Tribes Ascend - Free to Play Sci-Fi FPS Shooter (Just Launched)
What is Tribes: Ascend?
Tribes: Ascend is a Free to Play Sci-Fi First Person Shooter made by the people who brought you Global Agenda. At its core it is an incredibly fast-paced capture-the-flag game, (although there are Arena, Team Deathmatch, and Capture & Hold gametypes) with vehicles, projectile weapons, and most importantly: jetpacks. It's a game where most of the fighting takes place mid-air, "twitch" shooting is virtually non-existent, and movement speed / positioning is just as important as aiming ability. There are many parallels that can be drawn between it and UT2k3 as well as the Halo franchise, but it is honestly a completely unique game and the parallels that can be drawn to other games are quite superficial. Here are some videos that might give you a feel of what the game plays like
Differences Between Tribes: Ascend and most FPS's The defining mechanic of the Tribes franchise is something known as skiing You'll notice that in the linked video, the speed of the player does not decrease unless he hits an obstacle dead-on, or chooses to stop pressing the "skiing" button, even when they are not flying through the air. This mechanic lets players travel at speeds that are much faster than 95% of modern FPS's, giving the game an amazingly fast-paced and exciting feel.
The other thing defining mechanic of the Tribes franchise is the presence of Projectile weapons as opposed to hitscan ones. What this means is that when you shoot a gun the bullets you shoot are affected by your movement speed and movement direction, it is not as simple as pointing your crosshair at a target and shooting them as quickly as you can. You need to account for how fast you are going, how fast they are going, and how long it will take your bullets / grenades / whatever to reach them. Because of this, Tribes: Ascend has an incredibly high skill-cap, and "twitch" reflexes are not necessary for being a good player
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