Tribes was a spin-off of the Metaltech series that was intended to offer something different to the shooter genre. It is very far removed from the mecha-centric turn-based strategy games that were once prevalent in the Metaltech franchise, which may have turned off those who would prefer to have another strategy game to play with (as well as more giant robots), but to followers of the shooter genre, it was a breath of fresh air, or, just to include an appropriate pun in this review, a strong gust of wind against one's face as he/she zooms across the land on hovercraft boots.
Unfortunately, the Tribes games before Vengeance were criticized for many flaws, the worst of which are severe bugs and defective patches with Tribes 2, and a perennial lack of a worthwhile story mode. Fortunately, Vengeance does not have game-breaking bugs or terrible patches, and also has a surprisingly good story with worthwhile characters.
The main attraction of Tribes is its emphasis on speed, and this is apparent right from the start. The player is introduced to the signature mechanism of Tribes games very early in the tutorial, which is skiing.
As the tutorial would instruct the player in, holding down the button to ski has the player character skidding across terrain, exchanging turning control for speed. Of course, if the player starts to ski from walking speed, his/her player character is going to move at an awkward and slow pace. On the other hand, if the player is already moving at any greater speed, e.g. hurtling through the air from having jumped off a hill or explosive-jumping, skiing will largely preserve the player's momentum. This potentially allows a wily player to reach breakneck speeds if he/she can figure out how to exploit the physics of the game.
In other shooter titles at the time, trying to exploit physics would be frowned upon. However, in Tribes: Vengeance, it is considered legitimate and is in fact encouraged. Moreover, skiing also renders some infamous exploitation of physics obsolete, such as bunny-hopping, which just cannot achieve the same speed as that which can be gained from cleverly maintaining speed with skiing and adding to it when the opportunity arises.
In addition to skiing, all player characters are equipped with jetpacks by default, which further add to their ability. The tutorial informs the player that one quick way of accelerating from walking/running speed is to make short bursts of the jetpack in the forward direction. However, it will also inform the player that the jetpack draws from the player character's energy reserves, which while always automatically replenishing, have limited capacity and cannot recharge faster than they are consumed. This serves to limit abuse of the jetpack, further encouraging the use of skiing to build up speed.
It is fortunate that all Tribes games have this emphasis on speed, as its other main gameplay aspect – shooting things up – is not as exciting.
However, just to be a bit generous to Tribes: Vengeance, its mechanisms for the usage of guns are a lot more flexible than those of many other sci-fi shooters. The player can choose load-outs that will determine what weapons that the player character starts with, instead of having to hunt down weapons that spawn into the map (of which there won't be any). The weapons are also not so easy to use as those found in other sci-fi games (though this can also be seen in a bad light), due to designs intended to balance them against each other.
The default load-out includes the Chaingun, which is little more different than the usual machinegun archetypes seen in the shooter genre at this time. Firing continuously will cause its recoil (which is typical in a machinegun archetype) to become worse and worse, as visually depicted by overheating of the weapon; the recoil only gradually reduces over time, as depicted by the cooling down of the weapon. If not for the recoil mechanism, it could have been the easiest to use weapon and its use would have overshadowed the rest.
The Blaster is of the shotgun archetype, and works very much what like what a shooter veteran would expect from a shotgun. It would appear that with enough determination and speed, a player character could catch up to an enemy and blast his/her face off rather handily, but this weapon comes with a design that serves to prevent this cheesy tactic from ever being the norm in this game: this weapon does not consume any kind of ammunition, but instead draws from the player character's energy reserves, thus causing it to directly compete with the jetpack and any other device that draws from energy.
Then, there is the Spinfusor, which appears to be the Tribes franchise's take on the rocket launcher archetype. Instead of having a large explosive radius and a relatively easy-to-spot projectile, the disc that the weapon launches can be a bit difficult to spot (especially when it is coming from the front) as it only has a short trail of light giving away its trajectory. It also does not have a very large explosion. Therefore, this weapon can seem difficult to use for players that are new to Tribes, though to Tribes veterans, this weapon was designed to reward finesse – and reward finesse it does, as a direct hit with a disc is more than likely to kill any enemy outright.
The Grenade Launcher works very much like what a sci-fi shooter veteran would expect from a member of the grenade launcher archetype. It launches grenades that can bounce around corners and explode after a while, or when it connects directly with enemies. In a Tribes game, it may seem out of place when enemies can ski past the player character at tremendous speeds, or flies up high with the jetpack such that the player has to fire grenades at awkward angles. Yet, the Grenade Launcher can be devastating when the target is grounded (likely due to having run short on energy) or is trapped in tight spaces (likely together with the player character).
