Tribes: Ascend

Tribes: Ascend – Beta Review

Tribes: Ascend is a fast paced  shooter featuring big open maps and jet packs. I was fortunate enough to get my hands on the beta key for Tribes: Ascend. I admit i never played a Tribes game in my life since i was primarily a cosole gamer up until a few years ago. I always heard PC gamers touting Tribes for its fast jet packing style of gameplay. Many gamers also considered some of the Tribes games to be innovative and “before there time”. I don’t know about any of that but after playing some of Tribes: Ascend beta i know one thing, this game is fun. Tribes: Ascend is developed by Hi-Rez studios and published by _No Company. The game will release first on the PC Q1 2012 and later on the Xbox 360 TBA.

Since this is a early impressions article i’ll just get some of content out of the way first. The main screen has all of the beta’s basic info for navigating and finding what you need. Top of the screen has Classes, Profile, Buy Boost, Play Tokens and Shared XP. The Classes include Ranger, Soldier, Juggernaut, Scrambler, Raiden, Brute, Pathfinder, Infiltrator, Technician, Jumper and Sentinel. You start out only being able to access Soldier and Ranger. I played most of my matches today as a Ranger and did ok with that class. I even got a 5 kill no death in one match of  team deathmatch.

Each class has two Perk slots. There are about thirty different perks you can unlock give or take. Some are Looter, Bounty Hunter, Air Show, Flag Reach, Safe Fall, Back Stab and many more. You can also unlock Skills by playing Tribes: Ascend’s online multiplayer. Some of these are Spinfuser Ammo, Health Maximum, Energy, Eagle Reload etc. Since i’m just starting  i have yet to unloack any Skills yet. I did however apply the two free default perks to my Ranger class. As far as navigating through all of the menus etc it was fairly painless and noob friendly. Everything in the beta content-wise has a bio attached to it so you know excatly what your spending your in-game tokens on.

Gamemodes: Team Deathmatch, Rabbit and Capture the Flag. I spent my time primarily playing Team Deathmatch. Team Deathmatch was pretty neat. It has flags that can be carried and dropped for bonus points. Haven’t touched Rabbit or Capture the Flag. I plan on writing more impression articles detailing more gamemodes and maps.

Maps: Bella Omega and Dry Dock are the two maps i wrote down. I did play a couple of others. For the most part all of the maps are huge and open. Some maps are at night with space cruisers flying over head. Other maps are at daytime and feature more greenery. Every map has Inventory Stations that replenish ammo for all of your weapons.

Other Stuff: for a complete noob at Tribes i did find Tribes: Ascend albeit simplistic in design but a captivating and fun shooter. I really like how you have to anticipate and place your shots. My secondary weapon was a grenade launcher type gun. I was placing my shot so good i would blow up a enemy while he/she flew into the grenade i shot killing them. It was very rewarding. So much killing while in the air with this game. As for my skills go i always had more kills than deaths in all my matches. I haven’t spent any tokens on upgrades yet.

I am enjoying this little sci-fi beta thats for sure. I do plan of writing more Tribes: Ascend beta articles detailing more of the beta as i rank up. But to do that i have to play more. Thanks for reading.