Ludography
73/100
Players14 ratings
76/100
Critics2 reviews
Tribes: Vengeance cover

2004 · Irrational Games · First-person shooter · Shooter

Tribes: Vengeance

Set hundreds of years before the events of Starsiege: Tribes, Vengeance depicts the birth of the growing Tribal War. It focuses on the events surrounding five different characters over the course of two generations and how they each contribute to the developing war. The story ("The Past") begins with a Phoenix sub-clan leader named Daniel abducting the soon to be Queen, Princess Victoria. He takes her to his home world to show her the injustices done to his people and the two eventually fall in love.

Released
5 October 2004
Platforms
Windows
Genres
First-person shooterShooterSports
Developers
Irrational Games
Publishers
—
Series
Tribes
Modes
MultiplayerSingle-player
Perspective
First person
Themes
ActionScience fiction
Country
United StatesAustralia
Age ratings
ESRB T
Composers
Eric Brosius

About

Tribes: Vengeance is a science fiction first-person shooter video game developed by Irrational Games and released by Vivendi Universal Games in October 2004. It was built on an enhanced version of the Unreal Engine 2.5, which Irrational Games called the Vengeance engine. Part of the Tribes series, in addition to its multiplayer network maps, Vengeance includes a complete single-player campaign.

Keywords

  • skiing
  • war
  • capture the flag
  • human
  • motion blur
  • wasd movement
  • grapple
  • useable vehicles
  • multiplayer scoreboard

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

As a primarily first-person shooter, Tribes: Vengeance places the player in control of an infantry soldier in power armor. While the game is tailored for first-person shooting, the player can also toggle to a third-person view at any time. Additionally, there are multiple pilotable vehicles, which are restricted to third-person camera.

The game's most distinguishing features are the jetpacks and "skis" offered on all variants of the power armor. Jetpacks allow the player to fly for short periods of time, using the player's energy meter. This energy regenerates whenever the jetpack is not active. Skiing may be activated any time the player is on foot and does not cost energy; this switches the player to a frictionless ground-travel mode, allowing the player to slide very rapidly down slopes and (with sufficient speed before activating the skis) across flat terrain. Skiing up a slope will cause the player to slow due to gravity.

Story

Set hundreds of years before the events of Starsiege: Tribes, Vengeance depicts the birth of the growing Tribal War. It focuses on the events surrounding five different characters over the course of two generations and how they each contribute to the developing war. The story ("The Past") begins with a Phoenix sub-clan leader named Daniel (voiced by Gabriel Olds) abducting the soon to be Queen, Princess Victoria. He takes her to his home world to show her the injustices done to his people, and the two eventually fall in love.

During this time, a cybrid assassin named Mercury is hired by an unknown contractor to eliminate Daniel, but the hit is called off moments before the shot is fired. Victoria and Daniel try to make amends between the Imperials and the Phoenix, but it ends disastrously when the Phoenix's enemies, the Blood Eagle tribe, stage a raid on a Phoenix base disguised as Imperial troops. Feeling betrayed, Daniel kills the Imperial King, Tiberius, whom Victoria avenges by killing Daniel. It turns out that Victoria is pregnant with Daniel's child, who is born female and named Julia soon thereafter.

Development

On March 23, 2005 it was announced that Vivendi Universal Games was ceasing all support for the game, beginning with the termination of the 1.1 version update. In a January 2006 interview, in response to suggestions of a falling out between VU Games and Irrational, Ken Levine commented:

...This falling out with VUG is some kind of Jedi mind trick, man. We just finished an expansion pack [for SWAT 4] for them, and it went as smooth as cream cheese. With Tribes, we did a patch, and for whatever reason they decided not to release it.

Reception

The game received "favorable" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.

Tribes: Vengeance was a runner-up for Computer Games Magazine's list of the 10 best computer games of 2004.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Windows5 October 2004North America · Europe 22 October 2004

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Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.