The Burner is perhaps the odd one out of the lot. This is very short-ranged weapon that taps its fuel from the player character's energy reserves. In other words, getting close to an enemy to use it can be rather difficult. An enemy that is hit by this weapon would be set alight and will suffer damage over time, but the risks of being able to pull this off can be unacceptable, as the player would likely need to expend energy to get close to the target. As a consequence, it isn't likely be used by most players; the history of this game with the Tribes fan community would suggest so.
The Rocket Pod fires up to six missiles that follow the targeting cursor on the player's screen; these six missiles may follow different trajectories despite following the same target, thus making it a bit different from the usual homing missile archetype. It is also difficult to use against enemies that are skiing or jetpacking around, so it is meant to be used against slower and bigger targets, namely vehicles.
The Grappler is perhaps the oddest of the weapons in the game, as it is primarily used to improve the player character's mobility. It can be used to grab items, such as supplies that restore ammo, towards the player character, though given the player character's already prodigious mobility, getting to the item is probably a lot easier than trying to "shoot" at it with the Grappler. Instead, most players are likely to use its ability to tether onto solid surfaces, namely walls, ceilings , floors and even the ground to suddenly change their directions of movement. This is especially the case for capture-the-flag maps with many indoor segments that flag-runners can exploit with the Grappler.
It is also worth noting here that the Grappler is also perhaps one of the earliest of its kind in shooters, i.e. the line of "weapons" that can grab and hold onto objects, though it would later be overshadowed by the much more versatile and fun Gravity Gun in Half-Life 2. It is also worth noting here that the Grappler would not reappear in he next Tribes game.
Then, there are Hand Grenades, the design of which is somewhat inspired by the grenades in Halo. To throw a grenade, the player only needs to hit a button and the player character will toss out a hand grenade.
There are three other special weapons, but before these can be described, the three types of player characters have to be described, as these guns are associated with them. These types of player characters are generally trade-offs between toughness and speed, though they have some nuances.
(The player can choose either a male or female model, at least in modes other than story mode.)
The Light is as his/her name suggests; he/she is the player character with the smallest hitboxes and the lightest weight, meaning that he/she can be the hardest player character to shoot at and he/she can accelerate the quickest (which in turn makes him/her even harder to hit). However, he/she is also the weakest player character, thus requiring the player to keep him/her on the move to avoid simply being blown away.
The Medium strikes a balance between toughness and speed, making them suitable for rookies – the game does mention this in the tutorial, which is a wise design. Unfortunately, this also means that more experienced players would likely end up using either the Light or Heavy. The Medium's associated special weapon would have prevented this, but it is not exactly a reliable weapon.
The Heavy is the toughest player character, packing even more hitpoints than the Medium and Light combined. However, this is balanced by the fact that he/she is the biggest and slowest player character – two setbacks that can potentially be severe in a game that emphasizes speed as both a solution for mobility and staying alive. However, while this is unfortunately the case when the Heavy is caught out in the open, in indoor segments of a map (where speed matters less), the Heavy reigns.
Regardless of the player character being used, the player can only have up to three weapons equipped on him/her, but in any combination, including their associated special weapons.
The Light has the Sniper Rifle, which is a long-ranged, very accurate hit-scan weapon as a shooter veteran would expect. In a game like Tribes, in which player characters can zoom past at high speeds, such a weapon can be invaluable in the hands of a player with splendid hand-eye coordination. However, like all sniper rifle archetypes, it causes the user to have tunnel vision, which is a terrible disadvantage in a game like Tribes in which enemies can come hurtling towards the sniper at any angle, given enough momentum.
The Medium has the Buckler, which is not a weapon per se but which can be used for both defensive and offensive purposes. Simply wielding the Buckler reduces any damage coming from the front by a significant degree, but the player of course cannot really attack when holding it up. To attack, the player character has to throw the Buckler at enemies, and if it hits and rebounds off anything, or has been flying for a while, it will return to the player character, unless it hits anything else on the return trip, upon which it will fly around a bit more before arcing around to return to the player character again.
At first, it would appear that Tribes: Vengeance has done something thought improbable in a sci-fi shooter: have a weapon that is functionally like that of Captain America's of Marvel Comics fame. Unfortunately, although the game managed to show that this is possible, it also showed that it is difficult to use in a sci-fi shooter.
