GENRE: Free to play MMOFPS
PLATFORM: Windows
DEVELOPER: Hi-Rez Studios
OVERVIEW
A fast paced first person shooter that relies on team based cooperative in various PVP battles using futuristic weapons, vehicles, unique skiing movement and a wide range of weapons, items and skins to offer up personal customization. Tribes: Ascend is completely free to play after a client download and offers some premium micro-transactions to players.
KEY FEATURES
- Nine available PVP classes
- Six exciting game modes
- Over a dozen battlemaps
- Lots of weapons and items to customize your characters
- Drive and fly vehicles in battle
- Unique skiing mechanic for break neck movement across the map
- Free to play
GAMEPLAY
A classic MMOFPS Tribes Ascend offers some otherwise unique mechanics to really give the game its own flavour, ranging from the use of vehicles in battles or the unique skiing feature, players will feel the game is a spin on a classic genre. There are multiple maps and game modes that players can battle on that will give them ranks, rewards and currency to purchase new items and upgrade their gear loadouts for their preferred classes.
CLASSES
The game features nine classes to play:
- Light Armor: Pathfinder, Sentinel, Infiltrator – These agile and quick classes focus on speed above all else which make them ideal for capturing objectives and flags, evading attackers and pursuing fleeing enemies. They have more unique skills compared to other classes such as the Sentinel who can use a sniper rifle for long range attacks or the Infiltrator class who has a cloaking device to kill up close and personal
- Medium Armor: Soldier, Technician, Raider – More balanced in terms of their speed, damage output and armor value, they are generally the most versatile classes, but have a few tricks up their sleeve with the likes of the Technician class that can deploy ground turrets to auto-attack enemies as well as use repair tools to fix up damaged base components
- Heavy Armor: Juggernaut, Doombringer, Brute – Defensive units that can take the brunt of an enemy onslaught, they are ideal for sitting on a point defending a flag or providing cover fire, their arsenal ranges from some powerful miniguns, proxy mine weapons, missile launchers and more making them a serious threat out on the field.
SKIS AND JETPACKS
The skiing mechanic is a unique addition to the game that lets players quickly move around the map as they drift across the surface with triggered skiis (spacebar), picking up speed when going downhill they lack mobility but can quickly get in and out of a dangerous area. When heading uphill skis lose their momentum and so players must quickly switch to their jetpack that allows them to drift over the tops of hills, then jump back onto their skis to keep their speed up. Hot pursuits across the map are commonplace in Tribes Ascend, escaping with a flag or chasing down the enemy trying to gun them down as you travel at terrifying speeds, alternatively jetpacks can be used to fly up to higher vantage points such as defensive towers, floating fortresses or high up cliffs.
GAME MODES
The game has six different game modes:
- Team Deathmatch – Two teams with 125 lives between them fighting it out, the winner is the team who kills the enemy 125 times or has the most lives remaining after the time limit has expired
- Arena – Similar to Team Deatchmatch but on a small scale, smaller 5 man teams, smaller maps and only 25 lives available
- Capture the Flag – Teams must move across the maps to the enemy base and recover the enemies’ flag, then it must be escorted back to their team flag (which must be at its spawn point) to score a point; the first team to capture the target number of flags wins
- Blitz – The exact same game as Capture the Flag, but the flags spawn in many different locations around the map
- Rabbit – Here there is only one flag that can be captured by both teams, but teams must instead try to keep hold of it for as long as possible to score points, when killed with the flag it is dropped to the floor for someone else to pick up
- Capture and Hold – With three to five different points teams must capture and hold/defend these locations to earn points and win the game
SYSTEM REQUIREMENT
- OS: Windows XP/Vista/7
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4
- RAM: 2GB
- HD Space: 10GB
- Graphics Card: ATI/AMD or Nvidia with 256MB RAM and Shader Model 2.0 support
- Sound Card: DirectX compatible
