I’m a boomer (a term for old in modern internet slang) according to multiple discord servers. I’ve been called this because I like old games, a lot of the reviews I write are for old fashioned gameplay loops. You know what? If that means I take Quake’s action over Counter-Strikes, I take Unreal Tournament’s level design over PUBG’s or reflex shooting over aiming down sights then I’m not a boomer, I’m the ultimate boomer and everyone who disagrees can eat a rail slug.

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the evolution that video games have gone through but in some cases, I think that modern shooters have made access too easy. The modern FPS is more tactical, more thought out while being much slower than their old school compatriots. The old shooters, on the other hand, are stupid; I mean really stupid, their stupidity meant there was much less to worry about, there was much less to get right so they spent their time getting their action perfect. They did this with unnecessarily big guns, massive levels that made no sense for their size and characters that could sprint sideways. You know what? Those dumb shooters are maddeningly fun so let’s go check out one of the less popular ones.

Note: Tribes: Vengeance went free years ago. We are using the community-supported Tribes: Revengeance. 

Story:

The story is a bit of a trip. Let me quickly cover the playable characters before we dive into the story.

Victoria: The younger daughter of the king and the heir apparent, why is she the heir apparent? Because unlike her sister Olivia, she is hot; I’m not joking, that is the reason. She is kidnapped at the start of the story by Daniel of the Phoenix tribe. She eventually falls in love with Daniel… we all saw that coming.

Daniel: Leader of the Phoenix tribe and Victoria’s abductor turned lover before she becomes queen. Daniel wants peace between the tribes and the Imperials.

Julia: Victoria’s daughter out on a hunt for her mother’s murderer. She will do what it takes for revenge.

Jericho: Daniel’s brother doesn’t approve of Victoria and the empire but will do whatever his brother wishes.

Mercury: A cybrid (cyborg-like) assassin. He is sent out to kill Daniel first and 20 years later he is sent after Jericho.

The story acts like a Quentin Tarantino movie jumping between the present and the past. This takes a lot of work to do right but thankfully Tribes does this well. Each part of the present-day storyline flashes back to the past to show cause. I love how well this is done. The story is filled with love, deceit and revenge. Unlike most American writing; the story is fun with no stupid love triangles to follow while carrying interests to the next point.  

Sound:

The voice acting is mostly good, I wouldn’t call it great since the voice actors haven’t put all the emotion available to them into delivering their lines. The voice acting falls further when we have to listen to Olivia (Victoria’s elder sister) whose voice actor couldn’t be arsed to do her job.

The voice-over during the gameplay is poor. Each time your character takes a hit they make the same sound again and again and again. It gets on your nerves especially for high pitched characters like Victoria since a rapid strike will have her making the same sound nearly continuously.  

The weapon effects are solid. All of them sound straight out of a combination of the Trek and Wars of the stars. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these effects were sampled from those movies/series. They are perfect, especially the effects for the spinfusor that sounds alright on launch but makes a big splash when it hits something. There are also minor sound effects that tell you when you have hit something or are connecting to something. They sound a little out of place but their unique effect acts as an assist in gameplay due to their unique sound.

Graphics:

Yeah, the graphics look a little dated but they aren’t bad by any stretch of the imagination. The world textures look a little dated but you would be very impressed if you noticed the lack of detail as you pass over the area at 500 miles per hour. The levels are not drably coloured, they are quite bright and look futuristic. Character models and textures aren’t bad at all, they look great. The use of bright colours to denote each faction really helps to tell your friends and enemies apart.

Special effects are nice, they are even better for their time. Every faction’s jetpack effect is the same as its faction colour. The sniper and spinfusor have a bright red and blue stream respectively, the spinfusor also releases a cloud of blue smoke on impact which looks cool as all hell. There are lots of little graphical effects all over the world, a few examples are colours on boxes phasing in and out, airstreams in jump elevators, the waves in the water and most importantly the green highlights showing you the way to go. 

Overall the graphics look good considering how old the game is.

Gameplay:

You’ve read till here so you are probably wondering: What makes Tribes unique compared to its old school compatriots? I can give you the answer in one word: Speed. The movement speed in Tribes is nuts, that applies not only to Vengeance but to all the Tribes games. The on-foot movement is fast, and only the start of our story, you also have a jetpack to hover around but that is still not the end of our story, the skiing is where things get interesting. Skiing gives your character frictionless boots allowing you to slide down slopes, the longer the plunge the faster you go. This is helped further by the jetpack that lets you use ramps while skiing to throw you into the air and catch unsuspecting enemies off guard. You can deploy the skis anytime and anywhere; their sole job is to eradicate that asshole called friction. For those of you who know how to rocket jump and plasma climb, the skis will make you move even faster with an assist from a spinfusor.