The shield does not fly fast enough to catch any enemy that is moving faster than running speed. There may have been some potential in tricking enemies such that they get hit from behind when the shield comes back in its return trip, but the throwing range is just too short for that. The damage is also not commensurate with the risks of using this weapon.
All these shortfalls of the Buckler make the Medium player character quite unappealing for those who prefer the specialization provided by either the Light or Heavy class.
The Heavy is a poor combatant out in the open, but his/her special weapon ensures that he/she will see use out in the open. The Mortar is a nasty weapon that fires projectiles that will explode with a massive area of effect some time after launch. If a Mortar shell is still in the air after its timer is up, it will continue travelling anyway until it lands, upon which it explodes. This makes it very useful for bombarding enemies from afar, especially static defences. If not, then it is still useful if the player's intention is to draw attention towards him/her, and away from something important, such as the other team's flag in Capture-the-Flag mode.
In addition to weapons, the player character can equip "packs", which is a mechanism that had been in previous Tribes games. Packs augment player characters in ways that either build on their strengths or grant them versatility, though the variety in gameplay to be had from them can be rather limited: there are only four types of packs.
All packs have a passive ability that is present as long as the pack has "recharged" and remains un-activated. Activating a pack grants instantaneous benefits that are usually more lucrative than those provided by its passive ability, but disables it temporarily, depriving the player character of any benefit for a while.
The repair pack is perhaps one of the most important tools to a player, as it is a portable source of health for player characters and vehicles. When not activated, it grants the user slow health regeneration, though this won't be much of any help if the player intends to stay in the action all the time. On the other hand, the pack is far more useful when activated: upon activation, the pack will heal or repair other nearby player characters or vehicles (respectively) at much faster rate. The user himself/herself will not be healed, however, thus making the repair pack a device that is more conducive to teamwork than solo play.
The energy pack would perhaps be the default go-to when a player is mulling over a decision on which pack to include in the load-out of his/her player character. Like its name would suggest, it grants the player character enhanced energy recharge, thus allowing the player to use jetpacks longer or perform any other action that consumes energy more often. When activated, it grants a tremendous boost in running speed, allowing the player character to accelerate from running speed much more easily.
The speed pack grants a passive increase in the player character's speed, which is always welcome. However, the benefit from its activation can be a bit odd, as it doesn't have anything to do with a player character's speed: the activation benefit increases the player character's rate of fire with any weapons instead.
The shield pack grants a passive reduction of any incoming damage, whereas its activation greatly increases this reduction, albeit temporarily and for a duration shorter than the pack's recharge time.
Finally, rounding out the player character's arsenal are the deployables. Deployables are items that the player character can dump immediately on the ground, expending it from the player character's inventory but activating the deployable for its benefits. To prevent the player from abusing this, every deployable is associated with the player and thus, if the player attempts to plant another deployable, the previous one will be destroyed.
The Repair Station is one of the most used deployables, because it is practically a healing station that can heal or repair any player character or asset that belongs to the same team. This can potentially result in some game balance problems, such as players planting repair stations next to generators (more on these later), turrets and inventory stations, creating a forward base that is difficult to remove without intense bombardment.
Turrets are another type of deployable that would be heavily used. They are armed with rapid-firing hit-scan guns that while not powerful can be a great deterrent against raids by individuals. They can be destroyed rather easily from afar, but this will of course expose the locations of enemies that are trying to destroy them.
Deployable inventory stations are destructible, unlike those that are located in bases. However, they can be deployed anywhere to give an opportunity for the player to rearm and resupply equipment, including deployables themselves, as well as switch character types. This would mean that a player can practically resupply anywhere in a map, replacing an existing inventory station with another one elsewhere. This can lead to some gameplay imbalance.
Considering the various combination of equipment that a player character can have , it is fortunate that the game has a system that the player can use to save load-outs. However, designing load-outs has to be done in-match, so the player has to start a match just to configure load-outs and save them.
Although all player characters are very mobile (even the Heavy), they still have options to get around that don't involve skiing and firing jetpacks, and these options are of course vehicles. Story mode is perhaps the best mode to be introduced to the vehicles, though starting a multiplayer match on one's lonesome to test the vehicles is still an option.
Going into a vehicle switches the camera over to a third-person perspective, which is convenient as the vehicles in this game can be especially vulnerable to flanking by the very mobile player characters.
