While lurking around the corners of the internet, I often hear cries of how modern FPS are slow and skill-less when compared to the games of yesteryear - Doom and Quake. I for one agree, having played both sides and finding that the high-paced rocket-jumping gibtacular of the old games actually required more skill then the one-hit kill throwing knives and twitch reflexes of the CoD series. So imagine my surprise when I find out that a game in this day and era has gone back towards those roots.
The Tribes series has been a long-runner, having originated back in 1998. The game everyone remembers however is Tribes 2, with the high level customization of weapon, armor, and pack combinations, the high-speed jetpack fulled chases up hills and skiing down slopes, and the surprisingly high level of tactical and strategic play. (On this note, if you happen to find that game anywhere, buy it. It's worth the cost. Just don't be put off by the elitist snobs who now dwell in the multiplayer servers). Sadly, only a few of those elements remain in this newest incarnation of the Tribes series, but even so it's a reminder of how the FPS genre used to be.
Now, before I continue,
I'm going to drop this referral link here. Who knows, I might just get lucky.
tl;dr summary for those who can't be arsed to read below: free-to-play online FPS with high-speed combat, a lack of instakills, class-based loadouts, and easy-to-learn, hard-to-master mechanics that are actually rewarding and fun.
Tribes: Ascend is completely online, free-to-play, and operates on a business model comparable to League of Legends. When you sign up, you start off with access to three of the nine classes in the game - the light Pathfinder, the medium Soldier, and the heavy Juggernaut. Each of the nine classes is meant to fulfill a specific role in the team and is limited to certain weapon/pack combinations. The Pathfinder is a light armor class, meaning it's fast and fragile with 800 health - the lowest in the game. It is literally the fastest of all nine classes, able to reach over an ingame 200 mps (aka so-goddamn-fast-how-do-I-hit-this-hacker fast), meant for capturing the flag in CTF maps along with chasing down cappers and weakened fleeing opponents. The Soldier is a medium class, with a reasonable amount of agility and able to tank a few more hits then the light classes on 1200 health. The Soldier also carries heavier weapons then the Pathfinder, especially when you unlock the Spinfusor. As a Soldier you are a jack-of-all-trades - do whatever your team needs you to do. The Juggernaut is a heavy armor class, being slow and ponderous while sitting on 1600 health. He also happens to pack some of the heaviest weapons in the game, making him a walking weapons platform. Due to his slowness combined with his splash damage he's often seen either in indoors combat or shelling the enemy base with his Fusion Mortar.
If you want the other classes and options for your unlocked classes, you either have to pay with gold (obtained with real-world money) or XP (obtained by playing the game). Hi-Rez says that it introduced the class system and the current unlock model because "that's what the fans wanted" (bullshit, I want to be able to carry the missile launcher, plasma cannon, fusion mortar and spinfusor in heavy armor again), but that's neither here nor there. The long and short of it is this however - it takes a short time to unlock the other classes, with them being between 7200 and 18000 XP, but everything else is a blanket 42000 XP unlock. You want that shiny MIRV Launcher? You better be prepared to grind for that.
Gripes about the class system aside, the gameplay, if I dare say it, is actually fun. It's a high-paced game with action everywhere where skill plays a vital role as opposed to one-shot kills (well, unless you're a light class who wandered into a fusion mortar round). It is not an overstatement to say that there are always at least 2 players in view at any time who are zipping around at maximum possible speed, keeping you on your toes. "But Pintapau;" I hear you say "What about the heavy classes? You said that they are slow and ponderous. Wouldn't they be dead in the water if they poked their heads outside into the open plains?" To which I reply: Poppycock! You obviously haven't mastered the art of skiing.
How mobility in this game is obtained can be explained in this simple process:
1) Get to the top of a hill/slope (spawn positions are perfect for this)
2) Jump down slope, using your jumpjets if you need to (everyone has them and they recharge, don't be stingy)
3) Hold down spacebar
3a) Shoot explosives behind you at your feet to go faster
Congratulations, you are now skiing! The lore of the universe has you equipped with deployable frictionless skiis, so as long as you are going either down a slope or across a flat surface you'll be going fast. Just remember to use your jets if before you hit an upslope to maintain your speed. This easy-to-learn, hard-to-master process forms the bread-and-butter of Tribes Combat, so you better pick it up fast if you want to live. If you're standing still you're either 1) Inside, 2) a Sentinel (the sniper class), 3) A cloaked Infiltrator, or 4) Dead.
Of course, all this high-speed shenanigans would mean nothing if everything was a hitscan weapon. Well behold - the only hitscan weapon in the game is the sniper rifle and everything else has travel time and velocity inheritance. Yes, even the assault rifle and chaingun have travel time and bullet drop for shots, so don't expect to kill across the map with them. Velocity inheritance adds in a new layer of strategy that you have to account for how your current momentum will affect every round and explosive you fire. For example, the spinfusor fires a disk at 100mps. If you are traveling at 100mps and fire the spinfusor at a 90 degree angle from the direction you are traveling, the disk will travel at a 45 degree angle relative to you. If you shot the soinfusor directly ahead while traveling at 100 mps, the disk will be traveling at 200 mps. In short, every movement you make effects how your shot acts, up to being able to catch that not-actually-hacking Pathfinder. This adds another layer to predicting your opponents movements, as you now have to work in how your movements will effect your ability to hit him.
For those of you who actually bothered to read this far and try to understand my rambling, congratulations! Just a final note for you: If you decide to start playing, you start out in the small-fish pond with all the players between level 1 to 6 - in short, everyone sucks. Don't be discouraged when you hit level 7 and you get thrown in the big boys pool however - take the opportunity to unlearn the bad habits you picked up and see how high-ranked people play via spectator mode. You might just learn what you are doing wrong.
