Tribes Ascend - My Thoughts
I got lovingly invited to the beta the day before it opened to the public and spent most of that day tweaking the .ini file as it ran for crap on the only preset options I could choose, reminiscing the day when I tried to move on to Tribes 2 (which I shamefully couldn't).
Once playable the nostalgia came flooding back when I spawned with a disc launcher in my hands and vast a panoramic landscape to fly around in. much like a dog being let loose in an empty field, I enjoyed the freedom and smooth game-play until I hit level six and spent most of the time flailing in the air as my dead body came crashing to Earth like the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft.
When you reach that level you begin to understand how good some of these players are and how essential teamwork, strategy and how to quickly stamp out the voice commands can be. In this, Tribes Ascend doesn't fail to be true hardcore gaming, it's rough, gritty, punishing and absolutely exhilarating.
There are a host of modes to play, Team Deathmatch, Arena, CTF and more, plenty of variety to keep one entertained and to tone different skills and play styles.
On top of all this the aesthetic of Tribes Ascend is breathtaking. Spaceships (not the Phobos-Grunt) crawl across the skyline, nearby moons glow suppressing the battlefield and the terrain amplifies it's shape from base to base.
However, that shadow of such a shining game creeps around and you remember it's free-to-play. You can pay various amount of money to earn gold and XP boosters or you can sweat it out and earn all the XP yourself and unlock way. Though bare in mind, it took me a long time to gain 7200xp just to unlock the Sentinel class, a class similar to how I played the original Tribes, but to get the proper energy rifle you need to earn 100,000xp. I'd have to play as much I just had more than 13 times just to unlock that weapon, and then there's upgrades and extra weapons for everything and in every class.
Though they aren't rude enough to dangle in front of you the delights of what being a 'VIP' has to offer - if only I could transfer over my smurfberries, you can't help but feel that you inevitably have to put some money down and then it begins, now you've started you may as well pay the full amount, and if you pay the full amount (about £30), who's to say they won't add more and more and then you realise you've spent more than an average priced PC game. On top of that you may also have the displeasure of unlocking everything all at once and then have nothing to work towards! Why play? Why gain XP to earn that final weapon upgrade you've been struggling towards.
Though there's just one more nuisance, a bad habit I find with most free-to-play games, though this is nowhere near as bad as buying letters in Words with Friends, which is just outright cheating. In Tribes, those with more than you do have an advantage. Only after a few hours of playing I had unlocked extra health and more radius damage for my grenades, and for a game, the whole series in fact, that functions so well on a player's honest skill to have such an arbitrary system in place is a let down.
It's stressful, but it is acceptable. You can play Tribes Ascend without paying a penny and have an absolute blast. You may even be able to pay a small amount towards it and be able to play the style you prefer.
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