Long have we waited for developers to realize even a glimmer of the potential offered by online gaming. Sifting through the countless MUDs, Q2 servers and e-mail chess applications, a few uncut gems of genius have actually found their way into the hands of developers. A glorious environment where people form teams that rely on every member and offer many ways for each person to achieve their objectives. This is exactly the vision that Dynamix had when they created Starsiege: Tribes. This latest effort attempts to prove that teamplay is as essential to online gaming as Sting was to the Police.

Set in a grim future (try to name five games these days that aren’t) where controlling a section of a planet and defending it against rival tribes is the order of the day, this online-only game forces you to play nice with others.

You start each game in or around your own base, which can be a tower, a bunker or a floating fortress or ship. No matter where you are though, there are usually gun emplacements, sensor arrays, inventory and ammo stations, vehicle pads and generators. All of which can be destroyed and therefore must be defended from the enemy. Of course, the enemy has all this too, and you aren’t going to get anywhere if you don’t get rid of theirs.

And this is the real meat of Tribes. Giving players the option to be on either the offense or defense, many more people will be able to enjoy this game. Never have a very high kill-count in Quake or Half-Life? Well, you can stay in the base and set up additional defenses. You’ll still have the opportunity to use that chaingun since the enemy isn’t going to sit outside and wait for the invitation to enter, but sometimes you can let the turrets you placed take them out for you.

Ever wish you had more to do than grab a flag or unload your shotgun into every face you see? Then grab a mortar launcher and decimate the opponents’ remote turrets and pulse sensors. If you can get into the base, you can take out their generator and effectively cripple them. Hell, if you want, you can just wander around and enjoy the scenery. It’s all up to you, and the options are many and varied.

Okay, so there are more roles to fill in this game, but is that all? Did they give these duties some flair? The answer is a resounding ‘YES!’. So where to begin...the first thing you’ll notice is that some of the guys look really big and others are the size of underfed Victoria’s Secret models. This is because there are three armor classes, (light, medium and heavy) and each one has appropriate strengths and weaknesses. (The standard lights are fast but easily killed; the heavies are creeping tanks.) Each armor class also has a specific amount of weapons and ammo it can carry.

One thing common among the armors is a jetpack, which is a simple idea that has a huge effect on gameplay. No longer do you have to run around like a marathoner on crack, strafing corners and up stairs hoping to be the first one to empty his clip into the other. Now you can launch into the air to search for an opponent, and then rain death from thirty meters over their heads. The jetpack doesn't just make fighting more interesting, it’s also essential for crossing the terrain and reaching your base when it’s in the air.

Another addition unique to Tribes is the use of vehicles. There are three classes, all of which serve their purpose well. The Scout is a great speedy little ship to blast by the enemy base for surveillance, or to get anywhere on the map quickly. (Keeping in mind that the maps have a range of 8km just for the in-bounds parts, speedy travel is useful.) The LPC and HPC (light and heavy personnel carriers) are great offensive tools. The LPC carries two people other than the pilot and the HPC can hold four. Best of all, anyone riding one has full freedom to aim and shoot anywhere they choose.

The inventory stations are an excellent idea, because at each one you can choose any armor, weapon, backpack or deployable you want and load out; eliminating that nasty problem in most multiplayer games where the guy who gets the rocket launcher first has a distinct advantage. You are also able to set up five different payloads for yourself and save them so that every time you go to a station you can just select the one most suited to whatever you plan to do and go do it. The downside is that the number of stations is limited and you’ll find yourself waiting behind someone frequently. This is most painful when you’re behind a newbie who doesn’t have their presets configured or wants to play with combinations.

There is also a branching command tree that allows you to send out messages with minimum effort. You press ‘v’ to bring up the initial selections, including ‘offense’, defense’, ‘say team’ and ‘say all’. An example is when telling your teammates that you will be defending the base, you can just press ‘v, d, d’ which is much faster than typing.

Being a defender is much more than just trying to kill every guy that comes into the base.

Tribes has many deployables that can be utilized to ensure that a real effort is needed to get near your generator. There are motion sensors, which can’t be fooled by jammers, and there are cameras that allow someone at a command station to see whatever it sees. You can place smaller turrets on any flat surface, and dropping one around a corner next to a motion sensor is a lovely way to rip those attackers to shreds. There are also remote inventory stations which, although they can’t change your armor class, you can get anything else from them. All of these items have their own power supply, so if (god forbid) someone takes out your generator by chance, you can still use a remote inventory station to set up some defenses to protect you while you do repairs. Another present you can leave are mines, which burrow into the ground and are nearly invisible in shadows and on some surfaces.

These examples are from the base mod which, while very fair, has some limitations. There are two mods, Renegades and Insomniax, that are rapidly gaining popularity and server support. The Renegades mod is designed with defenders in mind and has so many more turrets and deployables that it takes a few games just to try to use them all.

Some of the new turrets are lasers, rockets, plasma and shock. The lasers are just like the laser rifle, except they never miss and usually shoot the weapon out of someone’s hand (a feature of Renegades) or take a head shot. The rocket turrets are best for exterior defense, since like the missile turrets some bases are equipped with, they lock onto the heat signature of jetpacks or vehicle engines. Plasma turrets look like the larger base turrets, shoot plasma bolts and have shields. Shock turrets are great for draining power and therefore shield and jammer packs, as well as energy weapons. Once all the attacker’s energy is gone, the shock turrets begin to do damage. Setting a shock and laser turret next to each other is a great tactic, and takes enemies out quickly.

