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Only buy it if you want the single player.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: March 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First off, best to warn you, the reader, that Vivendi Universal has no plans to patch the bugs that are apparent in the Multiplayer... They cancelled the patch they had been working on, and no patches or fixes are planned/expected.

Having gotten that out of the way...

Regarding the multiplayer: the game takes the fast, jetpack attack action of the first game, and the vehicle combat of the second game, and manages somehow to make neither aspect appealing. The gameplay is perhaps TOO fast, and can become very one-sided in the first few seconds of gameplay (frustration with the controls/inventory stations/vehicles will taunt you from the very get-go). If you have played any of the previous franchise titles (Tribes 1 or 2) you'll immediately notice that the projectiles move slowly (It is entirely possible to outrun your shots), the accuracy is mediocre at best, and while the new skiing ability is nice, it also feels completely random and therefore wont be used by 90% of the people who play it. The vehicles, a staple of the franchise, have been dumbed down to the point of being either totally overpowered (ie. the tank) or completely useless (ie. the rover). The rover and both air vehicles are fragile, only needing one or two shots before being destroyed. This is "balanced" (if you can call it thus) by the vehicles' ability to rapid-fire missles/bombs/etc at ground targets (this gets downright boring after a while).

Game/weapon/vehicle balance issues aside, the game interface is clunky at best, requiring "modding" to make it even remotely functional to the average gamer (or even the Tribes veteran). The ability to switch armors and weapons has been "streamlined" (again a misnomer) to require you to set up several "loadouts" which can be accessed through a complicated "hold" pattern as you step onto an inventory station.

Included maps are an insult to the franchise, often feeling very "cramped". Tribes has historically emphasised an "open air" feel, which is TOTALLY lacking in this iteration.

The choice of the Unreal engine as the foundation for the game has proven to be disastrous, as the game basically had a built in cheater base. Sadly though there will always be those who deny it, aimbots and other hacks are rampant in game.

There is plenty more wrong with this title, and it makes for a very unenjoyable multiplayer experience, but continuing in this vein would only be flailing the proverbial dead horse.

The only saving grace of the game is that the Single Player campaign has its moments, and that despite the somewhat wooden facial expressions, the characters and writing ARE better than your standard crop of FPS games. If you choose to get this game, understand that the campaign is somewhat short, but I DID enjoy the story and it was nice to have a glimpse into the Tribes Universe (even if it doesnt synch with the canon of the game world). I give the SP campaign 3 stars...

But with VU games pulling any support, I cannot recommend ANYONE buy this game save for the brief SP enjoyment.

Lack of suppert is driving this game in to the ground

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: March 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I pre ordered this game and have enjoyed it on and off since getting it(playing the single player). The problem is there are a lot of bugs that need to be worked out and Tournament mode not working removes a big part of the game.

The fact that Vivendi Universal is choosing not to support this game any more makes it nothing more than a coaster on my desk. As soon as the announcement came out any one who was working on maps or mods for it left it for a more worth while project. The servers are slowly emptying and its now very hard to find a good server to play on where the match isn't entirly one sided.

I highly reccomend not purchasing this product and saving your money for something better down the road. Even burning your money would be a better way of using it then buying this game.

Compared to Tribes 1

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Compared to Tribes 1. This game absolutely is horrible. This should have stayed in beta and never released. It was a waste of the 25 dollars i spent on it. Sickening. Horrifying on how bad this game was turned upside down from the original. Little server modding capabilities. Only some of the things good about this game are the Ski Mode, Vehicles, Packs duel capabilities, that were implemented.

Dissapointed...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: May 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I am very dissapointed in this game... It has great graphics on it, but it strayes from what Tribes was originally created for. I'm what players on the game call an "Old School Player" so i have all 3 games in the Tribes Series. I started playing the original tribes back around 1998, before Tribes 2 came out. The original tribes was extremely customizable on your equipement setups and allowed for easy server side modifications to the game. Tribes vengeance you cant... You have 4 slots of equipment to choose from and thats it. You cannot add equipment or special features to make your games unique. You can however make different game rules. The only part of the game i enjoyed was the grapple, being able to act like spiderman and sling shot around was fun for me and I enjoyed it. If i where to choose between the original Tribes, and Tribes: Vengeance, i would choose the original Tribes any day.

