The first time I heard anything about the Tribes universe was with the release of Starsiege Tribes back in 1998. Unlike most FPS games at the time, Dynamix built Tribes with gigantic maps, 3 dimensional fighting, driveable vehicles and mechanized armour. Outdoor maps with ruins, bunkers and traps were possible with vehicles and jetpacks, quickly becoming the battleground for players of the game. I was hooked! Jetting around a huge world, playing capture the flag and choosing different armour for each map was way too much fun, and as third party mods started to show up, the level of complexity to the game increase and it continued to keep my interest for another 3 years until the next instalment of the series came along. Tribes 2 was hailed as the epic big brother of Tribes, further expanding the look and feel of the Tribes franchise and building upon it's unique gameplay. Unfortunately, the initial release of Tribes 2 was not particularly stable and frustrated a lot of players, myself included. While the game did eventually get fixed to the point of playability, the damage was done and Tribes 2 never attained the level of player dedication that was seen with the original Tribes. When Dynamix ceased to be a few years ago I had little hope that I would see another attempt to release a successor to Tribes. It was a pleasant surprise to learn a number of months ago that Irrational Games was involved in a new Tribes release and that it would be based on the Unreal Tournament 2004 engine. While I was looking forward to another release of the Tribes universe, I have to admit to being somewhat hesitant to get my hopes up; Dynamix had built the universe, could Irrational Games now go and live in it? Introduction Tribes: Vengeance is the first of the Tribes games to have a real single player mode. While the other two major PC titles had single person modes, they were primarily for training newbies on how to actually move around the Tribes universe (and even then were a poor boot camp for the rigors of the multiplayer wars they would face when they went online). Single Player Mode "Yeah, so what?" you say? Having single player, story-line based gameplay for Tribes is a huge plus for players who've never experienced the Tribes universe. My own experience with Tribes was frustrating initially; I couldn't remain alive for more than a few moments because I didn't know how to move, shoot, or effectively survive in a very fast-paced, three dimensional arena. It took many hours of on-line play to get my bearings on the gameplay and learn how the world really worked - a sure way to lose a portion of the game players out there who don't have the patience to get fragged a few hundred times until the get the hang of the game. The single player mode in Tribes: Vengeance is quite well done. The story-line is interesting and manages to be engaging as you play different characters in the history of the Tribes universe. Very quickly in single player mode, you get a taste of how the game behaves in multiplayer mode as you fight against the empire in the arena. Each chapter of the story takes you deeper in the story while giving you more and more complex uses for your weapons and associated hardware. By the time you get to levels in the single player game where you have to defend yourself against dozens of bad guys at the same time, you've been taught how to use all of the weapons and you've been forced to learn how to use the drivable equipment. Keep in mind that I haven’t played Tribes in about 3 years, but I remembered ruling the skies, jetting around and fragging enemies with wild abandon by sniping them from a distance or just destroying them with my mortar or spinfusor up close. Naturally, I figured on playing multiplayer right away and becoming #1 for every multiplayer game I engaged in. Hah! I was fodder for the real pros out there. It was through this experience that I realized the value of a top notch first person mode. In addition to the story line that helps to explain the Tribes universe, after a mere 5 hours of playing through the scenarios offered in single player I had learned enough about the gameplay to go back out into the multiplayer arena and hold on to middle of the pack scores. Multiplayer Mode Tribes: Vengeance, like its ancestors, is well suited to multiplayer gameplay. The maps are large and extremely detailed, with many places to (try to) hide and numerous ways to ambush an enemy intent on capturing your flag. While there are relatively few (only 12) different multiplayer maps available for all of the multiplayer modes, Irrational has indicated that map and mod making information and tools will be available soon. If the mod record of the original games is anything to go by, I'm sure there will be no shortage of new environments to explore online in the near future. Installation and Documentation Installation of the game is relatively straight forward. With information packed on 4 CDs, you need to have about 5 Gigabytes of disk space to get the whole game installed. The minimum requirements are: 1. DirectX 9.0c compliant Video card with hardware T&L and pixel shader support 2. Microsoft Windows 98/2000/XP operating system 3. 256MB of RAM 4. 1Ghz Intel or AMD Processor I played Tribes: Vengeance on an older system: AMD 1900+ CPU, 1 GB Memory, Nvidia GEForce 3 GFX under Windows XP. It's not the optimal setup and I can choose graphics levels that will make my system crawl, but the default settings the game started with worked quite well and I scaled up the default 800x600 resolution to 1280x1024 without losing too much speed. The documentation provided is somewhat sparse, but it's not really needed as playing in single player mode trains you well enough. Graphics and Sound Graphics for the game are superb. With all graphics features available for my card turned on, the visual appearance of the players and environment were detailed and very clean. Game creators have paid attention to the details with the graphics, providing consistent styles for each of the major cultures in the game for architecture and armour, as well as providing appropriate logos on each weapon you may find. The sound in Tribes: Vengeance is also well done. Effects, dialog, and music work well together to create a realistic feel to both multiplayer and single player modes. Dialog in the single player mode is pretty good, with consistent characterization of each part in the storyline. Interface Tribes has always had a unique playing style due to the ability to jet-pack around its large maps. Player control is set up in the usual FPS fashion, with the keyboard and mouse working together to maximize the player's ability to move easily around the environment. For Tribes: Vengeance, the ability to "ski" downhill has been tweaked to become a highly useful way of maintaining momentum when moving around the map. This is particularly useful when playing with the heavy armour class, allowing the player to get to high speeds with the jet-pack and a conveniently placed hill to ski down. Weapons selection is fairly standard, utilizing either the keyboard or the mouse-wheel to select the next or previous weapon for a given loadout. Loadout is something that appeared as an "in-game" feature in Tribes 2, where a player must utilize an Inventory Station to select an amour class and weapons loadout as required. This element of Tribes: Vengeance provides an element of strategy, particularly in mulitplayer games, allowing the player to select an armour class and weapons loadout appropriate to their intended playing style. Gameplay Gameplay in Tribes: Vengeance is fast paced, with a requirement for a player to pay attention not only to enemies on the ground, but enemies that may be jetting in from above or below. It takes some practice to become proficient with the jet-pack which has limited thrust time and must re-charge, but once a player has mastered this game element, zooming around through the air to attack enemy forces around the map becomes second nature. Another feature of the gameplay that was introduced in the original Tribes is the ability for the player to use vehicles for their assault and troop carrying capabilities. There have been a number of changes between Tribes 2 and Tribes: Vengeance in the vehicles provided. The most interesting new vehicle from my perspective is the one man fighter pod, which provides high manoeuvrability and speed with rocket firepower. The downside to this nimble fighting machine is that it's relatively easy to shot down, so a high degree of evasive manoeuvring is a must. Conclusion Tribes: Vengeance is an excellent addition to the Tribes universe. Irrational Games has taken the torch from Dynamix and produced an able successor to the Tribes throne, with the added bonus of a very engaging and well produced single player mode. If you haven't ever played in the Tribes universe, Tribes: Vengeance is the game to start with. See you online.