Tribes 2 (2001)
Dynamix
Tribes 2 is the sequel to
Starsiege: Tribes (1998), which was one of the first online only games of its kind. It is a sci-fi first person shooter set within maps of barren landscapes featuring a combination of indoor and outdoor, vehicular and troop (ground and air) combat. Despite a number of online modes most popular is the team-based Capture the Flag.
Overall,
Tribes 2 only sold 400,000 copies, which is pretty low when compared with the millions of copies sold by other MMOFPS’s, such as
Halo and
Battlefield 1942, yet it had a loyal following in its relatively small community. One of the main reasons the game ultimately failed and only has a few servers left currently was because it's not ‘Newbie friendly’(as I found out myself!). The game is considered to have one of the hardest learning curves which meant it takes at least 5-6 months of dedication before you could stand a chance against the more experienced players. It's definitely stacked towards the good players and the wide gap between skill levels caused problems; an experienced player could easily beat a team of 16 new players by themselves, meaning that unlike some games, you can't get lucky and kill a good player. Experienced players become untouchable.
Tribes 2 also uses projectile weapons, so that you have to lead every shot, meaning the player needs to think ahead, yet another reason why the game wasn’t so successful.
Tribes 2 includes most of the same features as similar games, weaponry, vehicles etc. However, it was mostly known for its unique
jetpacks and
'skiing'. These were the main controls which players needed to master in order to quickly move around the map. Skiing was actually a bug discovered by the community in the original tribes game and was not intended by the developers (the games engine could not handle the figures jumping down the hills and it just made them slide down really fast instead). In Tribes 2 they decided to implement it as a feature of the game, this also allowed players to learn ‘routes’ on the map where they could ski huge distances at high speeds.
The sequel to this was Tribes:Vengeance, but the game's weak performance (it had even more bugs than the previous games) leaves the future of the series in question. Tribes could be considered both a success and a failure; commercially it was a failure with low sales and far from casual gamer friendly. However, for those who have the time to learn, it becomes a much more challenging, strategy and skill based FPS.
(I used movies here to give those who haven't played it a feel for what the game's like, because it makes much more sense than showing stills. As games aren't still.....)
This second video was made once all key teams decided to stop playing, as the numbers had become so low. Its a goodbye video with soppy music, which i think says something about how close the communtiy had become and perhaps calls for a physchology paper on emotional attachments to games.
