Tribes 3 Beta... Lookin' good Thread

Well, I just got the Tribes 3: Vengeance Open Beta and I have to say, I'm pretty impressed. Here' my review of the beta, as well as things I think could be made better.

Although it improves on Tribes 2's graphics in every way, T3V will never be pretty enough to play with the big boys like Doom 3 and Half Life 2, but then again, it also has to compensate for the fact that you can have about 100 players on a server at one time, without any lagging! That considered, the Graphics are phenomenal, and you can really see detail. The maps are lush and enormous, with all sorts of little thematic bits that are really a marvel.

One gripe I have, however, is that the T3V looks far more 'candy-coated' than it's predecessor's. All of the armies are bright (as in, 'ow it hurts my eyes' bright) shades of red, blue, and yellow, none of the muted and metallic tones from T2 that gave it's grimy and futuristic feel. One thing I do like however, is that T3V has gone for a very eccentric visual style... many of the suits of armor look almost medieval in design, and that gives T3V a very uniue flavor.

Keeping with tradition, T3V has a fairly limited pallette of realistic sound effects. Most of the most important bites are the various whooshes and explosions from high-tech weaponry going off, and off course the obligatory crashes as the destroyed hulls of vehicles collide with the earth. In T3V they added the sound of footsteps, which I have to say I never really notice, nor care about, but it's nice to see they're trying to improve. One thing that startled me was the absence of techno-rock music that filled previous games, notably T2. In server's there is no pulsing metal in the background, which makes things feel a little lonely.

In the weaponry department, T3V has removed quite a few of my favorites from the 2nd game's repetoire, but I hope they'll be replaced come full game. The rocket-launcher has been switched from a himing-missile launcher of doom to an amusing little weapon that fires 6 smaller missiles in rapid succession, and can be 'guided' with mouse movements. Extremely useful, very satisfying, but a bit innacurate. Most of the major favorites are still here, like the Spinfusor, Chaingun, Grenade Launcher, and, of course, the Fusion Mortar. Plus there are some very cool additions, such as my personal favorite, the Buckler. A wrist-mounted shield, it not only protects you, but allows you to damage enemies by ramming into them, and best of all, can be thrown like a boomerang! (Think lightsaber throws in Jedi Knight 2) There's also The Burner, an odd little device that fires spherical laser shots in the manner of the Old Blaster which explode in huge plumes of flame, and the New Blaster, which is essentially a shotgun. There's also the endlessly time-consuming gadget called the grapple, which is just that: A Grapple. There are a couple of notable guns missing, such as the shocklance and plasma cannon, although the shocklance does make a comeback of sorts, mainfesting as a sort of spring-loaded dagger everyone carries as a sidearm.

There's still jsut three armor classes... Light Medium and Heavy. Now, though, each class only carries three weapons, and each has a 'unique' weapon... Lights have Snipers, Mediums have Bucklers, and Heavies have Mortars. There are also only four available packs in the Beta: the Shield, Repair, Energy and new Speed packs. Hopefully we'll see some more additions. Each class has been balanced significantly now... the difference between Heavies and Lights is far less radical than it was in T2 and now it's actually POSSIBLE for a Light to kill a Heavy without the aid of a shocklance from behind.

In the vehicle department, I was considerably disappointed. It seems VU decided it liked the idea of infantry combat a lot, and moved T3V significantly away from the Vehicle Combat Sierra employed in T2. Vehicles are not 'summoned' at large stations, but instead appear sporadically at seemingly random intervals on vehicle pads designated specifically for each vehicle type. There are only four vehicles in the Beta, (once again, hope for more) and, as fun as they are, they just don't measure up to the coolness of the T2 vehicles. We have the shrike replaced by an odd contraption that looks kind of like a large wheel with a benh in the middle, armed with a harpoon gun and pitifully small, a Tank that has the extremely cool ability to scale vertical surfaces, the gunship, a grenade-launching two-gunner aircraft, and the buggy, an extremely fast thing with a machine gun on top and the ability to act as a mobile deployment zone (You can now choose your deployment zone... think Battlefield).

All i all, despite a few disappointments (and I'm willing to cut some slack since it is after all just the Beta) t3V is a very fun game, and I recommend to everyone to get their hands on a copy of the Beta. ALthough you can definitely tell it's from a new developer, it's still, at heart, the same great game.

My Rating (Beta): 8/10
Download it?: Yah.

omg pics :o

There are plenty of pics around... look at them.
www.tribesvengeance.com

/me wants the tribes 2 vehicles

Yes, the bomber is sorely missed.

Other thread.