Tribes: Aerial Assault

October 21, 2002

Platform: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: IO Interactive
Publisher: Eidos
Reviewed by: Rock_On

Gameplay: [7] Graphics: [6] Audio: [4] Replay: [7] Overall: [6.5]

When the Network Adapter was released at the end of August, there were only two online games available at that moment, which included Madden 2003 (released early August), and SOCOM: US Navy Seals (the side-by-side release with the Network Adapter), and also there was a coupon for a free Twisted Metal: Black ONLINE game, but it takes up to six (6) weeks for you to receive that after mailing in the coupon. There was also Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 which had online play in it, however when it released, the Adapter was still months away from being released, so TECHNICALLY THPS3 was the first online game. Anyway, only two (2) games isn’t going to be very good, and so to add another online title to the mix, Sierra releases a version of their well-known PC series for the PS2 called Tribes: Aerial Assault, loaded with major online play.

Gameplay:
First of all lets get to the single-player mode, which was actually put together relatively well. There is a campaign mode where there are 5 training missions for you to go through that will teach you the basics of the game and stuff, just like other normal training missions. If you feel compelled enough to complete those (they’re not MANDATORY, but they will get you use to the different weapon techniques and will help you learn the controls a little faster), you’ll then be able to start on the first mission, which is still in fact a training mission, where you’re put into a death match to reach a certain amount of points or frags. Then, once you’ve completed that training mission, you’ll move on to the first REAL mission. There are only about 5 or 6 missions in the Campaign mode, all of them giving you the same kind of objective, kill or be killed and grab the opposing team’s flag. The single-player actually lacks a lot to be desired, however I am quite surprised (and pleased) that the enemy AI in T:AA are bar-none the best AI in a shoot-em’ up type of game like this, as I actually had trouble completing some of the missions because of the AI blowing my robotic a$$ into tiny little pieces.

Basically the only objectives to completing each level in the campaign are to catch the enemy’s flag a certain amount of times within a certain time limit, and there’s really nothing to be desired once finishing it for the first time. Depending on the type of armor you choose; Light, Medium, or Heavy, will decide how many weapons you can hold at a time, and what power of weapons can be used. T:AA isn’t anything that would happen in real life ala SOCOM: US Navy Seals, so therefore don’t expect to have real-world weapons at your disposal. Weapons are futuristic like in many ways, and some of the weapons include spinfusors, grenades, mines, blasters, laser rifle, grenade launchers, missile launchers, and just other sci-fi like weapons with lasers, and lots and lots of explosions (sometimes the action kind of reminded me of a couple scenes from the movie Starship Troopers). One of the most unique features that sets T:AA apart from most shoot-em up games where you run around, relying on pure dumb luck to frag 10 people at once, is the use of jetpacks, which you wear on your back and can use it to jettison into the air, taking combat to a whole new level in T:AA. Now instead of fighting on the ground because of the gravitational pull keeping you down, you can fight with other fighters in mid-air, and also take an air advantage over your enemy by fighting air-to-ground, where they usually have a less of a chance of winning than you do (although controlling your character whilst in the air is pretty challenging to conquer).

=========
ONLINE
=========
Now onto what REALLY matters in T:AA, which is the fragilistic online mode. T:AA definitely wouldn’t be good enough to warrant a purchase if it was only a single-player, off-line game, because well...tribes is all about utter chaos in a battlefield with lots of weapons at your disposal, sort of like Unreal Tournament (2k3) only you can actually see what you’re doing so you’re not firing blind (at least...not ALL the time). Just like in SOCOM, the single-player will only take you so far, and you’ll probably either get bored before you even finish the single-player, or once you’ve finished it once there is no real reason to play it again (which was the case for both SOCOM and T:AA).

