Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Control and menus awkard
Tribes 2 has several interesting concepts, such as making defending and supporting roles quite important to the game. You will quickly learn that having no one around to repair your generators after the enemy has destroyed them is a very, very bad thing. You can also pilot various ground vehicles (high speed bikes, tanks, mobile bases) and aircraft (fighter, bomber, and troop transport). Unfortunately, the game has three major flaws. First, it has a very limited control system -- you only get to assign one button per action. So, if you try to use your joystick when flying one of the ships and assuming you have set the fire weapon action to the button on your mouse (as do most first person shooters), you must first go into the control panel to enable the joystick button to fire your weapons. Vice versa when you exit the vehicle. Inconvenient in the extreme when you are being shot. Second, most vehicles are very difficult to control and do not react predictably. I personally wonder if the programmers just treated vehicles as very big players, because that is how they drive. Don't expect your aircraft to dive or swoop like in most games -- it is a very limited control system. To add insult to injury, there is no seperate mouse sensitivity between vehicle driving and normal first person movement with your character. This means that if your aircraft decides to inexplicably go into a suicidal dive, you must move your mouse to approximately somewhere in the middle of Egypt before the aircraft responds. Third, this is one mother of a twitch fest. If you are not good at locking onto a 1/6 inch target, you had better settle for a support role. If you don't have the latest hardware and drivers, you are NOT going to be able to keep up with the big outdoor fights.
Rating:  - If you've got the PC, this game is well worth the price
First, don't even think about buying this game unless you've got a decent video card and a fast internet connection: it won't be worth your money otherwise. You'll get odd error messages if your video card isn't up to parr (I think someone else mentioned that here as well) and unless you want to turn onto everyone's favorite Lag Frag, you'll need something a bit more robust than the standard 56K modem. You'll need to download several patches to get the thing to work but once you get past this minor irritation and if you've got the hardware, TribesII has definitely got the action for you! With the standard variation of 'First-Person-Shooter' game types (including Capture the Flag, Siege (basically you either defend a base or attack it and then switch sides halfway through), etc.), they've added an assortment of ground and air vehicles which you'll need to master in order to win. You add to that the different weapons and armor types that each person can carry and you've got one highly customizable soldier! Now get about 32 of these folks (divided into roughly equal teams) in one game, some of them racing around in vehicles (which, FYI, include tanks, bombers, a scout bike and a fighter), some of them deploying mines and defense turrents, others blowing up enemy installations, and still others roaming around sniping the opposing team with plasma mortars and you've got one heck of a fun time! This barely controlled chaos is great. If you're a fan of FPS's like Half-Life, Doom and the almost legendary Diakatana (just kidding on that one--insider gamers joke for ya ;), you'll definitely like this game.
Rating: - Even better then the original...
The two main criticisms of the game are this:1. You need a killer machine to play it. True. But if you do got a fairly good machine(Maybe around 800 mhz or higher, Geforce 2, etc) then it rocks. 2. Its too much like the original. While this game adds a ton of stuff and innovates, at its base it is somewhat similar to the original. But thats fine with me-I love the original, and there is still plenty of new stuff here to make it worth buying. That aside, this game rocks. It takes a few days to get used to if you didn't play the original, but you can practice some offline, and for people who played Tribes 1 its easy to pick up. This game has a lot of variety- You can play it 1000 times and never have the same game. There are about 64 maps in box, and many more are playable(Most are server side, you don't even need to download). I can snipe from a ridge, cloak and sneak into their base, or put on heavy armor and a shielf pack and mortar them. I can man turrets, pilot vehicles, or set in at base and give orders. And there are already many modifications to make sure the game doesn't get old. And there are many kinds of play, from the standard Deathmatch and Capture the Flag to the original Rabbit, Bounty, Siege, and Capture and Hold modes, plus Hunters, Team Hunters, and more. Its beautiful,too, with rolling landscapes and eyepopping special effects. The maps also don't have a limit-they go on forever. The built in community features work great-I can chat, post in forums, browse Tribes sites, read news, and send and recieve e-mail all without having to leave the game. All in all, this is definitly worth a buy.
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