Once again we’re off to the races with the latest first person shooter from Dynamix, with a major twist. Starsiege: TRIBES is set as a multiplayer only game (it does have single player ‘training’ missions.)

Choosing to make TRIBES a multiplayer only title, Dynamix had their work cut out for them. After having spent many a night fragging away  I feel it’s safe to say that Dynamix has done an admirable job in making this title work quite well. 

The face of multiplayer shooters is changing and it all seems for the better. Deathmatch which has been the staple of shooters since their inception, but is now being challenged by a much more involved variation with squad based shooters. No longer are we reliant on CTF mods or other such team based conversions to find a team style match, we can now easily find them in games such as Rainbow Six, Delta Force and TRIBES. 

Dynamix has taken a big risk in creating a multiplayer only game. Most shooters have the single play aspect and story to draw the player in prior to him or her joining in multiplay action. This not only enhances the games fun and gives the player a way of learning the game on their own, but also justifies the cost the gamer pays. Dynamix knew this going into the project and didn’t take it lightly, and it shows throughout their excellent implementation of new ideas and exciting gameplay.

I myself have grown very tired of the limited play of deathmatches. Fun as it may be to frag your buddy online, it does get rather tedious after a while. Team based play not only livens the game up, but truly gives the gamer a feeling of urgency.

In team based play, objectives need to be met and command and coordination itself becomes a strategist's dream. In the heat of battle, these can also be a strategist's worst nightmare. You get a taste (in the safety of virtual combat) of what a real commander on the ground deals with in real combat (but in real combat there are no respawns). Still, you can get a good feel for the chaos that battle is and the challenges commanders face in the real world.

The first thing I must say about this game is that I have personally never seen a more user friendly way of getting on the Internet to play. Dynamix has done an outstanding job of making this so KISS simple that my old Aunt Martha could jump right in and connect to a TRIBES server.

Just how easy is it? All you do is install the game, connect to your ISP, double click the TRIBES icon and click join game. That’s it! From there the software will go out and seek TRIBES servers for you listing each one's name, location, game type (CTF, deathmatch etc) players in the game and PING. You can even filter the way the listing is shown to only show you, for example, low ping sites. Hats off to Dynamix for making connecting to a multiplayer game the simplest yet, now there is NO excuse for not getting online to play!

Once you’ve chosen your favorite game style and fastest connect server it’s off to battle you go. You have several scenarios to choose from: capture the flag, capture and hold, defend and destroy, find and retrieve and deathmatch.

The play areas are spacious enough to allow some intense and well spread out fighting, but not so large that battles become protracted.  The terrain is varied and beautiful and play is seamless both inside and outside of structures, unlike Novalogics Delta Force that shows a noticeable slowdown inside of buildings. Add to this varied lighting effects, rain, and even snow and this is one beautiful world to play in.

Now I must say after playing both TRIBES and Delta Force that there is one major difference I noticed. Yes, the terrain and visuals in TRIBES are dazzling, and I love how smooth the game plays, but the terrain is still polys and as such does not give the gamer the protection or immersion of realistic terrain like Delta Force’s does. 

Mea Culpa, I know I blasted the voxelspace engine myself in my DF review and lambasted it for being slow, but pixels do the job that polys can’t. I guess I’ve just become a bit jaded as a gamer and expect every game to be super beautiful and smooth, but ya can’t have your cake and eat it too… at least not yet.  I now have a more clear appreciation for the use of the Voxelspace engine. Not that the terrain in TRIBES is bad, for polys it is extremely nice. But it just isn’t as real as the terrain in Delta Force.

Enough comparisons, what about weapons?! Glad you asked, because with 3 different armor layouts, 9 weapons, assorted packs, turrets, cameras and even vehicles there’s a very nifty armory from which to choose.

Armor comes in 3 variations, which includes light armor which enables you to travel faster yet offers the least protection. Next is medium armor, which will give you a slight hit in movement speed but ups your staying power nicely. Finally, heavy armor will make you slower than the Clinton Impeachment trial, but you’ll be able to dish out as well as take a hefty amount of damage. Depending on your playing style and/or your place within your ‘Tribe’ each armor suit offers its advantages and disadvantages. 

