I know, I know. I'm spending waaay too much time on Tribes: V than I should on other matters (Site, widgets, etc). I have been waiting for this beta for a long time, though; so I've been playing it all weekend.

For a beta it is remarkably stable, and I have encountered few bugs. Unfortunately, the biggest bug every player faces is called the "stuck bug". As the name implies, you get stuck out of the blue. Whether or not it is related to lag I have yet to determine (I can't find the console lol), but it's nasty and it can ruin a flag run.

Despite a few key mapping changes (Irrational combined the jump and jet keys and created a separate ski key), I stepped right in naturally; it feels like a Tribes game. Irrational has done an excellent job of capturing the feel of the game (many development firms fail in this aspect <cough>Raven</cough>). The game physics are top notch (of course! it's powered by Unreal!). Since I am a foot soldier I don't spend much time in vehicles; so I cannot comment much on that aspect.

There are, however, a few game changes that any Tribes fans will notice. For starters, every armor type is limited to 3 weapons. I was a little dismayed when I suited up for heavy offense to find that my 2 must have weapons (mortar and spinfusor) took up 66% of my weapon inventory. There are no traditional health packs, either. In Tribes 1 and 2, everyone had at least one health pack that we could use at any given time. This has changed. About the only time you can heal yourself in the field is by picking up a health pack from a dead body. This is a good thing because of the map size (which I'll touch on later). In Tribes 1 and 2, you had to sacrifice your pack slot if you wanted to place a turret, inventory station, or any other type of deployable. In Tribes: V, you now have a deployable slot. You can now have your pack and a deployable at the same time. Mines, turrets, supply stations, and repair stations are all deployables. Repair stations, a new feature, can be placed at strategic points to repair any friendly player or equipment nearby. It is excellent to place near turrets. Mines are now deployables, too. A player no longer carries them by default.

The biggest complaint I have about Vengeance is the map size. I realize that we're dealing with the Unreal engine instead of Tribes 2's Torque engine, but the maps could be a bit bigger. I think that the decision to remove health packs stems from the small map size. On one particular map (emerald), a flag runner can grab the flag, hit the booster, and jet his way toward his team's flag. The runner can even go farther with a disc jump to get him started. With a health pack, the runner would be nearly unstoppable.

I uploaded a few videos of my playing experience (yes, the videos are of me). The quality is about as best as I can get it, and it is not as smooth as it is in game (playing a game and running the recording software dropped me to about 15 to 20fps). There are 3 videos in the pack of my two favorite maps. I am submitting them to FilePlanet. If GameSpy publishes them, I will remove the link to the pack here at wdonline and add links to FilePlanet. They are the exact same vids, just packed different (FP doesn't like .rar files, which is a shame).

Videos