Anyway, first to get you acquainted and familiarized with the gameplay and style of T:AA, which has nothing in common with SOCOM except that you’re split into two teams and there can be up to 16 people in a server, but otherwise T:AA is just another run n’ gun type of shooter where little to no skill is required to kill anyone, and just pressing and holding the fire button will get you pretty far in the game. Now before you even are allowed to connect to the network, you’ll have to choose the type of armor you want to use; Heavy, Medium, and Light. Each type of armor has its own strength and weakness which includes; in Heavy armor you’ll move like a snail, however you’ll be able to carry/use more/bigger weapons which do more power, and also you’ll have the toughest armor to penetrate, therefore taking other players forever to wear your armor out to kill you; Medium armor will give you the average amount of firepower, carrying less weapons than Heavy armor but more than Light armor, and has a medium type of armor which is less than Heavy armor, but still more than the Light armor; and then there’s the Light armor, which is the fastest type of character, however what it excels in speed lacks terribly in armor, and so a few solid hits from an explosive device will send you back to re-spawn, and also weapons are smaller and weaker which take you longer to defeat players with heavier armor than you. Picking which armor to use is all up to a matter of preference and opinion, and also depends on how you’re going to play the game. If you’re in a Capture the Flag (CTF) game, then you might want to sacrifice power and armor for speed and agility that can allow you the enemy’s flag and also the ability to get back out. If you’re in a Deathmatch game, then you might want to go with the medium armor so you’ve got an average of everything including weapons, armor, speed, etc. In T:AA, the heavier armors aren’t really necessary in any type of game, but they can be used to defend your base from other players, however other than that they’re basically useless. But THEN AGAIN, it is all up to personal preference.

When you first get connected to the network, there will be a big list of games that are both hosted by other players like yourself, or are the official games for the servers, where you’ll be able to choose a game that you’d like to get yourself into. The list will include the game name, next to it will be the amount of players/maximum players in a game, and then to the right of that is where the ping is located to see how much LAG is in a game (green being good, which is usually DSL/Cable users; yellow being ok, which is most likely a mixture of DSL/Cable and 56k gamers, or 56k users who are actually connecting at a decent speed; and last is red, which means that room is horrible and is probably consisted of 56k users), and on the LEFT of the name of the game, is where you’ll be able to determine whether a game has 56k users or not, and if there are any in a game, a telephone icon will show up letting you know that 56k dial-up users are in there. If you’re running a DSL/Cable modem like moi, then this little icon is very helpful (along with the ping) to decide which game you want to enter.

Once you find your desired game, then choose it and the mission will load and you’ll be put into the game. Instead of going right to work (or death, depending on how bad you are), once re-spawning or just getting into a game, you’ll see your character in a third-person view, and will be slightly shadowed, which means that you’re being given a little time to move around, and then within a few seconds you’ll return to the regular first-person view, and now you can go shoot em’ up (“em” being the other team). Don’t worry about being killed while in this mode for the few seconds that you are, because you’re invisible to everyone else until you’re put in the actual first-person view, so don’t freak out if someone’s right in front of you and you can’t shoot. Once you’re in the game, you’re now set loose with up to 16 other people to wreck havoc among the game, and to do that you’ll have to have weapons. The weapons are the same from single-player in multi-player, people with Heavy armors get bigger and more destructive weapons, Medium armors will get the average weapons and can carry more than Light armor but less than Heavy armor, and with Light armor you’ll have the weakest weapons and also the least amount of weapons to carry at a time.