The Fighter Pod is the weaker of two aerial vehicles in the game. However, it is also the fastest vehicles in the game, making it very suitable for chasing flag-runners (which are players who have been given the role of running away with the enemy's flag). That its weapons, which are dumb-fire missiles, appear to have very short effective ranges further reinforces this notion.
Perhaps the biggest complaint with the Fighter Pod is that the pilot is not fully protected by the vehicle. The open cockpit means that the pilot is vulnerable to incoming shots and explosive weapons, meaning that incoming fire can eliminate the pilot before the vehicle.
The Rover is an all-terrain armored personnel carrier armed with a powerful autocannon. It can carry up to six player characters, two of them being the gunner and driver. However, the other four cannot do much of anything except tweak their load-outs, using the vehicle like a mobile inventory station. In fact, the vehicle is a mobile spawn point for players, who can choose to spawn out of the Rover.
This makes the Rover very strategically useful, but also a major target for the enemy, who may either attempt to destroy it or hijack it (though restrictions have been designed into it to prevent a hijacked Rover from being used like a Rover that was originally team-owned). On the other hand, the Rover's autocannon can be a handful, and in a pinch, it can expend energy to accelerate quickly.
The Assault Ship is designed for team-play. By default, it can be crewed by only one player character, who will be the pilot. However, the pilot only has access to the mortar of the aerial vehicle, which is at best only effective against static targets. For more firepower, two other player characters have to man the machine-guns on its sides. Yet, it is not as fast as the Fighter Pod, which makes it vulnerable to anti-air fire.
The Jump Tank would appear to function much like a tank: heavily armored, slow and has a big gun as well as a smaller rapid-firing one for anti-infantry work. One would expect that it would not survive for long when the opposition is composed of very mobile infantry with highly customizable weaponry, and it would seem so if its advance is not supported by team-mates. However, it does have one trick that most other tank archetypes do not have: the ability to leap. This means that the tank is not so easily stopped by any obstacles that are not substantially larger than it is, and as long as it still has energy left, it can hop around to make it harder to hit.
It should be mentioned here that although vehicles have weight, whatever that happens to be on them or hanging onto them does not add to their weight. This means that players can exploit this gap in the physics designs to hitch free rides that do not appear to slow down the vehicle in any way. For example, the Grappler allows a player character to latch onto an aerial vehicle for a free ride, and he/she can possibly use the speed from the fall upon letting go to gain speed, if he/she can land on a slope. Such exploits had appeared to be quite rampant in multiplayer matches.
(Incidentally, the Grappler does not return in the next Tribes game.)
In multiplayer, vehicles take a bit longer to repair than in the single-player Story mode, though this is due to a game-balancing design. However, the vehicles in Story mode tend to be objectives that must be kept intact, whereas in multiplayer, vehicles are a bit more disposable as they can respawn and are definitely not the objective of any game mode.
On the other hand, to prevent players from abusing vehicles in multiplayer, especially the more powerful or versatile ones, there are only a limited number of vehicles that can be had in any map, and this design can be seen from the beams of light emanating from places within a team's base that have been designated as vehicle pads. These light beams also happen to denote when a vehicle would be respawned, after its previous incarnation has been destroyed. As long as a vehicle is still on the map, its associated vehicle pad won't spawn another, neither will the beams of light appear.
This means that in multiplayer, players who intend to use vehicles have to take care of these assets, namely by repairing them when they are damaged instead of wasting them and waiting for them to respawn, which can take longer than repairing.
The multiplayer modes of the game would probably be the main go-to for a Tribes veteran, considering that the previous games haven't had much in the way of single-player content and value. The match types available in Tribes: Vengeance would be quite familiar to said veteran.
The first of these is Arena, which has two teams of players trying to murder each other in an enclosed area. It is governed by a system of rounds: player characters that had been slain in one round can only respawn in the next one, so fighting in a round is just as much trying to survive as killing members of the opposing team. The team with no members remaining is of course the loser of that round.
Then there is Capture The Flag, perhaps the most played game mode. While the essence of this game mode has been around for edges, it especially benefits from the Tribes franchise's emphasis on speed; Vengeance would not be an exception. Grabbing the flag at high speeds can be exhilarating, as is the (perhaps also dreadful) prospect of having to outrun enemies that can be just as fast. However, due to the designs of defensive deployables (like the repair station and turret), teams can reinforce critical locations like the generator and flag rather easily.
