The diary of a murderous skier: My first two weeks with Tribes: Ascend
As free-to-play games are constantly changing, a traditional review can't really do them justice, so Joystiq relies on a series of unscored review diaries to record our experiences with them.
It's been over a decade since I last played PC games with any regularity. Outside of Word Munchers, The Secret Island of Dr. Quandary and The Oregon Trail, I grew up with a controller instead of a keyboard and mouse. There were brief flirtations with Duke Nukem 3D and Doom, but I was busy playing GoldenEye over Quake.
Starsiege: Tribes changed that. It barely ran on my father's computer, and our little 28.8Kbps modem could hardly handle the data stream necessary for online play, but I spent hours tying up our phone line regardless. Its fast pace, enormous outdoor environments, and central gameplay twist - "skiing" down hills and jetpacking up the other side, making for constant air battles with other players - entranced my adolescent brain. It seemed so vastly ahead of anything else available and, in many ways, still does.
It's been over a decade since I last played PC games with any regularity. Outside of Word Munchers, The Secret Island of Dr. Quandary and The Oregon Trail, I grew up with a controller instead of a keyboard and mouse. There were brief flirtations with Duke Nukem 3D and Doom, but I was busy playing GoldenEye over Quake.
Starsiege: Tribes changed that. It barely ran on my father's computer, and our little 28.8Kbps modem could hardly handle the data stream necessary for online play, but I spent hours tying up our phone line regardless. Its fast pace, enormous outdoor environments, and central gameplay twist - "skiing" down hills and jetpacking up the other side, making for constant air battles with other players - entranced my adolescent brain. It seemed so vastly ahead of anything else available and, in many ways, still does.
