Super Nerd Sunday Presents: My First 1205 Words on Tribes: Ascend!

This isn’t a complete review – I haven’t had nearly enough time with the beta of Tribes: Ascend to write one up. This is just a reflection on the product as I’ve seen it. My love of Tribes is old news for anyone who’s been reading this blog since its inception, but just in case any new readers hopped along: Tribes was one of the seminal games in my development as a gamer. Without Tribes I simply wouldn’t be the gamer I am today. I love Tribes like a hooker loves blow, like a cop loves doughnuts, like a teenager loves masturbating.

So I went into Tribes: Ascend with some pretty high expectations. I’d played nearly every version of Tribes to emerge since the first game decided it no longer wanted to be a game oh so long ago, and I’ve been encouraged and disappointed by bits and pieces within each of them. I thought Tribes: Vengeance nearly had the formula of Tribes back down, but poor map design and serious network problems killed that game for me. Tribes 2 lost the core of what made the first Tribes great, and effectively shot itself in the foot. That browser based version of Tribes remained so indistinct for me that I honestly cannot recall its name, never a good sign. It’s been a rough time to be a Tribes fan, to constantly see your hopes rise only to be dashed again and again.

And I’d like to say it’s over. Certainly, Ascend is looking quite good. But I cannot honestly say that I think it represents a full return to form of the original Tribes. It has a lot of the great elements that made up Tribes, don’t get me wrong. You’re still skiing with a spinfusor out, and that midair hit, when you get it, is a high unlike anything else in the world. There are a pair of flags, and you’re capping them, or not if you want to cost your team the game, charlatan. There are light, medium and heavy armors, and there are packs you can use to change the way your character plays.

And this is where the issue begins. Tribes was all about taking a small number of components and mixing and matching them together so that they made a unique collective whole. There were a lot of builds that dominated play to be sure (the spinfusor, grenade launcher and chaingun with an energy pack, for example) but you could pick any set of weapons, any pack and hop off into battle. You could even pick up weapons and packs on the battlefield if you wanted to make a quick change up on the fly – sometimes you’d have to drop your energy pack to fix that generator, or grab an enemy’s shield pack to pull off a quick last minute survival move when a mortar landed next to you. It was a game about customizing your class, and not just going into battle but during it.

Tribes: Ascend doesn’t have any of that. In Tribes: Ascend you choose your loadout from a group of around eight preset loadouts before you go into battle. These loadouts all have different gear and names that vaguely imply what they should be doing, but it’s still not easy to figure out just what the fuck is going on with each of these classes. It’s complicated by the fact that no two classes have the same piece of gear: even spinfusors aren’t spinfusors between classes, they’ve got shorthand acronyms and the word “light” or “heavy” in front of them to make them seem different. As a result there’s no way to know just what a class’ gear really is until you sit down and play them. I’m still not sure how a bolt thrower is that different from a spinfusor myself, aside from the fact that it’s assigned to the unfortunately named “jumper.” You can’t customize your loadouts, you can’t mix and match elements of them and you can’t test them out before you buy them.

That’s right, I said buy them. Tribes: Ascend uses the micro-transaction business model wherein you give them money and they give you fake money to spend within their game, fake money which is actually equivalent to your time as a player. Even if you purchase the game you’ll only get enough space money to buy around half of the available classes, and your only hint to what each class does is a two-hundred word tooltip and an animation of that class looking vaguely badass. Sometimes it’s just a picture of a Blood Eagle soldier holding a submachine gun. It’s problematic that they’re choosing to sell elements of gameplay this crucial, and that they’re doing so in such a manner that keeps people who have theoretically purchased the full product from actually owning the content they bought.

That’s my biggest issue right now. They’ve only released four maps to date, and they’re also a little problematic (something just seems slightly off about their design, like they attempt to make Snowblind more Snowblind and make Broadside more Broadside and just didn’t pull it off) but all in all it’s a noble effort to resurrect a game that, frankly, should still be being played by people all the time. Tribes is possibly one of the greatest games of all time, one of the most revolutionary and unique experiences available to FPS gamers, and it’s inspiring to see Tribes: Ascension emerging on the eve of one of the industry’s biggest and most marketed mill-design releases ever (Modern Warfare 3). Ascend preserves the core of the original Tribes – once I finish this writeup and post it I’m going to hop on and play some more of it. I’m excited to polish up my skills with a spinfusor and try to Stella my way back into being a competent Tribesman again.

I think most of the things I find troublesome will be corrected by the time the game is released. There’s no way they’re going to release the game with only four maps. And I cannot believe that the original map designs are going to have these issues: I think the problems I have with maps at present stems from knowing their progenitors too well. I just feel that something is wrong as I play them at the edge of my mind. These are places I spent countless hours of my youth in, and to see them re-created in ways that are just strange enough to catch my attention is a bit frustrating. But the progression model of the game, the model wherein you must purchase content and where you cannot customize your class, is unnerving in the extreme for me. I’m hoping class customization will be a part of the finished product, but I can’t see how that will work with the business model that Hi-Rez has constructed for their game.

I’ll be watching Ascend carefully, don’t get me wrong. The simple act of attempting to make a game like this is enough to get me excited. But until some of these issues are addressed, my excitement will remain tempered by concern and my joy as my spinfusors twist through the air will remain bittersweet.