Weapons range from the somewhat weak but decent standby blaster to the devastating heavy mortar, with a perennial favorite for many players being the lethally accurate sniper rifle. This sniper rifle is a weapon to be feared for its amazing accuracy, and an experienced sniper carrying this weapon can single-handedly keep a team at bay in defense as well as offense. Along with these choices the player can choose from such nasty devices as the chaingun, plasma gun, grenade launcher, electron flux gun and even a targeting laser to “paint” targets for the heavy mortar.

The accessory packs are ammo packs, energy packs, shield packs, jammer pack, repair pack, motion sensors, remote turrets and remote cameras. All of these weapons, packs and armor suits are picked at remote inventory stations, a unique and interesting idea Dynamix has thrown into the mix.

You begin each mission with a default loadout, but can quickly change them at these stations. The downside is that when you have a newbie or an indecisive person at one of these stations, you end up waiting some time before it’s your turn. Show some courtesy to those behind you in line and choose your loadout as quickly as possible. 

However, Dynamix has intelligently included the options of specifying up to 5 ‘favorites’, allowing you to pick and set up 5 favorite weapon/armor setups. If all players have a favorite loadout already set your time in the inventory station will decrease dramatically and get you into the fighting that much faster, allowing for a big jump on your foes!

Adding another twist, TRIBES also has vehicles you can fly and fight from, even to transport troops to the front! This is an excellent and much needed way of ferrying those much too slow heavy armored guys to the fighting. Not every map has them though so beware!

Once you’ve chosen your favorite loadout it’s time to get off your duff and get rough! In a CTF game your team does the typical “get their flag and defend yours”.

Play is fast, furious and non-stop as these games are quick. Not much digging in and grinding it out, as in some of the maps in Delta Force. In TRIBES speed is essential and the slow team will find themselves hard pressed to get back in the running for the win.

The way the game is laid out there are no frag counts and the whole point of the game is to work as a team to accomplish a common goal. Now this is where this game really can get interesting and at times downright frustrating. If you have a bunch of mavericks on your team expect it to be a loooong night, because without cohesion the team will not act as a team and chaos abounds! I recommend trying to find some people to play with regularly. This allows you to work together on communication as well as command and control.

C-3 (command, control and communication) is another area in which Dynamix has laid out a great plan. Comms are easily done through canned sound bites as well as through a chat window.

Command and control is accomplished through a very nifty commanders interface in which a commander chosen by the team as a whole can oversee the battle from a workstation in the safety of your base. From this workstation the commander can issue individual orders to each player or to groups of players. This allows one player to sit back and see the ‘big picture’ and coach his or her team along. This is an excellent addition to multiplayer gaming and a much needed one. Dynamix got this down cold!

It’s not only the commander who has a birds eye view of the battlefield, but each player has a PDA or Personal Digital Assistant from which they too can view the ‘big picture.’ This ensures that you won’t get lost and wander outside the playing area. If you do you’ll hear a verbal warning and must re-enter the playing area immediately. This is similar to a ‘tape line’ in paintball, and it ensures that the players don’t wander too far off the action. As a result, the game moves at a fast pace.

There’s a bit of a learning curve to this game, and your learning will come via the school of hard knocks as it’s all going to be live against real people. Don’t become disheartened if you get spanked the first night or two, just stick with it and listen to the veterans who will show you the ropes.

With teamplay as the cornerstone of this game, your teammates will help you, and it will be up to you to listen. It takes a bit of time to get used to moving, jumping and using your jet pack to get around until you learn the limits of your jet pack. Stick with it and before long you’ll be a major contributor to your teams online.

As you can tell, there is a great deal of depth and even innovation to this game. It'a an amazing accomplishment for Dynamix to bring it together so well right out off the line!

For those who want more to their online shooter experiences than just frags, this is a definite must. Hats off to Dynamix for bringing another quality mission based shooter to market. We award this one a Top Pick!

Rating:

• Core Rating : 50 (sci-fi shooter) 
• Gameplay : 95 
• Graphics : 95 
• Sound : 80 
• Intelligence/AI : (No AI, all opponents are human. Due to this feature I've included a new score below.) 
• Ease of Multiplayer Start-Up: 100
• User Interface/Mission Planner : 95 
• Fun Factor : 95 
• Learning Curve (in hours) : 1-2 hours 
• Overall Rating : 93