Tribes Evaluation Bryan P Jager CIS 577 May 16 2000 Tribes is a multi player only first person shooter game from Dynamix a division of Sierra Entertainment It retailed for 44 99 when it first came out in early 1999 However you can now get the game for about 20 The minimum requirements are a Pentium 200 32MB RAM Windows 95 98 or Windows NT 4 0 with Service Pack 3 or greater a LAN Card for high speed network gaming a 4x CD ROM to install the game The CD is not required to play the game 2D graphics card with a minimum of DirectDraw compatibility and run at SVGA mode 640x480 at 256 colors a DirectSound compatible sound card a Mouse and a keyboard The optimal minimum requirements are a Pentium 200 32MB RAM Windows 95 98 or Windows NT 4 0 with Service Pack 3 or greater a LAN Card for high speed network gaming a 4x CD ROM to install the game The CD is not required to play the game a 3D graphics accelerator that is 3dfx glide compatible a DirectSound compatible sound card a Mouse and a keyboard Tribes is a multi player only first person shooter This means there are is no single player missions There are 8 single player training missions The training missions are to help the user figure out the controls before going online and getting fragged These missions have no computer controlled enemies They are set up like a typical map the user would play on in a multi player game The multi player portion of Tribes is very strong There is no fee to play online Tribes forces the user to strategize and work in teams or the user s team will loose Tribes takes its story line from another Dynamix product called Starsiege Starsiege is a first person shooter that can be played as a single player or multiplayer Tribes is a continuation of the story line from Starsiege It is a struggle of power between the different clans fighting control of the universe The clans are Children of the Phoenix Starwolf Diamond Sword and Blood Eagle However these are the clans that come with the game Any clan can form and join the fight for this battle The player s role in the game is to go around and deter the enemy s team or just enemy to accomplish the given goal The goal varies depending on the type of game The types of games usually team oriented such as capture the flag this is the most common type of game but the game types can be also free for alls with no teams The installation of Tribes is similar to any other Windows games There are three installation options Minimal Typical and Maximum The interface is minimal The game interface consists of a compass a shield meter a health meter time left in the game a chat window a weapons array and a radar detector All the menus logically ordered and it is very easy to find any option that you want to change This interface can be modified depending on what the author of the modification mod wants you to see For example an interface mod that someone wrote is a zoom window in the lower right corner of the heads up display HUD The zoom window shows the user what their crosshairs sees but zoomed in about 200x Tribes plays similar to all first person shooters with using the keyboard to move the player forward an backward and strafing left and right The mouse is used to look as if you were to look around in real life The only difference is that you play against real players instead of bots Playing against real life players makes the game play level more difficult than a single player game All the controls are customizable so that you can reach any key you want in a way that is easy for the user It depends what games you play for scoring The most common ways to score are depending on game type killing or fragging the enemies capturing the flag and capturing the objectives The artwork for Tribes is great The skins of each type of armor weapons terrain explosions and sky for each map are very detailed Even when the user flies around with their booster rockets and you look at the sun at certain angles the user can see the sun glaring your vision This is just one example of the realness in the artwork of this game The sounds are also very realistic Blowing things up and actually feeling the blast if the bass is up with a subwoofer is great for the user to feel very immersed in the game Walking on snow sounds mushy and walking on some rocks sounds like rocks under your feet Also there are prepackaged sayings that come with the game Sayings such as taunts for multi player games so you can rub in a great frag your just made to your enemy and commands to tell your teammates to do specific tasks Tribes soundtrack is ok but it distracts from the great sounds and taunts or commands in the game The manual contains the story line the default controls what each weapon does what each armor does and what the different vehicles are used for This isn t very useful to most gamers In the initial release there were very few bugs Dynamix did a good job testing and releasing a relatively bug free product One thing that was improved was the lookup for game servers As of now there has been 8 patches to version 1 11 The best part of the game is ability to create modifications to it For example you can create new skins for the different armors new maps new weapons new sounds both taunts and commands and even new types of games This gives users the ability to create new game types and skin types Which helps give the game longevity and a chance to perfect tactics and teaming Being a multi player only game it is vulnerable to network lag This is where it takes longer than desired to communicate to the server That means you see everything move really jerky or the worst case scenario as a gamer as you line up an enemy in your sites and fire they could be long gone before your deathblow gets there Cable modem users can expect a ping of between 40ms and 80ms Dial up users can expect a ping of up to 1 3 seconds which is basically not playable under a very competitive match There are some differences in Tribes to other first person shooter games For instance it does not take place in confined spaces It would be much harder to have a dogfight in a cramped maze Since you have a more expansive environment you have a booster pack and plane type vehicles to quickly fly your across the maps Another way it differs is that it does not have any single player missions This way you can compete against real players and the game …
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