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Hail
to the king baby! Review by Dave "!FT!Marauder" Kratky. Apr 12.2001
Well, at long last Dynamix has released Tribes 2..... Was it worth the wait? Ohhh yeah.... (This review officially passes my Q3:TA review for most screenshots and typing. Incidentally, that's not an offical Tribes 2 logo up there. I modifed it.. Don't sue me Sierra!) Sorry I waited a week to jump on the bandwagon and do a review guys. I really don't feel that you can review a game as complex as Tribes 2 the day it comes out, like a pile of other gaming sites did. Considering the esentially multiplayer only nature of the game, many of the bugs and quirks don't show up for a bit, after you get a ton of people playing around with it. I've now been playing for 10 days, including a 10 hours LAN stint. (Woot!) and am ready to wield the harsh sword of justice upon this game.... Or something dramatic sounding like that anyhows... you get the idea. Despite a few bugs and issues, I'm so damned happy that Tribes 2 has finally been released. I can overlook a few minor glitches here and there, and I have faith that Dynamix will bring out patches to fix things pretty quickly.. In fact, so far they've released 4 client side patches and 3 server side (Well, Loki for the Linux server actually.) I must admit to being pretty disapointed right off the get go though. Kingpin, Dopper, Skotos and myself all go our copies a day after it came out....... and couldn't play. ARGH! Apparently Dynamix didn't expect the kind of sales figures they achived... and so their authentification servers were overloaded and only a few people could get on..... and sometimes it registered your CD key without telling you. (Suddenly you'd go from "Unable to connect" to "CD Key already in use." GRRRRRR..... Henceforth this problem shall be known as "Kingpinitis" For reasons which must not be revealed but you can likely guess at. :) Not to be a jerk or anything, but as far as I'm concerned if you publish a million copies your servers had damn well better be ready to handle a million users when you ship it.
Dynamix quickly took down their community (ex. Email, IRC etc) servers, apparently to use for more authentification servers. Personally I HATE when companies use auth servers (*cough*Valve*cough*) because, while they may slow the software pirates down for a few weeks, it's a huge inconvience for the legitimate owners of the game. And if the servers are down for any reason... guess what? You can't play. Woo-ee fun. Anyhows! On with the good stuff.
Graphics Engine & Sound The news graphics and terrain engine is absolutely gorgeous, and pretty darned realistic looking. The terrains vary widely, from brooding desert worlds and ice covered snow worlds to lush jungles and swamps. Environmental effects include lightening, snow, rain and meteor showers. (Yes, I got hit by lightening... "!FT!Marauder sticks his finger in nature's light socket.")
Sound effects are generally excellent and relistic. You can hear the wind in the hills and the crickets and frogs in the swamplands. When you take a near hit from a mortar you really feel it. The ground shakes, and the sound... man. :) Disks whiz as they fly by you, lightening crackles from near misses. Excellent work. The music is appropriate and sounds damned fine.... naturally I turned it off first thing, because it does tend to be distracting. The voice packs are sweet right off the get go, with an interesting new twist. If you are going through the command tree, you can select whether it's a command about yourself or a request to your team mates. For instance you can hit VAF for "Attack the enemy flag" or VASF for "I will attack the enemy flag." Very cool. I can't wait to get my hands on some user created voice packs. :)
Armor/Skins
All the regulars are back from T1 (Diamond Sword, Blood Eagle, The Pheonix), and we get a new addition.. The bioderms.... If you go to the Dynamix site and read all the backstory behind Tribes2, you realise that these new guys are serious bad ass mofos.... and they're ugly as hell too... and damn it, I like that. I also like their weapon placement more. Guns are smaller and take up less of your view for those of us who play with models on. The only real change in the armors themselves is that they now look MUCH better than the T1 models, with substantially more polygons per model. The animations are also much smoother. (I believe that many of them are motion captured.) One major change in Tribes 2 is the role of the medium (Assault) armor. In T1, the medium had the disadvantages of both light and heavy, and few of the advantages. The only real use anyone put mediums to was turret monkeying. For T2, the medium can take more damage, fly more, can pilot most vehicles (With the exception of the bike) and can carry the missile launcher. Finally, we can actually use ALL the armors for their various roles.
Weapons
The shocklance is a one shot kill close range weapon, if you hit the enemy from behind. Combined with the cloak pack, you can be a REAL bastard with this one.
Tribes finally got it's own missile launcher as well. (Woohoo!) Don't worry though guys, it's not going to turn into Quake III. The only way to fire a missile is to have a lock. The only way to get a lock is to have one of your teammates laser designate a target for you, or hold the crosshair over a flying enemy, turret or vehicle. When you get tone, it's missile away.... Actually, you can dumb fire the missiles underwater without lock. (Then it's Torpedo away. :)
Oldies but goodies
Some balancing and changes have taken place even among the classic weapons. The disk launcher (Stormammer) doesn't have nearly the blast radius it used to, while the plasma seems to have a bit more. The grenade launcher is harder to hit with, and doesn't have the blast radius of the old model, but it does have a higher rate of fire, which more than makes up for it. The ELF gun (One of my Tribes 1 favs) sucks energy out of enemies faster, making it ideal for stopping those pesky cappers.... On the other hand it doesn't do any damage to their armor. (Du'oh!) There's also finally a few reasons to use the puny blaster. The first is that it bounces at close range.. So you can richoette it around corners. The second is that it goes right though personal shields. :) Base rapers beware! New weapons model are generally pretty cool, although I do find the sniper rifle takes up far too much of your viewable area when a human is carrying it.
Grenades/Mines Naturally hand grenades and mines have made a comeback in the new game, with some interesting changes. There is more than just one kind of grenade now. In fact, you can load out with 5 different types:
Deployable Camera - Allows you to spam out 5 cameras. These little guys make your turrets more accurate, and anyone in a command screen can look though them.
