Experience Points: The Ragefest Of Tribes Ascend

This weekend I’ve been playing Tribes Ascend like I have no life at all. Which reminds me of that South Park ‘World Of Warcraft’ episode. Except with less swearing, relative to Cartman, and controversial humour. Well, I’m not that bad comparatively speaking. It’s not as if I’m addicted to the game in any way, whatsoever. Yet maybe I should explain the current ragefest I find myself in.

After marking some unsightly papers for one of my jobs and coming to an understanding that the English language is dead and all hope is lost, I decided to play a new FPS which Timothy had recommended. Tribes Ascend was the name of the game. It looked to be great fun with oodles of fragging goodness. The net result of reading said article was that I downloaded the free-to-play game.

I have now played the game to the point, that I have become one with the rebound force of an assault rifle, the flow of the bullets and the bouncing of ammunition from projectile weapons. I am a skiing jetpack enhanced cyber demigod with enough egocentricity to rival that of local ‘egotasticness’ himself, Caveshen ‘Bioware’ Rajman.

Although, in all truthfulness and with the obvious plain facts in sight there are still vastly better players than me. They type in German and post smiley faces in the chat window after they’ve killed you. Like some sort of declaration of war upon my unsuspecting gaming prowess.

Of course, in Tribes Ascend I continually press onwards to get the top score. On the odd occasion, having my dreams dashed by some impertinent prick with a name like Dende, the douchey Namekian from Dragonball Z (DBZ). If it had been Piccolo I may have been more forthcoming and understanding in my own demise and the countless frags against my name. But no it was some minor DBZ inspired prick that brandished my blood on a killcam after following through with a victory lap.

The game itself is a marvel of skiing down steep slopes jetpacking across chasms and landing shots at other players whilst not dying in the process. I went into the game expecting some sort of Quake, Unreal Tournament style game. What I got was a rapefest with a steep learning curve and unrelenting frag meisters who prey on noobs like it’s going out of fashion.

I hadn’t played the previous Tribes games in the series so I didn’t know what to expect. Videos can only tell you so much and after getting into the game it becomes a whole different playing field. A ragefest, a ragefield, a raging arena of epic rageful dissent that can only be cured by swift and utter violent fragging of enemies in the most explosive ways possible. It’s an endless cycle of rage because as soon as you get revenge on the douchebag who took you out, someone else takes you down. In all seriousness, the game should be called Tribes Ragefest. That’s how I felt after a few matches.

The steep learning curve incites an instinct within you to improve your standing in the game. Something that I’ve found lacking in other FPS’s which I’ve played through. You need to develop a high level of skill to become proficient at the game. However, learning the ropes is a ragefest in its own as you easily die within the first ten to fifteen matches, and the act of aiming itself is difficult to grasp from the outset and takes a bit of practice to get the hang of.

The game looks promising and has me hooked. But I’ll talk more about that in my upcoming review of the game which should be out sometime this week. I can only pray that my addiction to Tribes Ascend doesn’t steer me away from writing the review and publishing it. One man can only do so much.