After doing some of the training missions, I entered into a game. It was when I went straight in to Team Deathmatch and picked a side (you can pick between Blood Eagle and Diamond Sword and switch between them during a match if you wish) that I realized that I was going to get zero insight into the world I was fighting in and the side that I was fighting with. Why was I killing these people? What stances do Blood Eagle and Diamond Sword have? Why are they enemies? Maybe if I had played any of the previous Tribes games I would have known. But you would think that Hi-Rez would have provided a cut scene, or paragraph about each faction or something. Me personally, I am a big fan of immersion. I want to become a member of the world I am fighting in, and this game provided zero of that. In my opinion there needs to be some added loyalty to the side you pick. When you make your account you should pick a side after reading there views and stay true to your side.
Starting out you can choose one of three classes. The Pathfinder has light armor and can move quick and fly high. They can cross the length of a map rather quickly if you know how to boost and ski. They are equipped with a Light Spinfuser, which is a rifle that shoots an explosive disc that is not effected by gravity. And they also carry a shotgun. The Soldier is a medium armored unit and is a good mix of toughness and speed. They carry an assault rifle and a ThumperDX, think of the Thumper like a grenade launcher for those who are unfamiliar. Then there is the Juggernaut. This guy is a tank, with heavy armor and a lot of health, it takes skill to make him do much more then walk. He comes equipped with a Fusion Mortar, which is a long range, large grenade launcher, and a SpinfuserMKD which is a Spinfuser with more splash damage.
As you play the game, you gain three types of experience. One type is calulated at the end of the match and applied to your level. I personally reached Level 7 which is a Squad Leader before I wrote this review. The second type of experience you gain, is used to unlock upgrades, new weapons as well as new classes. There are nine classes total, three for each type of armor. Each class has its own armor, weapons, grenades and packs to unlock and upgrade. The third experience are called credits and you accumulate them during a match for things like kills, assists, recovering a flag, repairing torrents, etc. These credits reset at the end of the match so make sure they do not go to waste. With these points you can spend them on either Vehicles, yes, there's vehicles and Call-Ins.
There are three types of vehicles, the Grav Cycle, the Shrike, and the Beowulf. These vehicles are set up in the exact same way as the armor classes. The Grav Cycle is quick with light armor and is set up like a motorcycle. It does hold a passenger that can fire his weapon from the back. The Shrike is a flying vehicle that comes equipped with a cannon and after burners. It has medium armor with decent maneuverability. But you can quickly become a target because everyone can see you high in the sky. But with its maneuverability and long range cannons this is the most expensive vehicle of the lot. The Beowulf is like a tank. It can hold a passenger like the Grav Cycle and has a main cannon that does massive amounts of damage and a chaingun. The thing I got about the Beowulf is that it has an after burner equipped to it that does absolutly nothing. I saw no increase in the speed at all. It didn't help me get up hills quicker or anything. All it did was make a cool sound. This was one of the things I had to look up in the Tribes wiki along with some lore. And even the wiki states that the after burners on the Beowulf did nothing but make a sound.
With enough credits under your belt you can use a Call-In for support. There are three types of Call-Ins. The first one you will be able to afford is a Supply Drop. And it is exactly that. A station falls from the sky and lands where your target is and you are able to supply from there. Maybe my playing style hasn't been tactical enough. But when my life spans have been rather short, I have found little use for these. The second one you can purchase is a Tactical Strike. This brings a heavy barrage of missiles raining down from the sky in an area you mark. Then there is an Orbital Strike. I have never purchased an Orbital Strike because I couldn't afford one. A player could get two Shrikes for the price of one Orbital Strike. I have, however, seen one used. That is when my mouth dropped. After you mark the area where the strike will take place a siren goes off, giving the marked area three seconds to get out of dodge. Afterwards, large lasers rain down from the sky doing a ton of damage with each hit in a huge area. If you marked the center the other teams base you could easily take down everyone on the surface along with the torrents.
All of the maps are covered in hills to ski down and there are either one or two main buildings in a map. I was only able to play Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag because of my level, so I do not know how the other maps for the other game modes are laid out. The maps over all look good and I enjoyed their textures. Even though they were all hills they did a good job at mixing up and making the maps look unique by adding in different climates and backdrops as well as architectural styles. The maps seemed to be a good size. You didn't feel shoulder to shoulder and you could avoid death if you wanted to but you never really had to travel to find someone to frag.
Other features of the game were pretty standard. You could join ques of different regions, you can fight with your friends, and spectate matches. One thing did stand out to me though. There is a tab for Ranked Match with a Coming Soon script over it. It will be interesting to see how competitive Tribes: Ascend really gets.
So, for my rundown. All and all, Tribes: Ascend is a really solid multiplayer first person shooter. It is free-to-download, free-to-play. Micro transactions are for getting gold, which takes the place of xp, and xp boosts during matches. Nothing I saw would help you win just for paying cash. And in my opinion that is a good thing. What good is a free to play game when you have to pay to win? I have two complaints. The first is the lack of back story. To me that is important but I know that there are a lot of you out there that could care less about back story, and that is fine, I am just stating my preference. And the second is the toll it takes on my machine. I played on both my desktop and my laptop. It played better on my laptop with the i3 processor but still seemed to lack precision. It seemed that people were killing me rather well so more then likely it is the fact that I no longer have a top tier gaming machine. If you have played this game and experienced my same issues speak up, be heard and make a comment below. I would like to know if this game has just poor controls because obviously that would alter my view of this game. If you like the thought of a free first person shooter with booster packs, I highly recommend this game. If you only like military fps's like Call of Duty, I still recommend you try just because, hey, it's free.
So there it was my first review, I hope you enjoyed it, please comment below. What will I be reviewing next week you ask? Well, open beta for Seven Souls Online started today, so I am downloading as we speak. Seven Souls Online is a free-to-play action based MMORPG with an extreme Eastern martial arts theme. Check in next Wednesday to see what I think about it. I hope you all have a fantastic week and please subscribe and comment below. Out.
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