Flares - Flares are used to decoy heat seaking missiles away from yourself, or your vehicle if you happen to be a tailgunner. Flares in my opinion, tend to work a little too well. Concusion - If you take a
direct hit from a concussion grenade, it makes you drop your weapon
and pack. Very upsetting if you're in a fight with someone.... Luckily,
if they're too close the same thing happens to them.
Whiteout - Blinds anyone within about 20 metres looking at the explosion. Handy to blind enemies following you. (Similar to a flashbang.) Grenade - Your average everyday kaboom grenade. (You now spawn armed with 5 of these bad boys.) The only change in mines is that they will no longer explode untill they have dug in and armed. I'm assuming this is to stop the "mine-discing" that was so rampant and so damned much fun in Tribes1. (MD'ing, in case you don't know is when you thow a mine at an enemy and hit them with a disc at the same time. One shot kill on lights.)
The Vehicles
Off all the vehicles I have to think that the Beowolf Assault Vehicle is my favorite. Armed with an indirect fire fusion mortar turret and a heavy chaingun, the crew of driver and gunner can lay a serious beatdown on most attackers, both enemy troops or vehicles. The tank is fast, and nimble enough to dodge incoming fire. (Mind you, manuvering does make it a pain for the gunner. :)
Scout bike. Favorite for capers and snipers, this bike is just nuts. With top speeds of up to 330kph, you make a pretty damned hard target, and can obviously get in and out of situations VERY quickly.
Mobile Point Base. Basically a rocket turret and inventory station all conviently bundled together. Drive it where you want, hop out, and your team has a handy dandy home away from home. Very slick. Also very hard to damage, as it has the most sheilding and armor of any vehicle.
The Shrike is the new incarnation of the scout from tribes 1. Fast and more manouverable (You can now pull tighter corners and even do loop-de-loops) it's armed with a dual heavy blaster rather than the useless rockets from the original vehicle. Much nicer, and there's something so satisfying about blowing an enemy bomber or another fighter out of the air and watching the wreckage rain down.
The Thundersword heavy bomber is literal terror in the skies for the poor suckers trying to get their ground defences and turrets up and running. Armed with a dual plasma cannon and heavy bombs, the amount of firepower you can drop on someone's base is just amazing. The bomber has a 3 man crew. Pilot, bombadier and tail gunner. The tail gunner is responsible for defence against enemy craft as well as decoying incoming missiles.
The heavy transport allows you to take 5 of your buddies over to the enemy base. Also called a gunship, it's completely unarmed..... Except for the 4 passengers and a tail gunner. That's quite a bit of firepower in one package. Bad news for the guys at your destination.
Packs
All of the packs from Tribes 1 are back, with a few interesting new additions to mix up gameplay... The cloaking pack and satchel charge.
Cloaking - Hides you from view for a brief period of time. Uses energy up. Motion sensors & sensor jammers will show you. Sensor Jammer - Hides you from enemy mechanial sensors. Does not work on motion sensors. Will also reveal any cloaked enemies in your imediate area.
Satchel Charge - Heh. This one one of my new favorites. The pictures above just kinda say it all. Energy Pack - Required accessory for the sniper rifle. Gives you a boost and allows you to fly further.
Repair Pack - Allows you to repair damaged items and team mates. Also allows you to repair yourself.
Turrets
& Deployables
Well, I really like the new turrets.....When I'm the one deploying them that is. There are now 2 varieties of turrets avaliable to the industrious Tribes 2 turret monkey. Landspike turrets are deployable only on relatively flat outdoors terain. Spider Clamp turrets are have less firepower and shields then their outdoor brethren, but make up for it with the fact that they can be afixed virtually anywhere in or on a building. Turrets are now smaller, tougher and pack more of a punch than the Tribes 1 turrets. Very annoying if you're an attacker, very cool for the defenders. Please note that deployable turrets are smaller and MUCH tougher than the older T1 models.
An interesting inovation in the game comes with your base turrets. In T1, when an enemy had a rocket turret in front of their base... they always had a rocket turret... Or a plasma turret...... Now you can actually change the barrels on turrets to customize your defences. Enemies attacking you on the ground? Perhaps a mortar turret would provide a warm welcome. Attack aircraft inbound? There's nothing like an AA turret to show your uninvited guests who their daddy is. Adds quite a bit of uncertainty to an attack, and even more reason to keep those base defences supressed. Inventory Stations: Ever get pissed off in Tribes 1 when you walked up to your deployable inventory station, only to find out some SOB had been there already and sucked all the energy out of it? Won't happen now.... Unlimited energy. Just keep the enemy from blowing your stations up, and deploy to your heart's content. :)
Motion Sensors: Motion sensors work to detect cloaked enemies and make your turrets more accurate. Pulse Sensors: Pulse sensors increase your sensor network, and are quite usefull for pickin up imcoming troops and vehicles.
Stuff that sucked The initial problems with the auth servers, people pirating the game already... So we now need to have the game CD in our drives to play. Game basically doesn't run on Voodoo cards. (Although rumors have it that the WickedGL guys will be adding Tribes 2 support in the next few weeks.) Red jacking constantly (Seems to be a problem with the sound settings in game, see here for more details.)
Final analysis Well. Tribes 2 is adictive as hell, gorgous and a hellovalotta fun. It's got enough complexity that it should keep us all busy learning and mastering it for quite some time to come. I'm a little put out at some of the minor issues we're all experiancing... But at the same time I'm happy that Dynamix is all over them, and fixing the bugs as fast as they can. Tribes 2, well......... Just get it and play it. That's all I can say. (Just make sure you have a good video card. :) Cyah all on the battlefield!
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