Would be great, but...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 16
Date: July 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Don't get me wrong. I can tell that this is a great game, with excellent graphics, good gameplay, a good storyline and interesting characters. If you have a fast, modern PC I highly recommend it. However, if you have just an OK, mid-range pc like mine (My pc has a 1 Gigabyte processor and an nVidia Geforce 9.0 graphics card), don't waste your money. I got this game with high expectations; everybody said it was great, and I couldn't wait to try it out. But when I got it and installed it, I found that it had a number of problems that had nothing to do with the game itself, and everything to do with the fact that I didn't have a "perfect" pc. First of all, the loading screen before cutscenes and before each level take about six minutes apiece. Then, once you have waited the little bar to inch its way along the screen and you are dropped into the game, it completely stops for a long time and is jerky for much longer after that. These frame-rate drops happen fairly often during the game, and there is nothing more frustrating thatn waiting forever for your save-game to load and then, when you are finally able to play, having the frame-rate drop to zero with enemies all around you. Many times I have been in the middle of a large firefight and the game lags up as I am fighting for my life. By the time the frame-rate hitches itself back up again, there I am lying on the ground dead. Needless to say, this is extremely frustrating, especially because after this happens I have to wait all over again for the game to load. So, if your computer can handle it, by all means get it. If not, well, be warned.

great graphics, sound, and new vehicles, but missing element

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: November 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I started playing tribes with "starseige: tribes". Tribes 2 was an awesome upgrade. However, graphics, sounds, and vehicles aside, I think "tribes: vengeance" is an inferior game to tribes 2.

I have conquered the single player missions and I have played several days worth of multiplayer. Things I like are the new vehicles and the updated graphics and sounds. Things I don't like are the lack of a targetting laser, all of the packs only last a few seconds after activation, and once you activate a pack you can't "unactivate" the pack until it runs out of juice. Furthermore, you can't activate a pack until it reaches full energy.

They changed the plasma rifle into a burner rifle. The burner rifle runs off the armor energy instead of being ammo driven, which is cool except that you can't use the burner while jetting around.

You can't seem to mount turrets on walls or ceiling. There are no pulse sensor packs or motion sensor packs or cameras. There is no health kit you can use anymore. There is a repair pack which passively repairs you over time, but it doesn't really help you recover from an "oops, that was stupid of me" kind of mistake unless you run and hide for a long time. The new repair pack is cool in that it repairs all equipment and players nearby instead of just one object at a time.

Another thing I dislike is the new voice hot key list. I can no longer say I am going to defend the generator. Now, I can only say I am going to defend the base. Less specific and I think that hurts team work. Additionally, you have to hold the shift key while you are keying in the letter to say what you want to say, which takes two fingers. Before, I could key in a message while still moving with two fingers, now I can't move because the shift key has to be held, which disrupts game play and makes me a sitting duck while trying to communicate with my team. As a result, I rarely use the voice keys, which once again detracts from team play.

I don't like the fact that I can only carry three weapons even in heavy armor versus the 5 weapon slots in tribes 2. Also, the new missile launcher now requires you to guide the missiles to your target instead of being able to lock on to a target and then fire and forget. Oh yeah, there are no flare grenades either. In fact, for tribes: vengeance there seems to be only one grenade type.

The end result is that I like tribes 2 better. Tribes: vengeance is less complex than tribes 2 as far as strategy goes. I think it might be a good idea for VU to distribute tribes 2 as a bonus disk along with tribes: vengeance, since they were giving it away anyway. Maybe that will generate more sales, and if people like tribes 2 better they won't feel like they were ripped off as much. Better yet, maybe VU can add the missing components so that tribes: vengeance is actually an upgrade to tribes 2 instead of being, in my opinion, a down grade.

