Definitely a pretty decent first person shooter (FPS), Tribes Vengeance looks as if has enough to keep just about everyone happy. While it may do little for the hardcore RPG crowd, I believe that even they might find some aspect of the game fun if they tried.

With that out of the way, let me be the first to say that the game’s popularity is actually surprising when considering some of the more intense FPS games out there today. I myself have only received second hand information. Once again, it is popular, but remains an acquired taste.

When they first announced a new Tribes made by the guys behind Freedom Force and System Shock 2, I was just a little torn. These developers, Irrational Games, are good … at singleplayer. The Tribes version of a singleplayer “campaign” is just an elaborate tutorial. My inner cynic grew bold, expecting yet another heartbreaking Tribes debacle. Yet they insisted that the focus was on the singleplayer campaign. They promised a good story with a lengthy, interesting singleplayer mode. I remained skeptical. Tribes 2 was supposed to do all kinds of things, all it ended up doing was making you feel like an ass for buying it.

Later when I got a glimpse of it at E3, it was a multiplayer test. This was the Tribes I knew and loved. Bases with large open spaces between them, and nothing but a jetpack and some finesse to move you about. Some new additions like the grappling hook looked promising, while the old favorites like the spinfusor were still there. That hard disillusioned shell I’d worked so hard to build up began to crack. They managed to slip in a multiplayer game after all and best of all, it looked, felt and even smelled like Tribes.