Tribes features all the standard game scenarios you would want: Capture the flag, Capture and Hold, Defend and Destroy, Find and Retrieve, Team and individual deathmatch. Individual players score points for themselves and their team through kills, capturing the enemy flag or capturing and holding mission objectives.

Matches typically last from 15 to 30 minutes. Missions rotate within the specified scenarios. The maps themselves are wonderful and varied. The base game includes six to eight maps per scenario, so you don’t have to replay the same map continuously. Only a few, perhaps even one single map, disappoint. Tribes is perhaps the first game to successfully mesh indoor and outdoor spaces into one cohesive whole. Fantastic environmental effects include weather, fog, day or night lighting, slippery ice and sticky mud. The Tribes engine supports GLIDE-only hardware acceleration. Dynamix promises an OpenGL patch soon, but has gone on the record to say that they will not support Microsoft’s D3D. Fortunately, the game does not require any 3D-hardware acceleration to enjoy and performs quite well if you have a machine near or above the 300 MHz range.

Combat shifts from intense fire fights at close quarters to long-range and humiliating sniper shots. Equipped with powerful jetpacks, skilled players leap and fly over the battlefield devastating their lesser opponents who find themselves stuck on the ground out of power. Weapon balance is excellent. The most powerful weapons become clumsy and slow at close range. A nimble soldier and a puny blaster can be the death of a heavy armored myrmidon. No über-power-ups exist to cause friend and foe alike to flee from you in panic.

Tribes offers a unique approach to command and control of the battlefield through the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). The PDA interface supports three views new to players as well as mission-objectives and inventory views. The commander view allows any player to see the whole battlefield, identify friend and foe (within sensor range), and even see the through a small camera that allows direct viewing of a teammates immediate surroundings. Commanders are also allowed to give orders and set waypoints. The controllable object list allows a player standing at a command center to direct fortress armament including fusion and mortar turrets. The static object view displays important resources such as generators and pulse sensors. General player communication is also supported through the standard chat-type interface as well as a fun laundry list of built-in voice commands and player animations.

Players purchase equipment and weapons through inventory stations. Players may also acquire portable packs such as small remote sensors or turrets that can then be deployed throughout the map to build up a teams defenses or establish a small inventory outpost from which to stage operations. As a game develops you can watch individual players don heavy armor and load-up with mines, laser turrets, or inventory stations and head out to support your base or defend your flag while the rest of their team runs willy-nilly off into the jaws of the enemies’ weaponry.

Servers can be locally customized to allow team damage, player muting and game administration. Tribes doesn’t suffer too greatly from lag, but it is part of the online experience. Low-ping bastards still ruin your day by getting in three shots to your one and dancing around you like a gun-toting Baryshnikov.

There are few downsides to the game, such as the limited 3D-hardware acceleration. Additionally, there’s no support for persistent record-keeping or leader boards. You can’t even keep kills/deaths statistics on yourself. It’s currently unclear how you add new maps to a server or how players can download requisite maps. Team killers can often be found online and are a real nuisance when team damage is enabled. In-game voting does support kicking evil players, but often you'll never get the votes needed. Why should the other team vote to kick a player on your team that’s gone bad? Fortunately, a recent server add-on will automatically bump team killers after a specified number of friendly-fire kills.

I really didn’t initially suspect much from Tribes. Even after playing after-hours on the network at work I was only mildly impressed. It was only after playing online over a 56K modem for six hours straight that I began to realize just what this game had accomplished. Up front it appears that Tribes offers little more than a collection of multi-player Quake mods. But that was only the starting point. It’s the little, seemingly innocuous touches that create a game that deserves celebrating. Without a doubt, this is the current champion of multi-player first person shooters. The whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts. The online community has embraced the game but competition is still rather unsophisticated. Imagine a disciplined tribe of soldiers working in small fireteams with clear objectives and a commander directing the battlefield. Two-player weapon combos, minefields, airborne vehicles -- it’s all here.

Months ago, Quake II devotees freaked when John Carmack announced that the next incarnation of Quake would be an online, multi-player only game. Single-player play would be limited to simple training scenarios that prepare the erstwhile warrior for the battle waiting for them online. The first reaction of the fandom was fear. Later came acceptance and the understanding of the possibilities of a game designed from the ground up as a networked, multiplayer shooter. All I can guess is that someone at Dynamix was paying close attention. We’re still waiting to see Quake Arena and the joy it will bring. For the moment, though, we have Starsiege Tribes.

If you’re into multiplayer shooters, go buy this game. If you’re not, you should probably go buy this game anyway to find out what you’re missing.