Great vehicles, graphics, and sounds, but in my opinion VU has wrecked the mechanics of this game.

I can't shake the feeling that a huge oppertunity for a great game was missed here.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: December 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Once upon a time the original "Starsiege: Tribes" was the first game to introduce a wide array of features that are now considered to be the bare minimum standard. At the time things like driveable vehicles, teamwork centered multiplayer action and game types other than death match were considered nothing less than revolutionary. Tribes 2 carried on the work of the predicessor but the one thing that always prevented the game from really catching on was that it was Multiplayer only. Even *I*, a person who now loves multiplayer games over the internet, never bought into the Tribes games because of the mysterious Multiplayer only status.

Apparently, or perhaps unfortunately, the developers at Irrational Games decided multiplayer was a weakness of their game rather than a strength and decided to start over from scratch with their new game and throw in some single player for good measure. I was excited about the new design focous when I first heard about it. I figured that, because the developers promised the multiplayer would be just as good as ever, now was a good time to get into the Tribes universe and see what it had to offer. After all, even if the single player was awful, there had to be bots to play multiplayer matches aginst because it would be stupid not to port the single player AI over to make bots, right?

Being the cautious consumer I am though I naturally checked out the games website before buying it. Well, the site was a good deal less than helpful. If fact it told me a whole lot less than a preview of the game I had read almost 6 months before hand. Okay, I'll check the forums, theres gotta be people asking about the games features, and getting anwsers, there. First off I couldn't post on the forums without an account. Thats not too strange these days so I tried to make an account. Thats when the game made me angry for the first time. Apparently people with "free" email accounts (like hotmail), which means the vast and wide majority of internet users last time I checked, can't create accounts at Vevindi Universal's forums. That was sure nice of them. Luckly, you don't need an account to view the forums anyway so I just started reading and looking for posts asking if there were any bots in the game. Thats when the game made me angry for the second time. Seeing a pattern here? The games making me angry and I don't even own it yet. Not only had the publisher stated there wouldn't EVER be any bots but they basically blew off the question, insisting that if people really wanted bots they could just wait for someone to make a mod for that. Game publisher arrogance at its finest.

But I bought the game anyway, hoping the single player would be worth it. Now, I don't want to say it was awful, but there are some serious design flaws in the single player campaign. Though some people would disagree I thought the story was great and I liked the way you jumped into different characters for every mission effectivly allowing you to view the story from every angle and yet not ever being able to guess at the ending until the final mission. The problem is that the story doesn't really translate well into the Tribes universe and is totally incompatible with the games normally tactical and teamwork based gameplay. Too many missions, all of them in fact, have you acting as a rambo-style one man army. This would never work in multiplayer matches and only barely scrapes by in singleplayer because you are given a god like number of hit points to work with as the enemy is stripped of theirs. But even with that major change some levels are near impossible because of the games vehicles which were obviously not designed with their role in the single player game in mind.

If you don't beleive me about the vehicles then play the first mission where you control Mecury this way: At the start ignore all your objectives and jetpack over to the sensor control station. Here there are three fighter pods. Using the sniper rifle or chain gun kill the pilots without damaging the craft. Once they hit the ground without their pilots you can easily steal them. Notice these are the "enemy" versions of the craft with below standard hit points. The hit points don't matter because you are now invincible, enjoy mowing down every enemy on the level with ease except the tank. This demonstrates the vehicles are WAY to powerful for the single player game and shows another flaw in the game: the shoddy NPC AI. The enemies can't seem to deal with anything that can fly, which in the Tribes universe is everything.

A great example of how fustrating and unbalanced the vehicles are in single player is the mission where you are thrown into a tiny arena and then get surrounded by tanks and gunships that constantly bombard the arena with giant bombs for far more rounds than you are told you have to survive at the begining of the match. People now think I'm insane because of all the screaming and cussing I did as as I was playing this game. There were a few fun moments in the single player game but most of them revloved around the handful of times you actually got to drive vehicles instead of getting killed by them.

