I am captain apology of the sorry brigade. I feel absolutely terrible about that spoiler I dropped in my update. I had no intention of ruining the series for those of you just getting into it.
People have mailed me asking why I haven’t chimed in on the Tribes: Fast Attack deal. I had no intention of saying anything. Tycho and I are pretty much on the same page on this one. Many of you seem to want my opinion though so I’ve decided to give it to you. Once again I slip into the role of the “angry gamer” that has dominated many of my recent posts. I guess every family has to have one.
I think Tribes 2:FA is a step backwards for the franchise and I feel like it strips away all the things that made tribes a unique multiplayer experience. For the record I loved Tribes 1 and 2. When it worked right there was nothing that could compare to Tribes 2. For me Tribes was about warfare on a massive scale. It was about huge teams battling it out over massive maps. More than anything, Tribes was about teamwork. It’s unfortunate too, because many of the drooling morons that populated the games servers played it like it was Quake with vehicles. Heading off on their own in half empty vehicles and ignoring requests to shore up defenses or coordinate attacks. They bitched and moaned in forums that they wanted it to be faster, with smaller maps. They wanted focus taken off team cooperation and instead turned to individual, skilled players. They wanted something Tribes was never meant to be. I’ll say it again, Tribes was something special. It deserves better than this. I can remember eating Chinese food with the original development team in Oregon after Tribes 1 came out. These guys loved Tribes, you could fucking tell. They had amazing ideas for Tribes 2, stuff like submarines that never saw the light of day. These are the people that should be deciding the future of the Tribes franchise. These were the people that had their heads screwed on right. They delivered a product under circumstances that would have driven anyone else insane. I can’t go into half of the shit I was privy too about the development of Tribes 2. But these guys stayed because they cared about the game. Then, once the product shipped their reward was a pink slip. For all their hard work they got kicked out on the street. Tribes is no longer in the Hands of the people who care about the franchise. The people at the wheel now only care about making another FPS game that will please the vocal minority and bring nothing new to the genre. All the potential that Tribes had has been tossed out the window and forgotten about. The whining masses of junior high students that populate Tribes message boards have succeeded in killing off one of the most original games to ever come down the pipe. I hope they like what they get, they fucking deserve it. Me, I’ll probably never play another tribes game again. At least not with the same affection I had for the first two. I consider myself lucky to have had the opportunity to play them both. They were truly ahead of their time.
I have gotten a few mails asking why I seem so upset all the time. People have asked if I have some kind of mood disorder. I seem to oscillate between absolute joy and total rage. Rarely do I appear to occupy any sort of emotional middle ground. The only thing I can say is that I love video games. Anyone who spends any time with me will tell you I think about them entirely too much. When you feel as strongly about something as I do about games it’s hard to have a un-emotional opinion either way. If I love something I really fucking love it. I could have eaten REZ with a spoon it was so delicious. ICO made me feel better about my life and the human race in general. When I don’t like something though, I get just as passionate. When I see a game like Herdy Gerdy flush so much potential right down the toilet I get mad. When I see a company make what I think are poor decisions about a franchise I get pissed off. Is this healthy? Probably not. But there isn’t a goddmaned thing I can do about. I love video games.
-Gabe out
