tribes-2 posts

This weekend's out of the blue announcement of a new game in the Tribes series of sci-fi shooters by developer Hi-Rez Studios likely has the attention of some old school gamers who remember where they were when the original game in the franchise was first released. However it's also likely that many people reading this web site have never played, or even worse, never heard of the Tribes series.

So we decided to whip a quick history of the Tribes franchise for those of you who have yet to play any of the games in the series. The franchise was a massive influence of the first person shooter genre, particularly in its multiplayer features. In many ways the first game in the series was years ahead of its time but its successors never achieved the audience that the first game did.

One of the oldest first person shooter game franchises has a new home. Hi-Rez Studios, who released the sci-fi first person shooter MMO Global Agenda earlier this year, has announced that it has acquired the rights to the Tribes game franchise. Hi-Rez is already at work on the next game in the sci-fi shooter series, to be called Tribes Universe.

The surprise announcement was made in a post late on Saturday on the official Global Agenda message boards (free registration required to read the message) by Hi-Rez Studios' CEO Erez Goren. In his message he stated that the idea behind the Tribes acquisition actually started when they realized they could not expand Global Agenda in terms of player and map size beyond the game's current limits so the decision was mad to make an all new game that would have support for over 100 players at once with massive levels, vehicles and more.

Goren states, "While working through the design we kept coming back to one old and loved game that represented many of the concepts we where incorporating into the new game (Jetpacks, vehicles, large open space, three armor types, futuristic weapons, etc)." Of course Goren is describing Tribes and the company apparently decided to go ahead and purchase the Tribes IP. The previous owners of the Tribes property, InstantAction.com, have confirmed the purchase via its own message board post, saying, "HiRez owns all rights and any questions regarding Tribes development should be directed to them." Specific financial numbers for the deal have not been revealed.

Goren stated the new Tribes Universe will have, among other things, a fully persistent world with three factions, massive maps that are 10 times the size of the largest Global Agenda map, ground and air vehicles, "lots of weapons", jetpacks, clan support, "skiing." and more. Goren assured Global Agenda players that the game will continue to be supported and updated while Tribes Universe will be developed by a separate team at Hi-Rez. Alpha testing for Tribes Universe will begin at the start of 2011 and according to Goren, "Global Agenda players with level 50 characters will have priority in entering Alpha and Beta testing."

[Via Massively]

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

Tribes is a classic of the multiplayer FPS genre, and has influenced many games since its entry into the market. Games like Battlefield or MAG owe a debt to Tribes, as Tribes was the first truly massive first-person multiplayer experience. The level of detail and scale on the maps and gameplay was awesome, and almost every modern team-based shooter can trace its lineage to Tribes. However, the success of Tribes didn't stop with the first game. It extended into a franchise that has received two sequels. The latest, Tribes Vengeance, was not all that good, but the immediate sequel Tribes 2 was absolutely fantastic. Released for free a while ago to commemorate the launch of Vengeance, the authorization servers went down in 2008, with the community releasing their own in 2009. It's now completely freeware, and anyone who wants to enjoy this updated classic can do so once again.

Last November, Activision Blizzard shut down the online master servers of many of the older games they had acquired the rights to in their purchase of Vivendi Games. One of those games was Tribes 2, the sci-fi multiplayer shooter from the now defunct developer Dynamix. The game was first released back in 2001 and three years later was re-released as a free download. However the shutdown of the online master server a few months ago meant that the game was unplayable online.

Now some enterprizing fans of Tribes 2 are attempting to relaunch the game online with TribesNext. It's basically a third party patch that allows online play via a new multiplayer server. Since all of this is basically off the books it's currently unknown if Activision Blizzard has an issue with this game. Still if you have a copy of the free download you might want to check this out.

[Via Kotaku]