First of all Tribes 2 keeps the same basic gameplay we have all grown to know and love, but it all improves on it, greatly. They have added on top of the classic
CTF gameplay some other ones such as Siege, Rabbit, Hunted, and Team Hunted.
Siege, which is my personal favorite, puts the two teams against each other in a battle for control over a base. One team must
infiltrate the base and touch a control switch to win the game while the other team defends it. After successfully capturing the base the teams will then switch sides and the new attackers must capture the base in the same time or less to win the round.
The other new play styles are Rabbit and Hunted. In Rabbit One person grabs the flag and try and hold it as long as possible, the rest of the people must then kill him and get the flag. Once a new person grabs it the
mayhem starts all over again. In Hunted you must kill people and grab the flags they drop and take them to a certain spot on the map to score, team hunted is the same only with two teams going at each other instead of a free-for-all.
They have really fixed up the in-game
interface as well. Did you ever get stuck at a inventory station trying to decide what weapons you want with some jerk behind you yelling "Hurry up with that station!"? Well no more of that! You now have an inventory screen that you can bring up anywhere thus allowing you to configure your weapons and armor how you want them. Then all you need to do is hop on the inventory station and bam! You immediately get your items so there is no need for waiting in long lines anymore. You also get 20 spaces to configure all of your setups so you can switch equipment in a snap. You can now also arrange your weapons so you know what slot they are in, plus my favorite of all you can use your
wheel mouse to change weapons yay!
Then we have the
vehicles, sleek, sexy, and whole lot cooler then the original. There are six vehicles in all, the Shrike (scout flyer), Wildcat Grav Cycle, Beowulf Assault Tank, Jericho MPB(mobile point base), Thundersword Bomber, and the Havoc (troop carrier). Along with the new vehicles comes the weapons, all of the weapons have been re-designed to look more intimidating then before (except for the chain gun still looks the same). Plus they have added two new weapons, the Shock lance, which is a close range melee weapon, and the missile launcher, which can lock on to the vehicles, or players that have been using the jet packs to long and have built up enough heat. Besides those changes the game stays true to the Tribes 1 gameplay.
The game isn't the only thing that you get, there is also an entire online community built right into the game. This includes
message boards, in game
e-mail,
chat rooms,
news, and community browser that lets you look up other people and tribes. You can also create or join "Tribes" (commonly called to as clans) and you get your own message board and a special tribe tag after your name in yellow. Also there is a built in voice communication feature that lets you talk in real time with your teammates without using a program like
Battlecom or
Game Voice.
The graphics are nothing but incredible. The character models are smooth and life like, the buildings (though oddly designed) are awesome, and the
terrain is magnificent. Of course to be able to use Tribes 2's graphics to their full potential you need a high-end computer with good graphics card and
processor. Even if you don't have the best computer there are dozens of options that let you tone the graphics down so it will run better. Something new that was not in the first Tribes is that they now have added water, which you can dive under with a very well detailed splash. Once you're under water your energy will go down slower when using your jet pack and you will not build up heat. One thing that I though was cool is that you can perch yourself on a tree branch and snipe people from there.
Tribes 2 comes equipped with various music tracks for different maps. They are very well done and just improve the overall feeling of the game. Also the weapons sounds and
environmental sounds are very nice and life like (you can even hear crickets in one map but they just get annoying).
Of course with every great game comes it's down falls. The initial release was very buggy although dozens of patches have fix most of them I still do get occasional crashing hear and there. Also like I said before it takes a very fast computer to handle Tribes 2 at it's highest graphics settings, although you can lower a lot of settings to get it going smother on slower computers.
Basically if you loved the old Tribes action or are looking for a huge team based
FPS get this without hesitation! But remember it may take a little
tweaking to get the game running smoothly.