![]() ![]() By hitting F, up comes an interface allowing us to pick between three forms of armour, various shield packs, which offer improvements in health regeneration, speed and other areas (a minor refinement of the previous approach, which was a bit more complicated), and three weapon slots to fill with a mixture of any of the eight weapons on offer. The inventory stations in Tribes: Vengeance, even in single-player, are much as fans of the series will expect. Fortunately there's a hallway nearby, and - ah - the familiar sight of an inventory station lurking at the end of it. Another man nearby catches our attention, only to find himself blasted out of the equation by another explosion.Īs we move on, Olivia tells us we have to get on with it, and we make a play for some stairs in the next room. Unarmed and without an obvious exit, we dive into the hole, and wind up in a corridor below on top of a pile of bodies. Wheeling round, we see a trio of invaders. A few seconds later, laser blasts impact on the wall in front of us. All of a sudden there's a terrific crack and the floor beneath them gives away, and they tumble into the hole, banging on ledges on their way down as the ragdoll physics direct their distinctive demise. ![]() We move towards the end of the room and spot three of our crewmen banging on a door, which appears to be busted just a couple of inches open. As we pick our way through, furniture is knocked out of the way thanks to the Havok-tinted physics code, and bits of the carpet crumple and flip over as the circuits beneath them take a hammering. Up ahead we come to another long room, as regally decorated as the previous one, but this time littered with upended tables, lampshades and cracked flooring. It's a bit like trying to watch TV through the bottom of a pint glass, such is the effect, but we still recognise the limp body of a man floating past as if he's been sucked out of a nearby hull breach. As we dash towards the only exit we can see, ships are visible chasing one another out of the sun-baked windows on our left. "Get to the bridge," Olivia insists, a cut-out of her head and the text rolling along the top of the screen as her voice pumps out of our headphones. The battle to escape the clutches of the Tribals begins as the ship is jolted off trajectory by the invaders, and frantic radio chatter reveals that the Princess is in danger, and separated by some distance from her family. Today, we're taking a look at the single-player, which gives us a chance to take on the roles of many characters in the abovementioned family feud, beginning with the headstrong Victoria, and assess the likelihood of Irrational achieving their ambitious goal. During a recent demonstration at the headquarters of publisher Vivendi in Paris, we got a chance to try out both sides of the game. Tribes: Vengeance, developed by Irrational Games rather than the original Tribes or Tribes 2 team, is an attempt to strap these exploits - refined and hopefully bettered, with plenty of help from the community - to a genuinely engaging single-player campaign, which not only serves as a training ground for aspiring online skiers, but also delivers a science fiction narrative and varied adventure worthy of comparison to any other first-person shooter. We just hopped on 64-player servers and grabbed the nearest Shrike. Perhaps there was some convoluted justification for the whole thing (in fact there definitely was), but that was clearly a section of the manual we didn't read. It was a game first and foremost, which is why it was so effective. That game was a blend of tightly balanced team-based first-person shooting, strategy and aerial combat, best remembered for its fanatical following and the invention of skiing, originally a physics bug and latterly a bullet point on the fact sheet, which thanks to a combination of a brief spell of zero friction on landing and some well-timed use of the jump button, allowed players to traverse levels at lightning speed. This isn't really the Tribes we remember. It doesn't help that dinner is served with an unwanted side of invading Tribals, who blast their way onboard the Imperial Yacht, separating Victoria from her family and unwanted fiancé, forcing her to try and pick her way through the disintegrating superstructure armed with weapons she's never used and fought at every step by laser-toting space-goons with jetpacks. Princess Victoria is betroth to a snake-like, cloak-wearing noble with little respect for her interests, and her father and sister Olivia can only see their side of the debate that refusal to wed could bring down the whole family and mean the deaths of thousands of innocents.
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