After spending more than a dozen hours with the Early Access version of Tribes 3: Rivals, I could really get used to skiing around at 200 miles per hour while firing a grenade launcher at weaklings with no mind for speed. Channeling all of the silliness and style the series is known for, this lethal game of capture the flag is packed with moments of satisfying exhilaration and devastating defeat, and it largely nails everything I’ve loved about the Tribes games of yore. The trouble is that it only takes a matter of minutes to see all the maps and try out all the classes and weapons currently available, with no alternate game modes or other distractions beyond an extremely long and demanding ranked skill grind for those truly dedicated to their deadly craft. I fear Tribes 3 may be fated to fizzle out as quickly as some of its predecessors due to that lack of longevity, but the potential here is at least clear from moment one, and it feels great to be reunited with the zany, high-octane action I’ve adored for many years.
Tribes 3 pits two teams against one another in a stupidly fun capture the flag to the death, giving you and your friends a pair of skis and a jetpack to help you move across its large maps lightning fast, and an arsenal of futuristic weapons to maim those who get in your way. Maintaining momentum is key to your success, as you’re rewarded for timing your landings at the edge of a slope or boosting up hills to gather speed every bit as much as you are for having good aim. Learning to shred on skis and soar through the air makes all the difference between becoming an unkillable blur and watching someone glide overhead as they take you out with heavy weaponry like the sorry mook that you are – and spending my time somewhere in between those two extremes has been a blast so far.
Classes feel pretty unique, and each has some game-changing options.
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Capturing the enemy flag while protecting your own requires attackers and defenders of varying expertise, and with six playable classes (three offensive and three defensive), you’re given a solid number of options for how to approach each side of things. I have a natural affinity for throwing myself at the enemy flag and doing everything I can to break the sound barrier, so I tend to select the lightly armored and minimally armed Pathfinder class, which allows for deviously delightful teleportation and faster movement at the cost of being both short on explosive weaponry and very easy to explode. If you’re feeling lethargic, there’s also lots to do while remaining slightly more stationary as the Juggernaut, a heavily armored defender that is armed to the gills and can withstand quite a bit of punishment – they have also pretty much been the bane of my existence, all too happy to turn my squishy face into blood broth as I rush toward the flag. All six classes feel pretty unique, and each has some game-changing options, like the technician class, which can throw down defensive turrets and keep the base well-guarded alongside its pre-built protective structures.
The magic of Tribes 3 is in moments where you hit a slope just right, take out an enemy right before scooping up the enemy flag, then go flying across the map to score a point for your team. I can’t claim to be anything more than middling in this incredibly demanding twitch shooter, and even I found myself overcome with feelings of godlike might – screaming into my monitor, absolutely shocked by what I was able to pull off. There were also plenty of times where I was brought low and reminded of my mortal limitations, like when a real expert blasted me to pieces and tore through my base like a lightning bolt, making off with my treasured flag. But those humbling encounters have only pushed me to hone my skill, and are easily drowned out by the satisfaction of victory. There just aren’t many better feelings than those moments of pure PvP triumph, which are made uniquely epic by Tribes’ blazingly fast, ridiculously over-the-top style.
There are interesting strategies to consider outside of the flag itself.
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Aside from the usual tug-of-war involved in a game of capture the flag, there are also some interesting strategies to consider, like how you can fight over smaller bases located strategically throughout levels, which give a minor edge to the controlling team by turning turrets in those areas into your allies. Each team also has a generator located in their base that, if damaged, can shut down every defensive asset on that side of the map, leaving you extremely vulnerable to getting steamrolled by the enemy’s offensive players, which gives you another thing to defend or attack if the flag proves too well-guarded. You can even destroy a radar dish located on your opponent’s side of the map, which completely disables their ability to keep track of the flow of battle on their trusty HUD.
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Unfortunately, none of these optional targets have seemed to matter all that much in the larger fight, since bum-rushing the enemy flag almost always proves the best path to victory. Even sabotaging the radar dish, which you’d expect to be a major game changer, didn’t do a whole lot since opponents are pretty easy to spot on their own – especially since their names hover over them even across long distances. It takes a lot of energy to effectively attack these extra structures, and you could just as easily have stolen and scored the enemy flag a couple times to win the match instead of spending time to secure a minor edge.
The main issue with Tribes 3 is that, despite providing a very entertaining opening hours, there isn’t much to it at this time. As an Early Access game, that’s hardly surprising, and developer Prophecy Games has already announced an ambitious roadmap that aims to inject some much-needed variety into the maps and single game mode currently available – but in its current form at least, I foresee all but the most dedicated jetpackers running out of things to do in short order, as I have already). It would certainly help if some more stuff from previous Tribes games made a return, be that beloved game modes like Rabbit or Bounty, or my cherished vehicles like the Beowulf or the HAVOC. Hopefully some of this will be fleshed out in the coming months of Early Access, but for now the package is fairly thin.
Beyond the main 16v16 casual mode, there’s a ranked playlist that hosts smaller teams of 7v7, but this changes little else beyond drawing in a significantly sweatier playerbase. Still, halving the number of players does actually feel significantly different, since the reduced chaos means you can really dial in a strategy and your individual performance is more impactful while executing it . It also makes some of the less useful tactics in the casual playlist, like taking down the enemy’s base defenses, slightly more meaningful. On top of ranked, there’s a goofy time trial minigame to test your skiing and boosting ability where you move through a course of rings and try to set a high score, as well as custom matches where you’re given complete control over the inner workings and balance of the meta. That could mean decreasing the amount of damage players can take to almost nothing or increasing jetpack energy so players can fly without care – mostly stupid stuff, but can definitely make for a good time.
There are also some perplexing design decisions and a small amount of bugs that hounded my time with Tribes 3. For example, it’s very odd that I’m limited to hosting only three others in my party when the team sizes are either seven or 16. This became awkward a few times when we had more than four people online together and couldn’t join the same games, and I can’t think of a good reason for this cap. Especially in the ranked playlist, you think they’d want to encourage communication with the whole team – not just the four allowed in your party, which just seems like an odd limitation. The exception to these rules are custom matches, but then you’re left a bit shorthanded unless you’ve got a whole lot of friends or are willing to subject yourself to the ups and downs of an LFG. There’s also some irritating bugs, like one my group got hit with quite a bit where our party would randomly be split up into different matches or find ourselves otherwise separated from one another, and we’d all have to reboot to get things back in shape. I’m sure initial bumps in the road like these will be ironed out, but for now they can be a bit of an annoyance.
