Be Excellent To Each Other

So this is supposed to be awesome.

I downloaded it on Steam and I even bought the DLC for it (currently in the flash sale for less than 10 fags, so I figured it'd be a good idea to just grab it - the actual game is free to play).

I installed it, and it crashed my computer. Bleh. I think it's the graphics card "overheating*" issue I had with Diablo III which took me ages to suss out, uninstalling and reinstalling drivers. So fuck it. I'll save that for another day.

Upon rebooting my computer, StarCraft II bloody crashed when I tried to load that up. So I closed it via the task manager and I notice that "Hi Rez Games" have two processes running - eating up a fair bit of memory as well. A background updater and something else. They're for Tribes: Ascend. In the game's launcher options you can disable background updating, but these processes still boot up when your system does, and they just sit there, eating up resources. So I had to just uninstall it. Fuck that.

All that being said, as above, it's apparently great. Anyone playing it?

*For some reason, some games like to run at a million FPS in the menu screen, causing my graphics card to spaz out and my computer to crash.

It's an old issue specific to my graphics cards and a few others that are similar (X2 "dual GPU" graphics cards, if you're interested) that AMD never bothered to fix, and still haven't to this day. In fact, support for my generation of card is ending soon anyway. Yes, I need to upgrade!

I had to revert to very old drivers to stop this from happening in Diablo III, but now that I'm trying to run this, it's happening again, probably because I'm running old drivers. I can't win!

Updated my drivers. Trying again. Nothing else to do!

Screenshots tell me it's a Halo ripoff.

Na, the original game was around before Halo, although Tribes 2 might've borrowed some style from it. I didn't ever play either of them but I remember them being around. This is essentially the same game but updated for now. It's about jetpacking and skiing around... And shooting.

It works now, by the way, though my PC is woefully underpowered. Might just forget it until I upgrade my machine to do it some justice. Was planning on upgrading soon any way, money permitting.

edit: In fact, Tribes 2 was out about six months before Halo: CE back in 2001. (Tribes: Ascend is very similar in style to Tribes 2, by the way, which is why I'm banging this drum...)

Voices tell me I'm The Shit.



I'm the shit.

That's my voice!

Also, you shouldn't slouch so much and your beard smells nice.

*creeps away*

Ye\h, videos say it's nothing like halo.
It looks rather fun from my point of view - no hiding in shrubs, battles which last longer than a couple of seconds (Hit scan weapons not that common, Thankfully, so you actually need to work to kill someone) etc etc.

Sadly, it'd almost certainly mean playing with randoms, so I'll likely give it a miss.

As a hardened Tribes 2 player, the fact that you have preset classes all but entirely put me off before I even found out about microtransactions. Yes, if you want any of the other classes apart from the basic three you need to GRIND AND GRIND or get your wallet out.

Way before CoD4 thought of it, Tribes 2 let you create custom classes. Three armour types, each able to use most but not all of the selection of weapons and equipment. Two types of sensors, deployable turrets, a repair-beam that healed both players and equipment, portable item dispensers, a laser designator to provide artillery users with a means of aiming at targets out of their line of sight.

Plus, the vehicles! The most elegant solution yet to the issue in Battlefield of people camping the vehicles and stealing them. You'd go to a vehicle pad, you'd step on it, pick the one you wanted from a menu, and so long as they weren't all in use, it would spawn and you'd be automatically teleported into the driver's seat. Fighters, bombers (with seperate bombardier and tail gunner seats) and a transport that doubled as a gunship as the passengers could fire their weapons. A hoverbike, a tank and a mobile base with an automated defense cannon.

Tribes: Ascend, so I'm told, is very focused on the infantry and you need to use a lot of your points to get a vehicle that might well be blown out from under you seconds later. Given my character was a light armour with a repair pack, when I wasn't at base keeping our defenses in good working order I was pulling off hammerhead turns in my bomber. Both of these options are denied to me in Ascend.



So, fuck it. I think I'll wait and see how Firefall and Planetside 2 look. There's also the little matter that Section 8: Prejudice provided almost everything Tribes 2 did (only the armour classes were missing) and that died on its ass in a few months.

I get the feeling it was a joke.

Mmm, that sounds more sucky. I was disappointed (to put it mildly) that there was any form of unlocking structure at all. This just makes it sound worse.


If there's one thing Halo, Battlefield et al have taught me is that I prefer my FPSs to have no vehicles for general shooting. The lack of maneuverability bugs me, and the way it forces specific choices also.

After viewing the tribes ascend video, I watched some quake 3 duels. It made me sad about the state of modern shooters.

I don't mind ground vehicles, but air vehicles can fuck right off, especially as the current trend is to make all vehicles in shooters to be virtually indestructible. If I hit a helicopter with a bazooka, I don't expect it to be able to carry on flying...

Alas, yes. In Tribes 2, the entire selection of equipment was available from the beginning. In Ascend, you can either play to earn points to unlock stuff, I think, or you can pay to 'buy' access to a specific class, and there might also be the usual buffs to buy as well.



The thing about Tribes, is they all worked together quite well. The tank had a slow firing fusion mortar which was best used in conjunction with a spotter, the bomber need a full crew or it was vulnerable to attack by fighters, and the fighters themselves were fast but only the very best players were able to use them effectively against ground targets (players or infrastructure) without getting blown up by missiles or another fighter. Further, the bases were very large structures where the vehicles couldn't go so if you didn't fancy vehicles or the presce thereof you could just go inside. There was one map in particular that I loved where the outside was a series of very steep, harsh mountains - hard to pass even with your jetpack. The intention was for air vehicles to deliver infantry to assault the absolutely enormous (easily the size of your standard deathmatch or CTF map) bases. It worked really well as those who wanted to fly flew, those who wanted to fight just hopped onto a player-controlled transport and were dropped off at the action.

They claim the Tribes retains some of its purity thanks to the Spinfusor but I'm not sure that's enough.