One of the elements in T:AA that sets it apart from most online first-person shooters, is the use of the Jet Packs, which you can use that will jettison you up into the air, for a major advantage over players who are on the ground. However, you’re not special or anything to where you’re the only one who can do it, so watch out for other players using the jet packs. When learned how to be used right, flying can really be a deadly art to use for major advantages. In the top left corner of your HUD (Heads Up Display), is three different colored bars. The top one is your health, and as you lose health, you’ll go from Green (fine) to Yellow (caution) to Red (danger); once your health runs out, you’re mutilated/gunned down/etc., and so now you’ll re-spawn and repeat the previous process. The bar below that is the energy bar, which is depleted when using the Jet Pack, and also some weapons use it to power up, and then the third bar is the heat bar, and as you use the jet pack, that will go up and you’ll be more sustainable to heat seeking weapons. You can only stay in the air with the Jet pack for a limited amount of time, so use it effectively, however don’t worry about running out of “energy” or fuel because the bar will fill up as long as you’re just on the ground, and using a weapon that uses it’s own bullets. There are also other types of packs that you can equip to your player that do different things like allowing you to stay up in the air longer, more health, etc. Like in most online shoot-em’ ups (UT {2k3}, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic, Quake, etc.), there are two main games that are pretty common in shoot-em’ ups, including regular old Deathmatch where it’s you versus everybody, and the most popular type of online shoot-em’ up games; Capture the Flag. Deathmatch can be fun, however it gets quite boring with the only objective being to kill, Kill, KILL; therefore Capture the Flag is my game of choice for T:AA (or any online FPS for that matter). In Capture the Flag, your mission is to frag other players WHILE trying to capture their flag and bring it back to your own base. If you get the flag, but get killed on your way back, the flag will drop where you died at, and if the other team doesn’t get it to recover it back, then one of your teammates or even you could go back and continue the capturing of the flag.

Like I said earlier, it takes little to no skill for someone to blow somebody up. Everything goes on so fast and there are so many explosions and fire-fights going on, that it’s basically a game of luck as to whether or not you’re going to hit and blow somebody up. There are a lot of gamers out there who have the accuracy pinned down to such precision, that even while you’re in the air they’ll bring you down. So then you try to do that, it doesn’t work, and all you get is another kill for the opposing player. Doesn’t that suck? Well it does, but it actually takes practice to get some perfect accuracy in this game. However, determination can be a wonderful thing, so just keep practicing and you can eventually begin to snipe people.

Graphics:
I wasn’t really expecting much out of these, because since there was going to be so much chaos happening all on-screen at once I figured most of the power would be put for running the game at a fairly smooth rate. However, to my surprise, the visuals of the game were pretty good looking. The environment models aren’t really something to look at, using just plain textures to map out the basic environments, nothing big or anything like the environments in SOCOM (ha, like anything could out do SOCOM right now). The character models also aren’t that great to look at, and consist of the most simple character textures you’ll ever see.

The frame rate runs at a fairly constant rate of frames per second (FPS) while playing offline, however while you’re online then some of the lag (yes even Broadband lags a little bit) will cause the FPS to stutter a bit. Most of the maps are fairly large, however lack any kind of detail, and others are really small, and STILL lack any amount of details.

Sound:
I’ve never actually PLAYED any of the Tribes games on the PC, but I do remember the sound being a lot better, and so when I booted up T:AA the first thing I noticed was that the game audio sounded like it was compressed to fit the disc. I mean, I can understand WHY it’s compressed though, because the game was made on a regular Playstation disc. Why they didn’t use a PS2 disc so they could have more room to improve is beyond me, but their choice came with consequences, and aside from un-texturized visuals, the audio took the heat of it. Because of the compression, everything sounds muffled, and instead of hearing the “boom” of an explosion, you’ll get like a little “pow”. If there was no compression, and there was enough room on the disc, then T:AA could have had awesome sound effects and stuff, including some awesome explosions. As much chaos that happens on-screen, and with all the explosions, laser beams, etc. going around, it’d make for a heck of an experience with a surround sound set-up.

Rock’s Thoughts:
In the end, if you’ve got a PS2 and the network adapter, then Tribes: Aerial Assault is a great game for the beginners to start out with, however I can’t really suggest to purchase the game unless you’re a fan of the run n’ gun type games. Personally, I like to go a little more covert, undercover, etc., and so SOCOM will still continue to run supreme in my PS2 to play online, and hopefully Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 or Twisted Metal: Black ONLINE will please my online appetite.