ike Quake III, Tribes 2 is an online multiplayer game of virtual cowboys and Indians. Teams of gamers log on to remote servers from their home computers and jet around virtual landscapes, dealing pretend death. What separates T2 from Q3 and other games of the genre is the scale of the battles. As many as 64 players can log on to the same server in T2.
Players start by choosing a faction, then picking one of three classes of armor to wear as they enter the game. Players are not slaves to their chosen armor; they can change on the fly if they find the right inventory station. Besides the three different types of armor, players can outfit their characters with 11 different primary weapons and five secondary weapons, plus packs that give special powers, and six different vehicles.
Once outfitted, T2 has eight games: Capture and Hold, Capture the Flag, Deathmatch, Hunters, Team Hunters, Bounty (each player can hunt only one other player at a time), Rabbit (one player holds a flag as long as possible while everyone else tries to kill him) and Siege. The maps are huge to provide room for all the possible players to roam in. All three armors come with jet packs to let the characters cover more territory, and to give the game a more 3-D feel. Battles are fought on plains and mountains and in valleys, often all on the same map.
The tribe has spoken--shoot or die
The standard mode of play in a game like Tribes 2 is to run around, shooting everything that moves until the character is killed. Once their character is
dead, players wait for it to respawn, and then charge off again. T2 can be played this way, but it is a waste of the game's strengths. For instance, the sound is so good in the game that players can detect cloaked characters by listening for noises of them moving. The controls allow players to look around corners before running around them. There are so many players in a game and the maps are so open, many of the objectives are impossible if players don't cooperate. The mortars, for instance, are a devastating weapon, but they need a scouting player to target for them. Some assaults are impossible without other players laying down covering fire. Defending is the same. Turrets and fire positions work best if the defenders have a plan and follow directions.
The need for teamwork is especially apparent in the vehicles available to players. The Turbograv Assault Tank takes two characters to use, one to drive and one to shoot. Same with the Bomber, which takes three characters: a pilot, a bombardier and a tail gunner. Each character depends on the others to be effective. Even the Jericho Mobile Base, which requires only one character to drive, is part of this teamwork emphasis. Once it is in place, characters can rocket across the map from their respawn points with light armor, change to heavy armor in the mobile base and then assault the enemy stronghold. It is a cool tactic, but it depends on someone taking the initiative to deploy it, and on that player's team defending it until it is in place.
Tribes 2 has as big a call for hand/eye coordination as any first-person shooter, but it has a different feel than any other game. Partially because of the jet packs, partially because of the ranges at which fights occur, but it is critically important to learn where and when to shoot in this game.
The amount of practice it takes to shoot other characters in Tribes 2 is daunting at first. When the enemy character and your grenade both fall from the sky and land on the same spot at the same moment, then you've got it.
--Eric
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