The multiplayer doesn't fare much better I'm sorry to say. Theres really nothing new or innovative here and in fact it feels more like a step backwards than forewards. There are only five game types and only 11 maps. Thats pretty lame in comparison to many of the other multiplayer first person shooters out there. Plus most of the maps are so small they seem cramped. This kind of makes sense because getting enough people togeather for a game will probably be hard but you know, BOTS COULD HAVE FIXED THAT.

Theres no giant leaps in the basic gameplay either with only four driveable vehicles and a handful of weapons. The game is still the only first person shooter with jetpacks and skiing but that only goes so far when you figure other games out there, like Planetside, offer huge worlds and dozens of unique vehicles and weapons.

Some people might enjoy Tribes: Vengeance but I can't shake the feeling that a huge oppertunity for a great game was missed here.

Ok, but disappointing for the strategy minded.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: November 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The game is fun, and I held off writing a review until I had had a few days to play it. However, I am going to wait for a few of the mods to come out and see if they can get back in some of the missing things.

One, is the missing beacons and targeting laser, as well as the indirect fire weapons. This is what made the difference in Tribes, to me, with the other first person shooters. The ability to coordinate as a team and attack with greater accuracy with larger weapons was invaluable when I played.

The second problem is the newbie-factor. In trying to make the game more newbie-friendly they made the feel too much like UT. Or, maybe I should say didn't differentiate it enough. Wearing a heavy armor is only slightly inconvenient, as opposed to the differences in Tribes 2. Ragdoll effects, as mentioned before, do seem somewhat... exaggerated. Also, the ability to get clamp turrets to ceilings, around corners, etc is missing.

On the plus side, I DO like the grappler, and the new additions and variations of the weapons. Also, the inventory system is quicker once you get used to it. Having the turrets come out of pods on the wall for pickup is nice, as well as the new pack system makes things a bit more strategic. The graphics ARE beautiful, and sound is great. I'll continue to play, most likely, but hopefully Vivendi will release an official patch to us "old timers" that enjoyed the strategy of Tribes, not just the "blowing things up" part. And don't get me wrong, I play UT as well - But if I wanted that, I'd just buy UT.

Another Gem from Irrational Studios

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: April 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Tribes: Vengeance is a really nice game. I'd be hard-pressed to call it innovative, but it's very solid in all of the major areas--graphics, sound, control, and story. I played a fair bit of the first Tribes game, and only a little bit of the second, but I'm quite happy to have a decent single-player adventure to complement them. There are some unfortunate, but not experience-ruining, bugs which look like they won't get addressed in an official patch: Vivendi has recently announced that they will not develop any more updates.

Tribes is back with a Vengeance!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: April 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This the first game in the Tribes series to have an single-player included in it and th SP rocks. I was quite impressed with the way they did it and story was pretty good too. It is also a pretty long one.

In the SP, you play 4 different characters (you also play one chararcter when she was a child) in different times (the story covers something like 4 generations). You go back and forth alot, but the story is still pretty easy to follow. And some of the missions and one on one battles are very challenging. The only annoying thing I experienced in the SP was the trials you had to do later in the game. One of them involved completing 6 laps in the allotted time. I must have done that at least 100 times(I'm not kiiding about this either) before I finally beat it. Other than that, the SP was awesome and very fun.

As for the MP, I am not very impressed. First off, there seems to be very few servers. Not sure if this game just didn't generate enough interest or what, but very few servers and very few people playing it seems to me. But when you get in a server that has a good latency, it is pretty fun. All I have ben able to play though is Capture the Flag.

Graphically, this game is pretty good. The sound effects are even better and you still have 3 classes of armor and there are vehicles you can use plus flying units too.

For the price this is selling at right now too, this is a must buy for any Tribes player, at least for the SP. But you won't be dissappointed.

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