Renegades also has force fields and platforms for defense, and a generator with a shield in front of it and turrets around it is almost untouchable. Basically, this mod ensures that a small army is required to penetrate the defenses.

The Insomniax mod has most of the same items, but the defenses are more realistic. You can’t drop ten turrets in a room because they ‘interfere’ with each other’s signals, and force fields have to be placed a certain distance from each other. This is much more fair and provides defense without eliminating any chance the attackers may have.

This is where most people will spend their time, but that will hopefully change as more people understand they can’t win if there isn’t anyone back home making sure the generators work.

The options here are too numerous to go into depth about, but we’ll hit some of the highlights.

Sniping.

In this game, sniping is elevated to an art form. You have four levels of zoom, and a good shot can take out half a team before they figure out where he is. Pick a hill a good distance from the enemy base and drop a remote inventory station while in medium armor. Then lay out sensor jammers, turrets and mines as you see fit. Then come back in light armor with a laser rifle and go to work.

Laurel and Hardy.

One guy gets in the heavy armor with an ammo pack and a mortar. The medium gets a repair pack and a targeting laser. The medium paints a target and the heavy takes it out. The medium will be hunted down, since his bright green laser announces where he is. This is where the repair pack helps. He can also help defend the heavy, who will be rather vulnerable to light armor attacks.

Infiltrator.

Just head into a base in medium armor with a shield pack and start tossing grenades and dropping mines. Unloading some plasma bolts can be useful, too.

Pilot.

Grab an HPC and announce to your team that you’re willing to do a run. If you’re good enough to hug the ground until you get close to the base and generally avoid getting shot down, you’ll be a team favorite.

Visually, if you have a Voodoo based accelerator and a good internet connection, this game is butter. The maps are incredibly well done, being set in deserts, snowscapes and green hills. All the maps have valleys and large hills, though they tend to warp some as you approach. Environmental effects are nice, with rain, snow and fog that look great, but can also be turned off if you choose. Some missions occur at night, which not only looks beautiful on the desert stages, but makes sniping a serious challenge.

One of the best features of this engine is that it allows you to go in and out of complex structures with impunity (that means no loading). The bases and various buildings are well designed, some of which are ruins that have sunk into the ground forcing you to walk on the walls or ceilings. When in a ship, you will notice that the layout feels authentic (if anyone can say a large floating structure can be authentic) with the generators in the center and access ports in suitable locations.

The weapon effects are acceptable, if unimpressive. The bullets streak with an off-white color and the explosions are standard fare. But really, how much improvement can be done with explosions these days? Anyway, for this type of game, it hardly matters.

So now it’s time for the stuff no developer likes to hear. The complaints. We’ll start easy and go from there.

There is no D3d support. If you own a TNT based card, you’re not going to be happy. While the software rendering works, it’s far from top shelf. They have announced that a patch is in the works, but someone told me that the last Batman film was good too.

The weapon selection is derivative. The only original idea is the disc launcher, and even that isn’t amazing. They do get the job done, they just do it without any ‘oohs’ or ‘aahs’.

The training missions are like Dan Quayle in a debate on economics. Useless. You’d get better training at an Exxon driving school. Not only do these things not even come close to preparing you for what you’re in for, they also instill a false sense of confidence in you. You show up on a server and think you’re the man, only to end up spending most of your first session begging people to explain what the hell is going on.

It’s multiplayer only. ‘No big deal,’ you say, ‘that’s why I bought it.’ That’s fine, but consider this: only being able to play with other people means that your enjoyment of the game is often at the mercy of strangers. You may have the best time of your life, but the possibility of getting on some bad servers does exist. What is a bad server? The top ranking candidates are ones loaded with 12 year-old kids who not only have no idea what communication is, but constantly spam the message box with ‘Shazbot!’ and ‘D’oh!’. Or you could be on a team where everyone wants to be the hero and you get left at the base to hold off eight attackers while running around trying to repair everything. One of the worst and, sadly, more common occurrences is an opposing team member switching to your team and blowing up all the defenses. Even if team damage is off, they can still grenade everything, or worse still, put large objects in front of the inventory stations. This makes it impossible to use them, and you can’t get rid of the object since team damage is off. There is a system that allows you to vote on nearly any subject, but getting the opposing team to kick one of their guys who’s disrupting your base isn’t gonna happen.

The last problem, and it will only be a problem for certain people, is that full enjoyment of Tribes takes a serious investment of time. You need to develop skills that haven’t yet seen the light of day, and sometimes you need to just follow someone really good around and see what they do. It pays off tenfold, I assure you, but some people would rather just shoot a gun. For those people, I strongly suggest you pick up a copy of Half-Life and let the rest of us handle Tribes.

Don’t let the cons here outweigh the pros if you’re considering purchasing Tribes. The only question you really need to ask your self is: Are you ready to try your hand at the true future of internet gaming? If it sounds intriguing and you think you can handle the next level, then that’s all the reason you need to own this astoundingly fun and well-done game.

Happy hunting brothers...I’ll see you on the battlefield.