The sequel to
Gabe and Tycho's favorite obsession,
Tribes. It's been wildly overhyped by the fanbase of penny arcade, I think, and this lead to mixed reviews. Some people just can't run this highly demanding (system wise) game. They'll either admit the faults of their boxes, or scream havoc and send unmitigated streams of flaming, poisonous vitriol to various message boards. Some people just prefer Tribes 1, or
Quake, or
UT, or whatever, and are cool about it. Some people (me), bought it, can run it decently (had to turn a lot of graphic options down), and enjoy it that way. I mean, people call themselves gamers and then
throw down a game when they can't run it at 1024x768x32. That's pathetic. These people aren't gamers, they're graphophiles. Gamers would prefer to play a fun game, not a game that allows them to get the most out of their Voodoo-X+-Alpha, Championship-edition-monkey-whatever.
You've got to accept that a game can be a lot of fun without being graphically stunning. Look at Pac-Man. Yes, it's still addictive. Galaga? Indeed.
River City Ransom is one of my favorite games, and with it's
tiny system requirements, (check it out on emulator),
my computer, which isn't even that special, can run it at about 80 times the speed it's supposed to go.
Tribes 2 is a facelift to Tribes 1, if I understand things correctly (I didn't play the original). It's got new vehicles (multiple passengers allow some interesting vehicular tactics), slightly different physics, and a lot of the same old, same old. It holds up to 64 people in a game, which is a testament to how far we've come in the realm of FPSs (but how far will we go... that's another node). It looks good, the weapons are fun, the voice commands are complex and handy at the same time. The interface takes some getting used to, and above all...
You're not playing Quake anymore