The skies and jetpack wouldn’t make sense without the levels to entertain them. I would like to say that Irrational Games nailed this, but honestly, they have nailed it only 95% of the time. Most of the levels are these huge open areas where you find yourself constantly switching between your jetpack and skiing areas all talking snapshots at enemies or a little larger than average corridor areas where you can still slip and slide your way through the enemy forces. Sadly, there are tight corridors where the game might as well be called Tribes of Duty: Vengeance Call, these are rare but do throw the game’s momentum out of whack. Before we close on the levels I would like to point out 2 levels in particular for being unfair train wrecks of bad design and unnecessarily high difficulty:

• Victoria: The Past – Proof: I hate defending NPCs and there are no worse NPCs than structures that need to be defended. This level has you protecting Daniel, a generator and 4 satellite dishes all at the same bloody time. This might have been acceptable if the game had coop with a friend aiding you but alone this level is just bloody brutal.

• Julia: The Present – Trials: This level is unfair because it expects you to know two things:

  • Traversal Methods that you never learnt before or will ever use after.

  • How to use weapons that you have never used up to this point.

These two levels are annoying as hell. I never thought I would ever say this but just use the skip level cheat code (“CampaignNext” in the terminal) to get past these levels, they aren’t worth your time or frustration.

Next up is the weapon list. There are a decent number of weapons in Tribes: Vengeance but I mainly want to focus on 2: The chaingun and the spinfusor. The reason that I’m focusing on these two is that they are the weapons you will be using most of the time. The Chaingun fires rapidly and can take out enemies at long range while the spinfusor is when you get up close and personal or when you can predict where an enemy is going to be in a few seconds. The spinfusor is an all-around weapon in the Tribes games. It works well at short range, it has an explosive radius with no limits on the range. It can take out everyone from the small to the big to the annoyingly large with minimal effort. The other weapons such as the shotgun or the multi-rocket launcher are useful in certain conditions but those are few and far apart. The fact that the game lets you only carry three weapons at a time is annoying but at the same time helps in keeping the desperation and in turn the adrenalin high.

To keep the weapons company there are grenades and packs. Packs come in multiple forms but you can only equip one at a time. The packs provide additional abilities like speed, shields, energy for your jetpack and repair that can heal you and your friendlies. Again, there is no best one to use here, each of them has a specific use case and it is up to you to read the level before choosing one. 

There are vehicles in the game but they are few and far apart. In the single-player game, you can drive a buggy, a hovercraft and two different kinds of tanks. They are fun to drive but you do need to keep them running. I found myself either driving to repair spots or getting out of the vehicles to use my repair pack to fix them. The vehicles are fun and the gaps for repairs add to the intensity of the game. There is also a certain fun in watching enemies flop over from the vehicle weapons. I love the vehicles and their sections. The vehicle sections are a masterclass in game design, they have fun, anger and pure fear all wrapped into one.

Time for the core gameplay. The first thing Tribes does right after the movement is the lack of regenerating health followed by tough enemies. Your health is not coming back from a hit just because you hide behind a rock. You want your health back, you need a health pack, thankfully enemies drop health packs when they die. Enemies vary between heavy, medium and light but all of them die with a spinfusor or two to the face. Once you drop an enemy you need to rush to grab the health pack that they dropped on their deathbed, if you are lucky, you will also find ammo for your current weapon. Enemies don’t go light on you either, they will dodge, they will jetpack and they will ski to make your life hell. You need to think quickly and manage the battlefield against the opposing forces by using the correct weapon and pack for every encounter. 

The gameplay is solid, it’s been a while since I could feel my heart beating after a level. Tribes managed to get my heart pumping after every level, I loved every second of each level except for the two mentioned above.

Conclusion:

Colourful, brutal, insanely fast while supported by a decent story, Tribes: Vengeance would have been an easy 9 but then two stupid levels and poor sound clips reduce it to a 7 till the levels get their hands on you pushing the game back up to an 8. Tribes: Vengeance has its flaws but is saved by intense gameplay.

There is no recommended price today since the game is free. Links to download are beneath the final score.

Final Score: 8/10

Downloads:

Tribes: Reveangeance

Tribes: Vengeance from Hi-Rez Studios