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Tribes, Is it the best game ever?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 12, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Every once in a while, a computer game is released that changes the whole landscape of the industry. First there was Wolfenstein, the first person shooter developed by id. Then there was Doom, which is arguably the most popular game of all time. The five-year-old quake engine is still being used to develop games. Now, there is Tribes, a revolution in the gaming industry; the original first-person shooter that caters only to multi-player online users. Is it a revolution in the gaming industry? That's what this article intends to find out.
We will evaluate this "evolutionary step" and see if it can hold up to all the hype. How does the game compare to traditional first-person shooters? Graphic quality and sound are important aspects of any game; we'll how Tribes holds up to the competition. Finally, how we'll was the games designed. What is it replayability? What options are available?
There are a total of nine weapons to choose from. You can never have all of them. Which weapons you carry also depends on your armor class. There are three armor classes, light, medium, and heavy. The larger you get, the more weapons you can carry, but the heavier you get the less mobile you become. Also, certain weapons are restricted to certain groups. For instance, the laser rifle can only be carried by the light armor class, and the mortar launcher (my favorite weapon of mass destruction) can only be carried by the heavy armor class, or heavies as they are often referred as.
These different armor classes are another innovating feature. Your suite comes with an infinite supply of energy, but you can easily outpace energy generation by using certain weapons, backpacks, or your standard jet pack. Yes, that's right, you can fly. You can also enhance your suite by acquiring performance enhancing backpacks. There are five to choose from . The most notable are: the energy pack, the repair pack, and the shield pack. You can use these to enhance you players ability. The energy pack give your suite a larger energy reserve and helps your suite regenerate its energy faster. The repair pack is used to fix breakable objects in the game, including yourself, but it does so at the expense your suites energy. The shield pack does what the name says. It provides extract protection, also at the expense your suites energy.
There are also deployables. These are objects you can carry around instead of a backpack. You can deploy remote inventory stations (that's were you have to go to get all this neat stuff), motion sensors, remote cameras, and most importantly turrets. Turrets are gun that automatically shoot at an enemy when they are close enough. There are seven deployables in all. The way you use these is the difference between surviving, and becoming mortar fodder. You can carry miscellaneous other things like grenades, mines, beacon, and extra ammo.
Another innovating idea was to include vehicles. All vehicles can only be driven be the driven by the light armor class. You can choose from three vehicle: the scout, the LPC, and the HPC. The scout is a small, very fast, and maneuverable person hover jet. It is the only vehicle with a weapons, a single missile launcher. The LPC, or light person carrier, is used to carry people. It can carry three people in all, including the driver. The LPC is considerably less maneuverable than the Scout. The HPC, or heavy person carrier, can carry five people total, and is even less wielding than the LPC.
With all these different choices, you would expect it to take a while before you're proficient. The general first-person shooter ideals hold to the game, but you aren't playing with stupid artificial intelligence anymore. Tribes takes a little more time to figure out than most games, only because you have so many options available to you. There are eight single person training missions. They teach what Tribes is all about, and they take about an hour to finish. With the jet pack, Tribes utilizes the third dimension extremely well. It takes practice and a little help to be able to truly believe you "own" your opponents. Luckily, there is a dedicated core of Tribes players to help you along the way.
Tribes supports the community aspect of the first-person shooters (FPS) extremely will. Before, if people wanted to take the initiative and form some sort of group, it was very hard to communicate. Most often, group member would be spread out across North America, and the traditional FPS didn't have a way to help their players communicate. Tribes includes a chat client built into the game. People are able to, instead of automatically starting to play, join different chat groups. This feature was essential to the survival of Tribes. It gave people the ability to communicate easily. Now, there are hundreds of teams where thousands of people practice and play together. As a result, the Tribes community is extremely eel versed in the nuances of the game, and the overall player population is quite proficient. This also causes problems with new players. With almost almost anybody can start playing Tribes right away, the curve to be able to compete and get to a point where you can find a team to take is very steep.
All of these aspects involving the concepts and game play mean nothing if the game isn't good to look at. Let's face it. In today's computer world, if a game isn't some kind of amazing graphical miracle, it doesn't have a chance. Tribes would be a let down to some people in this department. While game like Quake 3 take great pride in graphical detail, the Tribes designers used the minimalists approach to graphics. While you can't say that graphic design is shoddy, the barren landscape and inornate buildings give the game sparse feeling. It's my belief the designers had very good reasons for this. This game is designed to have around 20-30 players in a game at one time. It's also designed to move fast. These two things take a huge hit on you computer's performance. When the game was originally released in 1998, the average computer just didn't have the processing power for a while bunch of pretty eye candy. I'm not saying that this game doesn't look good. The characters and weapons are well rendered, and over all the game is fun to watch. I'm just saying it is very, vary barren. As a courtesy, Tribes also includes a sound track which helps get you into the game. The sounds match game play very well and do nothing but enhance your gaming experience.
This game offers a ridiculous amount of game play. I've been playing since it's release, and I see no end to the options. Because of the huge amount of talented and enthused supporters this game has, different groups have taken it upon themselves to add to the game. Now, there are so many variations to the game, the only way it could die is if the developers decide to stop supporting it. Even though the game has been out for two years, there are hundreds of players on a number of different servers at any given times. This is a tribute to the game's innovation.
Tribes is definitely a revolution in the gaming industry. While the graphics reflects the two-year-old gaming engine, this game will continue to wow audiences world wide. Its innovating ideas in game play and design ensure Tribes a place in history. The additions of armor classes, vehicle, and team play are just the tip of the iceberg. This is definitely one game yo should own.

Excellent first-person shooter by the now defunct Dynamix

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: April 15, 2002
Author: Amazon User

First, I'd like to give proper respects to the now defunct development studio Dynamix of Medford, Oregon. They made some of the best computer games in the business. Let them rest in peace.

