867th played so far
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2001
Developer: Dynamix
Publisher: Sierra On-Line
From the creators of The Incredible Machine comes… one of the early multiplayer online shooters. The mecha Starsiege games led to Tribes, which then had its large online component isolated for this sequel. I’ve heard of it (in part in previews) more than I’ve the series, but it stuck in my mind as a good online PC shooter, when you had that PC complication. These days that’s all Team Fortress,ย Fortnite and Overwatch, but this is that midway point between Quake and those games.
Our Thoughts
As always, my main focus for these games is that I try to see what the single player is like – I don’t have enough skill to really immerse myself in a shooter where most players will have been able to have nearly two decades of experience – assuming they are around. It’s fine, in this case playing the tutorial felt like a good idea. The game’s solo levels have a vague story that set up the world, although it’s mostly about tribes fighting that you have no real affinity with. It does takes you through the different features of the game and goals of the map – at first killing them, then capturing control points and making use of the facilities in different towers as they give you resources and such.
As a part of these big multiplayer matches with loads of players, the maps are suitably big. You have specific travel abilities as you need to cover large distances to get to the right point, and distance gives you a lot of chance to prepare as defenders. It’s a bit clunky to control still, but the game has the right feeling that it started to sink its hooks into me sooner that I would expect.
Final Thoughts
Tribes 2 has all of the FPS staples long before they were actually standard. It might not have invented them, but I feel the scale at which it does them is big enough to feel amazing. It’s not the prettiest or easiest to use, but it works and I can see how a giant match up might help.