Speaking of the generator, in some game modes, namely Capture the Flag and Fuel (more on this one shortly). teams have bases that provide them with vehicles, indestructible inventory stations and some static defences. These are powered by the generator, which if destroyed, will disable these assets until it is restored. Although the generator is often not the objective of any game mode, hobbling the other team can be very advantageous. Even if attempts to sabotage the generator is not successful, having the other team split its efforts between protecting the flag and the generator can be helpful.
Fuel is a game mode that is somewhat similar to Capture the Flag, except that the objects to be captured are scattered throughout a map for this game mode. These objects are of course the namesake fuel, which has to be extracted from depots located around the map; a player character can collect up to fifteen units, and has to return it to the team's own depot to be hoarded. The first team to hoard up to the target limit is the winner.
Nuances with this game mode include players from one team being able to steal fuel from players of the other team, or dropping it for faster team-mates to ferry back to base. Players can even attempt to withdraw fuel from the other team's depot.
Unfortunately, this game mode has one inherent weakness: players have to stay close to depots to collect fuel, which does not contribute to the game's emphasis on speed. Moreover, considering that enemy players would be coming after them at great speed, having to stay in one spot and defend it can be disadvantageous, even more so than in Capture-the-Flag mode. Some depots do have some natural defences that mitigate the problem, but others are wide-open for any hit-and-run attacks.
Like Capture-the-Flag, the essence of the gameplay behind Rabbit has been around quite a while; the player has to grab and hold onto an important object as long as he/she can – scoring points all the while – and at the same time has to avoid being hunted down and slain by other players who also covet the same object. The emphasis on speed in Tribes: Vengeance contributes a lot to this game mode.
At first glance, it would appear that this game mode would favour the Light character type, which does have an advantage in acceleration and thus presumably can get away with the objective item more quickly after grabbing it. However, other players would eventually be able to catch up after building enough speed, and this is when the Light's relative fragility would be a liability. Conversely, the Heavy is a risky character to use to get away with a freshly dropped objective item, but if the player can get away from the scramble for it, running down a Heavy can take quite some effort.
Ball is perhaps the match type that best utilizes this Tribes game's emphasis on speed. The objective, a ball (of course), is a very mobile object, being subjected to physics that have it bouncing around with gusto when it is not being held in the hands of a player character. It can be hectic when guns are involved though, but there are options to disable guns. Anyway, the objective item has to be brought into the goal post of the other team, which is easier said than done when every player can fly and shoot about at high speeds.
However, to prevent players from resorting to simply rushing into the other team's goal post at high speeds while still holding the ball, players are required to throw the ball into the other team's goal post to score, thus risking capture of the ball by the enemy.
It is worth noting here that Tribes: Vengeance offered options for dedicated servers for multiplayer games. It also has a lot of maps by default, which does uphold the sense of value to be had from the game. These maps also happen to be splendidly detailed and themed, making each one quite a different experience from the rest. For example, Utopia is a map filled with detritus and ruins of a war-torn city, making it difficult to spot enemies from afar without getting on top of these buildings. In contrast, Tropics is a very open map, but a lake smack in the center of the map prevents players from having a straight path towards the other base, at least not on foot.
The previous Tribes games has very inadequate single-player modes, which felt more like subpar tutorials with some having half-hearted attempts to highlight the backstory. Tribes: Vengeance has a single-player mode that is a lot better conceived, as well a story that is actually worth experiencing.
Unfortunately, the story mode is the only single-player mode available. Multiplayer lacks bots that would have been useful for practice sessions, and the story mode is a poor primer for multiplayer as it has far different gameplay objectives.
Furthermore, unlike the story modes in many other shooters, the story mode in Vengeance does not offer convenient methods of healing like medical kits or regenerating health. Instead, the player has to use repair packs, repair stations and inventory stations to heal, which can be slow. A player is likely to opt for the repair pack almost all the time over the other packs, which is a waste.
Of course, if the player can put up with these gameplay inconveniences, there can be quite a lot of fun to be had with the story mode.
It starts off with a tutorial-like level that sets the premise for the motivations of one of the main protagonists. Afterwards, there would be a change in the time-line to have the story place another protagonist in the limelight, coincidentally one that has a lot to do with the aforementioned motivations of the previous main protagonist. There would be quite a worthwhile tale of trust, betrayal, regret and self-discovery to be had from the story mode, so there won't be more mentions of its plot designs for fear of including spoilers in this review.
The story-developing sequences are enhanced by surprisingly good voice-acting for the characters. Animations for body language, facial animations and lip-synching are not very remarkable, but adequate enough to portray the brevity of the situations that the characters are in.
