Unlike all of my other friends, it seemed, I didn't care about Tribes 2. JamesWong really got into the first installation of the game, while I enjoyed it, but the limitations of the weapons really turned me off.
Everything was a "play the odds" shot. The only weapon that hit where you fired it was the sniper rifle, and you had to hit twice to kill anyone with it...if they didn't move after the first shot, they deserve to die. Like the campers in MW4 I take out with the Artillery Strike.
So when I saw Tribes 2 at E3 last year it didn't interest me in the least. I walked by the monitors, saw that it had exactly the same weapons, and looked pretty much the same...It was more of an update than it was a new game.
When I eventually bought the game last month, I figured I'd get into it because the rest of my friends were looking forward to it, and it was another group game to kill the monotony. Despite my unenthusiasm, I'm the only one still playing the game. Everyone else just felt so much more letdown than I. The aforementioned James, who played Tribes 1 for something like 2-3 months if I remember right, played T2 for under 2 hours, and has yet to play again.
There just isn't enough new game for anyone to really enjoy who played the first one. Sure you can get WAY more players into the game, but 95% of the players are worthless. I was horrible at the first Tribes. I won through outsmarting people, because I had no skills. I found the game balance flaws, and I used them.
In T2, I find more people standing around for me to snipe holes in than I'd ever imagine. During one game, I was at half health, and I killed 5 people before someone got me. Not just 5 ordinary people...5 people who died, and respawned, and were from the same clan, AND were communicating on Roger Wilco. Now, I know they may have been newbies...but there no excuse for allowing me to sit in the same spot and reel off 10 consecutive sniper hits.
One of the neatest things in T2 is the new vehicles. You get bombers, skimmers, etc. The bomber is nice because 3 people can cooperate to make a devastating team...but the fact is they don't....ever. I've been in bomber groups where I'm the bomber, getting ready to waste the enemy vehicle station, and the pilot will sit there waiting for a tailgunner for the next 2 minutes, occupying the vehicle station. Then after a tailgunner finally hops in, the pilot will proceed at top speed and ram it into the front wall of the enemy base, to try and capture the flag.
What the heck's the point of being in a bomber?! I can't bomb ANYTHING if you just ram the first wall you see...the bombs do a FAR better job of taking out ground defenses than ramming the ship into them does, and what's worse, the pilot doesn't even warn me OR the oh-so-valuable tailgunner that the pilot waited 2 minutes to pick up..so we both die.
While I'm talking about vehicles, I've noticed another strange thing about them. You our team, despite seeing a enemy skimmer parked next to your flag will NEVER fire on it! But the are more than willing to take pot shots at bombers, and vehicles on their OWN side as they pass by. What gives?
More often than not, if you jump into a game it will be a blowout. This is because one side will inevitably play defense, while the other side, most often the one I'm playing on, will have one person setting up turrets, and that will be me. Occasionally an enemy will come by and swipe the flag while I'm getting more turrets, and my team will respond by doing absolutely nothing, except yelling at other teammates with the voice commands to go get the flag.
Some of the players in the game are the absolute biggest morons on the planet. The forums went up about the time the China/US flap over the collision happened. Then this flame war erupted on the board, between pro-China and pro-US supporters. I have to say both sides had their share of idiots, but the American supporters would go and make fun of the English of the Chinese supporters...with even worse English than the people they were making fun of! I'd like to say that these people were representative of the people that play the game, but sadly...they are all too representative of the people I encountered.
If you're thinking that a lot of my problems are with flaws in the players, and not in the game, that is correct. It is a team game, however, and that means the game can only be as fun as the competition allows it to be. I wouldn't play football if every game I played was going to be a 63-0 blowout.
But this doesn't mean that the game is a sparkling piece of work. Far from it. Lag is intense in T2. While the servers will frequently report sub-50 pings, when I actually pop into the game and more often than not, I will immediately jump to above 200 ping.
The weapons are nearly exactly the same as Tribes 1. You get some new turrets, and the Inventory system is nicer, but there isn't anything new...which is the whole point of releasing a new game, I thought...
It is highly unlike that you will hit any target directly. Nearly everyone in the game plays with the spinfusor or grenade launcher, and basically fires somewhere in your vecinity. You have 15 spinfusors in the smallest size ammo pack, and you'll probably use up half of them killing an easy target. Inevitably this battle will take place in the form of a Chinese-style sword duel, where you fly at each other and shoot down at the guy on the ground as you pass them. If you're a new player, don't choose the Plasma Gun as you will NEVER hit anyone with it.
I was a bit disappointed in this rehash of Tribes 2. It seems tha all they did was address some complaints people had with the first Tribes, and nothing more. And yet the game still took over two years to come out. If I hadn't gotten the game for $10 through a Sierra connection, I'd feel gypped.
The one new feature that I do like is the ability to vote to kick/ban a player on your team off the server who is teamkilling. Teamkilling sucks, because it takes no skill, and the only people who do it are 10 year olds who are upset that there's no naked Britney Spears character model in the game. They take out their aggressions by shooting teammates. I take out my agressions by getting them banned. =)
If the players become better in the next 3-6 months, this game may be a half star better than it is at this stage, but for now, I'd just advise you to wait for the game's price to drop.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.