Tribes: Ascend is a upcoming computer game by Hi-Rez Studios and is currently in beta testing. Beta testing is where a company opens the game up to players in order to find bugs or problems. Tribes is fast and full of explosions. Set in a land where every other weapon is a rocket launcher and all the soldiers are equipped with rocket skates and jet packs, this is the most fun I’ve ever had in an arena shooter.
The primary game mechanic is the aforementioned rocket skates, which is referred to in-game as “skiing”. In order to get up to speed, you must jump down a hill while activating your skates, the jet up the opposing uphill side. I was surprised at how fluid and natural this felt after a while. The controls are easy to learn, yet hard to master. In addition to this unique mechanic, Tribes also has a class system. The classes are divided into light, medium, and heavy. The light classes move faster, and have light weaponry. In contrast, the heavy classes have much more powerful weapons, but move slower. The middle classes have a little bit of both.
The game has the standard Team Deathmatch and Capture The Flag, but with a twist. In Team Deathmatch, the first player to score a kill, drops a flag. The team that holds this flag scores twice as many points. In addition, the game has a game mode called Rabbit, which is where one player holds the flag, and tries to evade capture for as long as possible. Capture The Flag is by far the most fleshed out of all the modes, and is the most played. Capture The Flag includes elements such as vehicles, base defences, and air strikes.
One element hard to capture in a written review is the sense of camaraderie. I personally found that playing together as a team works much better here than in Call Of Duty, or Battlefield. When you team up to protect your flag carrier or base, you do much better.
Tribes: Ascend comes out sometime this year, and is currently in closed beta. You can get a beta code off of their Facebook page.