| Tribes: Vengeance | |
| Developer: | Irrational Games |
| Publisher: | Vivendi Universal Games |
| Producer: | Tony Oakden |
| Designer: | Edward Orman |
| Programmer: | Rowan Wyborn |
| Artist: | Andrew James |
| Composer: | Eric Brosius |
| Series: | Tribes |
| Engine: | Unreal Engine 2 |
| Genre: | First-person shooter |
| Modes: | Single-player, multiplayer |
| Platforms: | Windows |
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.
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.
Combat occurs primarily with ranged weapons, including bullet and explosive projectile firearms. Each character, vehicle, and machine has hit points. Anything with hit points may be repaired by "repair packs"; infantry may also pick up medkits dropped by other infantry upon death. The game offers three classes of armor: light, medium, and heavy. Heavier armor offers more hit points and ammunition but slower movement.
The player has three weapon slots, grenades, and a utility slot; the utility slot holds items such as repair packs, speed packs, energy packs and deployables like repair stations, turrets and inventory stations.
The introduction of a grappler gun adds another aspect to movement in the game. This is the first and only game in the Tribes franchise to include such a mechanic.
The single player campaign follows five playable characters (Victoria, Daniel, Julia, Mercury, and Jericho) whom the player navigates through 18 missions. The missions are played in achronological order, set either in "The Past" (Victoria, Daniel, Julia, Mercury) or in "The Present" (Julia, Jericho, Mercury), with the former detailing the story of Julia's birth and childhood and the latter describing her search for vengeance upon the Tribals and later, for her own psychological identity.
The multiplayer mode offers five different default game types and a diversity of map locations. Players are ranked during matches by points they acquire through the match. You can get offensive (killing an opponent, capturing a flag, or destroying enemy equipment), defensive (returning a flag, repairing your equipment, or killing an enemy flag carrier), or by style points (hit a head shot with a sniper rifle, or hitting someone in mid-air with a spinfusor disk).
Set hundreds of years before the events of , 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[1]) 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.
Years later, Daniel's brother, General Jericho (Steve Blum[1]), raids the Imperial Palace and kills Victoria in front of Julia. As a result, Julia (Tara Strong[1]) becomes an anti-Tribal extremist and uses her standing and fighting prowess to humiliate the Tribals at every opportunity (in "The Present"). Eventually, she captures the leader of the Phoenix, Esther (Nika Futterman[1]), and stages a trap for Jericho. Jericho, however, is killed by Mercury before Julia can exact her revenge. She then learns about her true father and goes to Esther for guidance. Esther trains Julia as a Phoenix, accepts her into the Tribe, and the two try to mediate peace. At this point, news arrives that the Blood Eagles have taken Olivia (Ellen Crawford[1]), late Victoria's sister and Julia's last living relative, captive. Julia hurries to her rescue but discovers that Olivia has, in fact, been Mercury's mysterious employer and a co-conspirator of the Blood Eagle leader Seti all along. Together, Olivia and Seti try to orchestrate an industrial accident to kill a large number of Imperial civilians and escalate the Tribal War, but Julia succeeds in foiling their scheme.
Although the game's ending sees Mercury and Seti killed by Julia, Olivia escapes in the last moment, leaving the story without a definite conclusion. This may have been addressed on in the unreleased patch as an additional story mode.
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:[2]
...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.
In 2015, the game was released as freeware by Hi-Rez Studios.[3]
The game received "favorable" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.
Tribes: Vengeance was a runner-up for Computer Games Magazines list of the 10 best computer games of 2004.[4]
The game won the Australian Game Developers Awards in the categories of Best PC Game and Best Game of 2004.[5]