25-Jul-2003 Tribes and tribulatons as PC shooter classic launches assault on console
Porting classic PC teamplay shooter Tribes 2 to PS2 is at best like giving wakeboarder Shaun Murray a skateboard and asking him to make like Tony Hawk's, or at worst telling Michelangelo to redo his Sistine Chapel painting on the back of an envelope. You'd respect what you saw, but it'd be a pale imitation of the real deal.
Luckily, Inevitable knows this and hasn't tried to do a straight port. What you get instead is something that looks and feels like Tribes, but as the name suggests, is deliberately different and better suited to console.
Forget notions of plot. Tribes is about team-based online fragging with jetpacks. Capture The Flag is usually most popular, with players constantly switching roles between attack and defence, using inventories to instantly access light, medium and heavy armours and different weapons and equipment load-outs like deployable turrets.
AA's multi-menued inventory system works well on a pad too, and Inevitable hasn't had to dump too much Tribes 2 content either (no Cloaking pack, though - bah!). Levels are large enough that mastering the twin arts of the jetpack and 'skiing' down mountains is still essential, though a new target lock feature makes the aerial gymnastics more manageable on a joypad.
Oi, Big But After racking up insane hours playing Tribes 2, we're weren't expecting to enjoy AA half as much as we have, nor indeed for the teamplay aspect to work as well as it does online. Its differences actually offer some interesting variations in tactics on Tribes 2's, and there's still room for 'v-cap' showboating by more skilled players.
There's a big 'but' though. There are apparently no plans to include headset or keyboard support nor a comprehensive in-game voice menu to communicate with team-mates, which is utterly incomprehensible in a game that's all about being a team player.
The danger is that, much as Tribes 2 failed to achieve great commercial success because it was too far ahead of its time and not enough players recognised how rewarding large-scale teamplay can be, AA will suffer a similar fate - not least due to the headset muck-up.
It may not offer quite the depth of Tribes 2's teamplay, but it deserves more than simply being written off as yet another watered-down PC shooter ported to console.
Should have showcased the potential of online teamplay for PS2, but poor team communication hampers its potential. Players are more likely to go for SOCOM. Shame.
Aerial Assault goes one up on Tribes 2 when it come to playing over the Net with a mate, as it offers split-screen online play. It's a nice touch, though probably the only time you can guarantee there won't be any problem communicating with other players.
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