On the other hand, the player may be annoyed by the need to trudge through the rest of the story mode that does not involve story exposition. This is of course the various fights and battles to be had.
Some of these are better than the rest of course, and these happen to be set-pieces like an on-rails major Imperial aerial assault on the holdings of the Phoenix tribe and a rather linear romp through Blood Eagle territory with a tougher variant of a Rover. However, the rest are just fights with aggressive but somewhat dim-witted A.I.-controlled enemies. They are smart enough to use jetpacks, but not skiing. They also rarely use packs and deployables, unless they have been scripted to do so.
An observant player will also notice that the models for the main protagonists appear to be the only ones who lack helmets, though they are otherwise slight variations of the default models for player characters. This becomes even more apparent if the player switches their armor type over from their default to another, in which case their models are completely replaced by the default models for the latter. This gives an impression that the story mode has been slapped together without much thought.
Of course, it can be said that much of the effort that had gone into designing the gameplay for the story mode had been reserved for the design of maps and the scripts for these. Unfortunately, these maps do not give many opportunities to experience the game's emphasis on speed, because many of them happen to be linear and not too open-spaced enough for this emphasis. There is a lot of verticality in these levels though, such as vast underground bases and bases floating above mesas via a combination of anti-gravity and rocket boosters.
If the player can play the story mode, he/she would be rewarded with some interesting plot twists, though these wouldn't surprise any veterans of tales of betrayal. What would surprise them though is a surprisingly good final scene that can be rather touching – which is a rarity in sci-fi shooters, much less the Tribes franchise.
The Tribes games have a reputation for resorting to quite a lot of contouring for its map designs, giving the environments a very artificial visual theme that suggests that they are little more than glorified skating parks; the creators' attempts to describe this visual oddity as a trait of the Wilderzone, the segment of fictional outer space that is the geographic setting for the Tribes games, would not convince those who have some trivial knowledge of geology.
Still, gameplay-wise, such obviously artificial contouring facilitates the mechanisms for skiing and jetpack flight, which makes for fun gameplay. Nevertheless, it would take an ardent Tribes fan to dismiss this visual peculiarity.
The models for the game are fortunately more believable than the map designs. They are rather intricate for a sci-fi shooter of this game's time; those for the player characters are especially good examples. The detailed models for player characters and vehicles also make their silhouettes easier to make out from the background. Despite their details, there can be quite a lot of these models on-screen without much of a dip in frame-rate. Of course, the rather simple-looking and usually open environments in this game could have contributed to such easy rendering of many detailed models within the same screen. However, indoor segments with a lot of details, such as those seen in the story mode, can chug, though not on higher-end machines.
The particle effects in Tribes: Vengeance are also satisfactory, or at least decent to look at. Every weapon has its own set of particle effects, with the Spinfusor being the most notable of these. The Blaster is the least impressive, though it is not too pathetic when compared to the rest. Some of the weapons have deliberately garish particle effects for purposes of gameplay, namely the Mortar, the shells for which have obvious green trails that give away its trajectory and source; this is a needed design, as the Mortar would have been too overpowered otherwise.
Lighting and shadowing is only available is only available for higher-end machines, but where it is available, it can certainly render the game a lot more visually impressive.
The Tribes games' jetpack and skiing mechanisms have necessitated that player characters be animated satisfactorily in order for the actions associated with these mechanisms to be considered believable. Having had a couple of games to figure out the best postures and transitions, the developers have put their experience to good use in Tribes: Vengeance. Up to the time of Tribes: Vengeance, the animations in this game were the best to be seen in the Tribes franchise by then.
Most of the sound designs in the game concern combat in the game. Most weapons sound satisfactorily powerful and/or distinct, with the Spinfusor being a particular highlight; after all, the Spinfusor or any weapon that is similar in appearance did not occur much in other sci-fi shooters. The sound effects for explosions, rocket propulsions and such other secondary occurrences of combat are believable enough. There is significant ambient noise to accentuate the themes of sci-fi bases in this game, which contributes sufficiently, if not remarkably, to its atmosphere.
In conclusion, Tribes: Vengeance may not be leaps ahead of the previous games in the franchis, but it does build on what they have done and streamlined some aspects of the gameplay (though perhaps at the cost of some content that had been in earlier games). Most importantly, it addresses one of the biggest complaints with the previous Tribes games by introducing a worthwhile single-player story mode that has a surprisingly good plot.