Second, I'd like to review one of Dynamix's best games they created, the second game in the Starseige universe, Starseige: TRIBES.

I'd like to say that I got this game by accident. I've been a beta tester for Sierra (the owner of Dynamix), and after testing a particular piece of software, they let me pick any software title available in their catalog. At the time, since I did not have a very fast computer, I picked Earthseige 2. However, they sent me Starseige 2 (aka Starseige: TRIBES). I was not able to play it, however, I kept it on hand, and a couple years later, after I moved from Seattle to Nashville, I had a Pentium II/266, fine for this game. I first played it, and was BLOWN AWAY.

Not by it's graphics, mind you (for my current setup does not have 3D acceleration capability), but by the gameplay and the atmosphere. A purely multiplayer game, with strategic elements (where you don't necessary shoot anything that moves). This was one of the first of its kind. Also, the popularity of this game was unheard of when it first came out in 1997. Over 2 million users of the Dynamix servers - incredible. There is no lack of players to play online with Starseige: TRIBES.

This game raised the bar of FPS games, and after Starseige: TRIBES, FPS games were never the same.

Try it - you won't regret it. :)

THIS GAME OWNS

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 27, 2002
Author: Amazon User

TRIBES is the best game ive ever played, ive played doom and quake before but when i got tribes i was blown away! ive been playing tribes for 3years, and im still going.theres all kinds of mods to play in multiplayer and even though every year we get less players coming back it still is a populair game and lots of people still play it.

best first-person I've ever played

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: May 19, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Normally I'm not a fan of first-person shooters, as I find them terribly pointless and stupid, as they are little more than "lets see how much I can blow up in as little time as possible." Yet Tribes is different. Its actually a fun game, since rather than dealing with fairly idiotic AI, you're combatting against actual human intelligence, making things so much more difficult. The gameplay interface is a snap, and the graphics are to die for. The only problems I came across were the sheer impossibility of playing on a regular modem, which is expected I guess (lucky I have a t1), and the lack of real preparation the tutorial gives you. While providing familiarity with the controls, weapons, and mission types, it does not even remotely prepare you for playing with real people. Expect a baptism of fire the first time you play, unless you luck out and end up with a bunch of other newbies. You catch on pretty quick though, surprisingly.

unmistakeably the best game ever!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: February 12, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is the best. no comparison. if u like online games with action, this is the #1 game for u! it is so easy. Even the demo is as good as the real game. ...you get a choice of boy/girl appearance 5 different voice sounds male/female and a skin color like blue or whatever. there are lots of guns exspecialy in a mod, like renegades the best! you can pilot planes and stuff like that to. you can deploy turrets and controle turrets. anyway this is the beast game. you can always play, ayt time of the day. some of the mission types are Capture the flag, capture and hold, capture the flag/capture ahd hold, duel tournament, death match, duel, Defend & destroy, and more. the guns are out of this world, the main one, spinfusor or disk launcher, fires a blue disk that explodes on impact, very useful. the most destructive can only be caried in heavy armor, which gives u more guns and armor but less speed and u way more,is the mortar it shoots big green bombs that blow up very big. there is also a Nadelauncher (Nade = grenade) blaster, plasma gun, Chaingun, Elf gun, Laser rifle (Which is a sniper rifle) and many more. the maps are very cool. this game is very addictive so watch out. i can very easily play 8 hrs +, per day. but it is very cool. the reason y its called tribes is beacause u can join tribes (i.e. (UTD)^Epyon^, is my name, (UTD) is my tribe ^Epyon^ is my name). if u were in a tribe other ppl would be in it to. (i.e. there are lots of People in (UTD) because its a tribe or clan, they have to tryout). players of all ages can play this game. you can also make maps, but thats a little bit hard. it is so easy to conect to a game, after it loads them it gives u a big list all u do is highlight one and click join game then wait about 10 seconds and your in. the bases which u buy guns from are huge. there is realtime whether like snow and rain. the only flaw is that some places in the maps are endless holes in which u fall the can't get out. anyway there is a chat room, that is a part of the game. you can chat and team chat while u play. o well this is THE BEST ONLINE GAME UNTIL TRIBES 2! so original! so if u like online games with lots of fast paced action, with a good frame rate no madder what then this is the game for u!

no more online

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: September 18, 2002
Author: Amazon User

i purchesed tis game elsewhere, i tryed to play it online and the tribes mother server has switched to tribes 2 and its not much fun alone so i sugjest u pay a little extra 4 the usable online version

tribes

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: August 30, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is the greatest only online shooter ever made! It even beats the second Tribes!

1337 G4|V|3 Q\/\/N5 4LL!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 21
Date: March 09, 2001
Author: Amazon User

7h15 r3V13\/\/ 15 f0r 7h3 1337 0nLy 17 r0c|<5 j00 5h0uLd g37 17 N0\/\/

-R41D3R 0u7

PH34R M3!

No Questions Asked

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 11, 2000
Author: Amazon User

If you are looking for a high quality, unbelievably online game, you've just found it. I can usually get bored with a game after 5 months or so, but not with Tribes. I've owned Tribes for a year, and I STILL love it! It leaves Quake III in the dust. It excels in teamplay, and has six times the strategy of Quake III, Unreal Tournament, and Half-Life CounterStrike.......COMBINED. It is by FAR, hands down, the BEST first person shooter today, NO QUESTIONS ASKED!

It's the best!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: December 06, 1999
Author: Amazon User

There aren't really any words to explain Tribes but that it's cool. It's the most creative game ever! But make sure you have a great video card and a really good modem or cable hook up. This fast action game will get you hooked!

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