...New Tribes game?
Fuck! Now I've got to buy a new computer...
Ah, Stormhammer; how I have missed thee.
Kids today with their wannabe SOCOM games. No one appreciates a proper FPS experience anymore.
Hard to be sure from the promo of course, but it looks good. I see lots of "real" Tribes (1 and 2) and less of that "UT with jetpacks" bullshit from Vengeance.
They kept skiing; kept non-regenerating health, no "iron sights"; still have the good old inventory station/class driven system...
Whoever was playing in that demo video was a Halo or UT player though, I guarandamntee ya. A real Triber would've been discing the shit out of people instead of putzing with that pistol. It was pretty cool when he MA'd that would-be capper with the Shrike, though...
I'd like to have seen more about the deployables. As a turret monkey myself, I care about such things. Not that it'll matter much -- I'm sure the Renegades crew is still out there somewhere, and will give us a proper mod for the thing.
Not sure I like the glow-y corridor leading into the base. It was supposed to be difficult for heavies to assault a Broadside-style base. That's what made it such an ego boost when you could pull it off.
Of course, it's also very cool that you can still run people down with the grav bike. That was always a kick; I remember in T2 there were maps where you could get a bike up to 300+kph. You could mow down heavies at that speed. Couldn't steer for shit, though... lining up your run-down was much like aiming a V2 rocket.
Gah, damn it. I miss my old Annihilation buddies, now. I know I've mentioned it before, but they used to make me stay in the base -- since I tended to beat on the 0300 server denizens so hard we could never keep the other team stocked with enough players for a game.
I really, really hope this one isn't dumbed down like the last one. One of the great things about Tribes was that cliff-like learning curve. Made it so much fun. It also made it easy to pick out UT and Quake players -- they were the dumbasses standing around trying to fight on the ground instead of jetpacking. Combat in three axises, she is a bitch.
Oh... and apparently we'll also soon-ish be seeing a new Planetside, and ARMA III...
Considering the first Planetside flopped inside a year, and ARMA II is still melting down even new systems, I'm not particularly excited about them, though. Shame; Planetside had potential. Persistent world capturing of territory over whole continents; with sort of a Tribes feel... it'd be nice if II works out. Might actually convince me to subscribe.
Renegades? Rene-GAY-des? Seriously Nos? They munchinized the game so damned much I avoided those servers like the plague they were. And as for kamikaze jet bikes, those could go to hell, too. You could never use them for any mobility because jackholes would repeatedly grab them to ram into enemy generators to keep defense guns powered down.
ReplyDeleteSkiing took a bit to get used to, but when you could use that technique to get across the field in heavy armour faster than a light could - something is broken. :|
I should clarify: Renegades was about the only mod choice in T2. Shifter went right to shit; and the base game stuck with Dynamix's tried and true "no one hit kills!" for all the weapons.
ReplyDeleteIn T1 I was an Annihilation player. So much glorious excess. Though I'll confess I did not dig Ren in T1; as Shifter was the much superior mod there.
Neither was as fun as the BD mod; but I don't think that one every got widely distributed (I was the beta tester for it).
Skiing was actually an oversight/physics error in the first game; but it was such a player favorite that they kept it. And as fast as you could get a heavy going, lights could still do it faster. It was all in the technique.
Stupid question: these are MMO games?
ReplyDeleteDepends on your definition of "massive", I suppose.
ReplyDeleteOriginal Tribes was up to 128 players per server. I forget T2's limit, and for the new one they're talking 64.
Practical limits on public servers were closer to 32 -- by the time you had 16 to a team, things were so clusterfucked and chaotic it was almost unplayable.
But it's straight-up FPS. No persistent worlds, no quests, no auction house or any of that shit. Combat. Capture the Flag was always my favorite game mode, but there were also Capture and Hold (maintain control of points on the map to score points), Defend and Destroy (score by destroying the enemy's base amenities), Team Deathmatch, and straight free-for-all deathmatch.
It had all the twitch-gaming of Quake deathmatch, but with more thought and strategy required -- the inventory stations, different armor classes, and weapon loadouts allowed one to tailor their equipment to their play style or the situation; rather than just grabbing spawns off the map. Made for a more tactical experience.
Most mods also included deployable base defenses in the form of automated turrets, sensors, cameras, secondary inventory stations, ammo replenishers.
It also had a hell of a learning curve. Because all armors had jetpacks, there was no such thing as a roof or sniping post that was out of reach. "Skiing" -- making use of an error in the physics engine -- allowed one to jump and jet together to slide across terrain; do it on a down-slope and you could build up ridiculous amounts of velocity.
And my personal favorite was the mid-air duels. Get two or more people circling around each other, jetting to leap fifty or more feet into the air; criss-crossing back and forth, trying to nail each other. Aiming a splash-damage weapon for your opponent's feet as he was about to land was the accepted practice to score damage; but the highest display of skill was what we called the "MA" or Mid-Air -- taking your opponent out of the sky with a disc launcher while you yourself were airborne.
Tribes is my second all-time fave FPS game behind the original Team Fortress. If this version of the game has the same feel and spirit as the first two, I will be all over it. And lucky for me, I've freed myself from the chain that is MMO's recently. :D
ReplyDeleteI could never get into Team Fortress. Tried it quite a bit, it just wasn't that good.
ReplyDeleteAs for MMOs: I wouldn't dislike them so much if they didn't suck; but it seems they're all repeats of the same five quests over and over, while being either attacked by enemy players eight times your level, or having remora-like lower level players following you around begging for money and power leveling.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: if I was willing to deal with that many idiots, I'd be out in the real world and not here on the computer.
@DarkSong: Weird, I just recently got free from the chains that is MMOs too only to fall into the clutches of Team Fortress 2. Had it for over a year, just never bothered playing it (I got the Orange Box for Portal). It caught my attention again when it became free to play.
ReplyDelete@Nos: MMOs have become even worse recently. The devs have actually started using Skinner Box style techniques to make the games addictive rather than just fun...
"The devs have actually started using Skinner Box style techniques to make the games addictive rather than just fun..."
ReplyDeleteWell, they've gotta protect that bottom line, y'know.
Can't expect them to actually innovate, can you? That would be too hard.