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To start this review I'll just go through some terms and talk about modern shooters in general. Tribes is an arena team based competetive first person shooter. So, what do I mean by this? Arena based means that there will be two relatively equal teams, competing against eachother (team competetive), FPS. Arena based will also refer to the maps, that will usually have boundaries and being mirrored for both teams. This is to create as equal conditions for both teams as possible, leaving it a struggle of skill, teamwork tactics and strategy. Another example of arena team based gameplay would be soccer, starcraft or counter strike. The opposite of this would be scenariobased, where you play through a map of some sort, from finish to end. The teams will not be balanced or have the same conditions. Left 4 Dead would be an example of this, or any storybased game, such as Diablo.
Another term I will use a lot is hitscan. Hitscan is about projectile travel. Counterstrike for example is hitscan. If you are aiming at somebody and you shoot you will hit. There is no delay for the bullet to travel from your gun to the target, nor is there any downfall. An example of non-hitscan would be rocketlaunchers, that will usually fire a rocket which will travel from you to the target. When the rocket arrives the target will have had time to move, right? Hitscan will usually be easier than non-hitscan. Without hitscan it is suddenly a game of psychology as well; you have to predict where the enemy is going, and you have to guess where your enemy thinks you're going to avoid his attacks. Hitscan seems rather logical in a lot of modern shooters. Often based around real weapons, where a projectile velocity of a thousand metres a second wouldn't be impropable at all, your target will usually be rather close (less than a hundred metres) and movement speed being rather slow (usually running speed). You can skip the approximate math if you want; Let's say velocity is 1km/s, distance is 50m and the target is running 5m/s (usually the most difficuly circumstances you'll come upon in for example Counterstrike or Team Fortress 2). The travel time for the bullet would be 0.05s during which the target could move 0,25m. Seeing as a human would be a large target at that distance, and that the target might not be running i
So, onto modern shooters. They will usually be slow, heavy and down to earth. Look att BF3 or Modern Warfare 3. They are both mainly supposed to be multiplayer games, usually involving team based games (conquer bases, destroy target or the teams should, in total, earn some set ammount of points). Combat in these games are coverbased and usually close quarters. With rapid fire hitscan, assualt rifles with high damage and combat being close quarters you will kill an enemy almost instantly if you get the shot on him, right? It will end up being about attacking enemies from the right angle, finding cover and reflexes. There's a very simple reason for this. Console controllers are not precise enough to handle too difficult aiming or movement, and most modern shooters are made to sell on consoles, and then on PC secondary (maybe).
Now, finally, on to Tribes: Ascend. It's made for computers, it's free to play and it IS STILL IN BETA. Focus is on Capture the flag. So let me tell you about movement! First of there's the skiing mechanic; it turns friction off. Jumping down a steep hill without friction and you will build up a lot of speed. That will be your primary way of traversing the large, open and hilly maps. You'll find no boxes to hide behind when you're outside of the bases. Maybe the occational rock or tree. Speed is how you survive. The faster you go, the harder you are to hit 'cause, remember, it's not hitscan. To actually hit something you have to figure out where your target will be when you hit that potentional spot. To add to this you all have jetpacks to jump over hills (to retain momentum) as well as control you momentum. This is how you get the enemy flag. Try to walz in somewhere like you can in MW3 or BF3 and you will die. There's little cover, there will be people by their base and they will shoot at you. You've got to go fast.
So, there's a bunch of different classes with different strengths and weaknesses. They're well balanced, already, with dynamic to them and they're all crucial to the game. Step one is teamwork! Compose a decent team to defend your flag, being able to hunt it down if taken, attacking their base and taking their flag. Most weapons fire explosive rounds, the signet weapon of the Tribes series being the spinfusor; firing a single discuslike grenade that explodes on impact. Being close to people mean that it'll be easy to get hit, and being slow means you're an easy target. Inside there's plenty of close surfaces for things to explode on, there's short distance and nothing to build up your speed with. Being inside will make it easy to deal and take damage. Heavies are excellent here, having powerful weapons and lots of health will allow them to outgun most enemies.
The pathfinder being the fastest class i excellent for chasing or flaggrabbing. You can easily build up speed using their special packs and their light armour makes the jetpack very efficient. Doing the same with a heavy class is much, much harder since the jetpack cannot lift their heavy bodies as high and their heavy momentum makes it harder to make quick turns. The pathfinders low health, however, will make it very vurnerable. They have to have speed and be able to fly around freely.
Just pointing these two things out will allow most people to deduct that heavies can be used for defence, and pathfinders for easy flaggrabbing. With the variety of classes it is more dynamic than this, and that leaves you and your team to adapt to what the other team is doing. If they get few infiltrators, class mainly for close quarter combat with a stealth pack to make them invisible, a raider or two will be necessary for defence, since their jammer packs will reveal invisible enemies. Having a doombringer set up forcefields and mines around the base is also useful, but easily countered by artillery that will have to be taken out by a faster unit. Switching classes can be quite crucial during the course of a match and the matches ccan change severely and quickly. Keep an eye on what's going on, and use your team. If you see that your team has several infiltrators then another one will hardly be necessary. This game is dynamic. It's dynamic makes it hard. It being hard will force you to master. To master you have to be dynamic
I mentioned earlier that the game is free to play. You don't have to buy it and there's no subscription fee or anything. You can pay for stuff though. Ascend has a progressive career element with ingame benefits. As you start out you won't have all the classes nor all the unlockables and you will have no upgrades. Classes and unlockables (mostly weapons, perks and items) can be unlocked either by earning experience by playing, or by buying Tribes gold for real life money. Now, the classes are balanced, as are the unlockables, but still. In the essence of the game it is supposed to be played on equal conditions. The upgrades however can only be bought with experience which can only be earned through playing the game. You can however pay for a temporary boost, which will double your experience gain for some time. Now, while I do kind of oppose this, the game is of comercial level and quality, with a requirement for official servers and since selling an arena based FPS the conventional is impossible today, and we still want comercial level games, I do approve of experimenting and this is clearly an innovative and well thought out way of doing it. Besides, you can earn everything by playing. You can unlock all classes, unlockables and buy all upgrades without paying a single cent! Also, a lot of arena based shooters already have these career elements, and most people don't seem to mind.
I also don't mind since Hi-Rez Studious (the developers) really listen to the feed back of the community, and even though there seems to be a lot of rage about the game not being a direct clone of Tribes 2 (old fanboys who didn't get their old game remade) Hi-Rez have done an excellent work of balancing the old game with their new ideas. A worthy sequel with new and innovative content! All in all it's an excellent game that is fairly balanced (still beta, remember), already plenty of content (but not at all overwhelming), excellent difficulty curve and mechanic as well as being generally nice guys and, for being an FPS, having a wonderful community! If you have any interest in real computer FPS's then then you should try it out! It is free after all, and to get the beta you only have to sign up and you'll propably get a key within a few weeks or like them on facebook for instant access (this is what I meant with semi-open beta)! And yeah... maybe I am doing a bit of commercial for it, but the developers and the game deserve it... for now.
https://apps.facebook.com/betakeytribestest/contests/176920

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Get rid of spawning in loadout.
destructible inventory stations.

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Hmm... doubt there's any place for a squishy Infiltrator like myself in the Arena gamemode... it'll likely be the Soldier's playground... best balance between speed and offence.

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