Crolis said:
Like many of you who also enjoy the game, I made sure I had my pre-order in. I have high hopes for the December patch and from what I can gather the DEVs are putting some time into it.
. . .
As for the game...I was playing the original Tribes for about 1.5 years before Tribes2 came out, and I remember the patch-hell that was Tribes2. I truly enjoyed both of those games and my feeling is that T:V is a worthy successor to the franchise. Yeah, there's a lot of competition out there but most of the current crop of games have that run-and-gun style that the Tribes franchise allowed me to stay away from. I stll think that T:V is the best multiplayer experience out there.
-Crolis
I couldn't have said it better myself. Though I missed out on T1, unfortunately, I did thoroughly enjoy what little I managed to play of T2, and it frustrates me to see T:V and all of it's awesome potential struggle due to a lack of interest.
What follows is a bit long, since I'm avoiding work at the moment. Cliffs: Tribes is awesome, T:V is awesome, but I'm worried sick about the franchise.
A bit o' my personal gaming history: when I was a kid (and had way to much time on my hands), my gaming interests were weaned on the old hard core flight sims like Falcon 3.0 (still the best of 'em) and the F-15 series, not to mention the occaissional Sierra adventure game. When I started college, I basiclaly had zero interest in the FPS genre all together: games like Quake, Doom, etc. were little more to me than point and click affairs coupled with some random arrow key pushing (that and I sucked at them, bad).
Fast forward a couple years. The buggy mess that was Falcon 4.0 is released (T2 was
nothing compared to that), and the flight sim community enters its death throes. I start to look for another genre I can get involved in, and while the FPS series still has little to interest me, I pick up on the ol' mech style games, particularly Mechwarrior. I like the more "action-y" feel of the games, but there's still enough depth and complexity to make them interesting. It is during this time that I also have a chance to try out Deus Ex and NOLF, and I begin to realize that some FPS games
are more than twitch and shoot affairs.
Anyway, I picked up T2 on a whim during the height of my Mech interest, and I fell in love with the game. The FPS style-action combined with a complex team-oriented game mechanic sold me. In particular, though, was the way movement was handled in the game: it wasn't a point and click twitch fest: it was a very deliberate, careful shooter where you
piloted your character. I felt it was something wholly removed from the Quakes, Half-Lifes, and Unreal tournaments of the day. And even after I graduated and had no consistent internet connection, I enjoyed any little time I could spend with the game.
Several years pass, I enter grad school, and develop a begrunging appreciation for some of the twitch FPS games that I avoided earlier, since there is no Tribes in the forseeable future. I hardly even noticed when Vengeance was announced, since most of my focus was on the upcoming Half-Life 2 (not to mention passing my comp exams). Come September, I was excited to see that the SP demo of Tribes was released, though I was a bit apprehensive as to how well Tribes would handle an SP component. I downloaded it to take it for a spin, and the
instant I picked up the Spinfusor from a fallen Beagle and started jetting and skiing, I fell in love all over again.
Despite it's problems (which I personally think are minor, but that's me), I agree that Vengeance is an excellent game that is worthy of the Tribes name. However, since becoming semi-involved in the community, I'm very aware of people's different opinions, frustrations, expectations, etc., concerning the direction the franchise has taken and the future of this game. While I wholly believe that T:V has the most raw potential of any Tribes game, I'm also aware that it's in the most dire straits. We can only hope that IG/VUG will continue to support this game, and that any upcoming updates will help draw players back to the Tribes universe.
*whew* Thanks for letting me get that out. I'll shut up now.
