Free Agent: Tribes: Ascend

GameSpy's Free Agent is your advance recon into the world of free-to-play games. His mission: jump into a free game every week and put in some hours to see how much fun can be had without spending a cent, then try out some paid items to see if they're worth the asking price. This week, he straps on a jet pack and goes skiing in Tribes: Ascend.


No Money Down

Running as fast as I can in Tribes: Ascend feels like I'm sporting a pair of cement boots. I'm moving at a pace comparable to a sprint in other first-person shooters, my home base in sight and the enemy's flag strapped to my back, and all I can think is, "I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead!" Sure enough, a Blood Eagle soldier blazes through me at roughly 150 km/h, ending my futile run at glory with a devastating attack.

Little did I know, my girlfriend (you don't know her, she lives in Canada, so don't try to find her) watched these events unfold with wide-eyed glee. Spotting her in the doorway to my office as I waited for my character to respawn, I burst out laughing, realizing what just happened: I'd been playing with my teeth clinched, eyes squinted, and spine pressed firmly against my chair back as if bracing for impact in a plane crash. The last time my entire body reacted this way to a game, I was a freckle-faced elementary school student.


The lesson here is twofold: 1) Speed, sweet Mercury Speed, and his close cousin Perfect Timing are what make Tribes: Ascend so exhilarating and such a stand-out in the current generation of carbon-copy first-person shooters. 2) It's an intense, skill-based gaming experience capable of making you look like a jerk. And I mean that as a compliment.

Did I mention you can make yourself look like a jerk for free?

Set up a Tribes: Ascend account, and everything within the game – all of its modes, its nine character classes, and its many weapons, equipment, and perks – can be unlocked simply by playing and earning XP. The only things locked behind paid doors are cosmetic skins. I started out my free Tribes: Ascend experience with the balanced Soldier class (three classes, including the light armored speedy Pathfinder and heavily armored slow-poke Juggernaut are available for free at the outset) and jumped into a round of Team Deathmatch. I then proceeded to die roughly every 20 seconds.

Even as a gamer that enjoyed Starsiege: Tribes and the stellar Tribes 2 back in the day, I was ill prepared for the speed and timing required to survive and thrive in Ascend -- a game that plays so true to its roots, you'd think it was developed by Dynamix rather than High-Rez. For those unfamiliar with the franchise, Tribes straps a jet pack on your back and challenges you to use it not just to fly, but to help you "ski." Pressing the space bar while descending one of the many hills on the wide-open Tribes maps removes all friction, and by combining this "skiing" with the power of the jet pack (leaping over any obstacles that'd slow me down) to build momentum, I reached and sustained speeds of over 200 km/h. While flying all over the map, navigating hills with equal parts skiing and jet packing, I was in a constant frantic gun battle where successful shots required spot-on timing. If the jet pack energy meter ever hit zero and forced me to simply run, well, as I described at the outset, I was the fish in the proverbial barrel – only much slower and easier to kill.


It was a frustrating early experience, but that was for lack of skill, not equipment. Once I got my ski legs under me, I started having a ball, particularly in the tactically challenging Capture the Flag mode, where a balanced squad of Soldiers, turret-building and repairing Technicians, speedy Pathfinders, and wall-like Juggernauts is required to achieve victory. My chief complaint came on the multiple occasions when the auto-balancing system booted me from my winning squad to the losing one -- especially because there is a fat XP bonus for the victors. Robbery!

Insert Coin

Yes, you can dive into Tribes: Ascend, conquer the learning curve, and find one of the best skill shooters available today -- free or otherwise -- even if it is still in beta. Just don't expect to level up and unlock goodies very quickly while playing for free, because Hi-Rez uses a carrot and a stick to entice you to open your wallet.

Playing predominately as the Soldier class, I quickly discovered that the Assault Rifle, while a decent enough weapon, is a peashooter compared to the Spinfusor, the famous Tribes weapon that shoots exploding blue discs. Go toe-to-toe with one of the many more experienced or paid foes you'll face equipped with Spinfusors, and the Assault Rifle will lose the vast majority of the time. Unfortunately, when you start as the Soldier, the Spinfusor is locked up tight and can't be had until you've racked up 42,000 XP points or 240 gold (Hi-Rez's in-game currency bought with real-world money).


The Spinfusor is a juicy carrot to entice you to spend money in Tribes: Ascend (paid bundles start at a minimum of $10 and increase in increments to $50), and the tortoise pace at which free players earn XP is Hi-Rez's stick. Even in victory and with a solid personal performance in a single match, my XP begrudgingly ticked up, and it took me hours to earn enough XP to finally unlock the coveted Spinfusor.

However, you can not only instantly buy the Spinfusor when you spend a minimum of $10 (giving you 800 gold), you will dramatically increase your XP gain with any paid purchase. Buy anything in Tribes: Ascend and Hi-Rez will label you a VIP, and as a VIP you earn 50% more XP for life. Not only that, a number of paid Booster XP packs are available that increase your XP gain by another 50% for a set period (one day to permanent if you shell out enough gold).

I spent $10, became a VIP, and picked up a number of items -- including a one-day Booster. The 100% XP gain difference was night and day, making the XP gain rate from my free experience look snail-like. For example, those 42,000 XP Spinfusor points I slowly acquired playing for free over multiple hours were now obtainable in just a handful of matches. And overall, the item unlocks my leap in XP gain enabled every single match were extremely rewarding.

Free or Flee?

Are Tribes: Ascend free players at a disadvantage? Not at all. Everything can be earned simply by playing the game. But there is no denying the incentive to spend money and increase your XP gain by up to 100% is monumental. In fact, I recommend you think of Tribes: Ascend as a $10 game and make a fun free game an even more enjoyable paid experience from the get go.

In the end, though, I was more than happy to support Hi-Rez. Still in beta, Tribes: Ascend is highly polished, smooth (I've never been booted from a match or experienced a moment of lag, even at 180 km/h), and just plain fun. Tribes is back, it's better than ever, and it even made me look like a jerk. I'd pay $10 for that any day.