Whereas movement in other first person shooters generally involves nothing more complex then occasionally remembering to jump here it’s just as complex and nuanced a skill as using your weapons.There’s also a number of Unreal Tournament style vehicles, but these have always been an underdeveloped element of the franchise and they still prove fairly inconsequential here.A class-based system is brand new for Ascend but it feels like a natural fit from the previous games, which already had different sets of armour and a two-weapon limit (plus accessories like mines and grenades).Even the weapons are different in Tribes though, with most of them being mortar-like projectiles of one sort or another. When used in conjunction with the jetpacks you finally begin to understand why the maps are so big, and why they’re filled with gently rolling hills and ramps.Between the skiing and the jet-packing learning how to get around the map in Tribes involves a smooth but fairly long learning curve.
If you fondly recall rocket-jumping in zero gravity in the original Quake then you’ll immediately take to the equally fast-paced action and outrageous weaponry of Tribes.There’s also the series’ signature ability to ‘ski’ around the landscape, which is just as odd as it sounds but a profoundly satisfying skill to master. That dream of the atomic age is alive and well in Tribes: Ascend, where gunfights are just as likely to happen in the cerulean skies of alien worlds as in amongst the rocks and scrubland of ordinary shooters.With a limited power supply you don’t spend all your time, or even the majority of it, in the air but when on the ground you’re always looking up at the sky.Although it has plenty of unique ideas it’s not hard to trace Tribes’ origins back to the very earliest days of competitive first person shooters. And yet at first glance it looks remarkably mundane, a cross between all the least interesting design elements of Halo and Unreal Tournament.But the low detail visuals serve a purpose and the game’s unusually large maps are the key to supporting one of the series’ main gimmicks: jetpacks. It then finally evolved into the current Tribes games, which, against all the odds, are among the most original first person shooters ever ignored by the general public.Okay, maybe original is slightly too strong a word but what has always been endearing about Tribes is its willingness to completely ignore current trends and fashions.
It then expanded to a series of MechWarrior knock-offs called EarthSiege. The universe in which the games take place was created as long ago as 1983, in a Battle Zone rip-off called Stellar 7. The Tribes series has one of the most peculiar histories in all gaming.
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