Tribes: Aerial Assault
Tribes: Aerial Assault is an online first-person shooter video game released for PlayStation 2 in 2002 by Sierra Entertainment. It was one of the first PlayStation 2 titles designed almost exclusively for online play and was the first online PlayStation 2 shooter that supports both modem and broadband connections. It was announced in tandem with Sony's online strategy for the PlayStation 2 at E3 2001. Gameplay. "Tribes: Aerial Assault" is a first-person shooter game with an emphasis on mobility. There are many game types in the single-player campaign and multi-player, including capture  the flag (CTF), capture and hold, hunter, team deathmatch, and deathmatch. Campaign usually consists of some mixture of these game types. In all games but hunters and deathmatch, there are team and player points. Depending on the game style, team and player points can reflect two completely different things. Player points are usually earned through an individual player's accomplishments that help the team as a whole. Player points are earned by setting and deploying equipment, repairing friendly assets, destroying enemy assets, defending friendly assets, and completing objectives of the game. Like most first-person shooters, "Tribes: Aerial Assault" has  a Heads Up Display (HUD). The HUD consists of a crosshair, health, energy reserve, grenades and grenade type, pack type, armor heat, lock-on detection, and vehicle condition. The HUD also has target identification, that is, a red arrow over the target is an enemy, a green arrow is a friend. An unusual feature of "Tribes: Aerial Assault" is the jetpack feature. The jetpack runs on armor energy and allows players to fly for short to medium distances. Story. It is the year 3945 A.C. (five years after the events of "Tribes 2"). On the frontier "Wilderzone" of human space , hardy neo-barbarian tribes compete for possession of new worlds. Tribal warriors enter combat in powered armor, relying on skill and bravery to win glory. BioDerm Hordes have started to invade tribal space. Though the tribes boast of being the finest warriors humanity has ever produced, they face a genetically modified race that has literally bred itself for battle. The stakes are epic, and the Wilderzone is aflame with a new kind of war. The player controls J. Ransom, a recently recruited newblood. After a training segment, the story follows J. Ransom through missions to fight off the BioDerm horde  and keep control of tribal space. Development. Like "" the year before, Sierra had hoped that gameplay elements popular on the PC would translate well to console and would catch on with a much bigger audience. Unlike the Xbox however, the PlayStation required an external device for online connection, which despite the console's success, limited the game's potential audience. In addition, PlayStation online functionality did not arrive in Europe until June 2003, and Ethernet ports were not added to the PlayStation 2 until 2004. In early November 2008, Sierra shut down the online servers for 21 games, including "Tribes : Aerial Assault". In 2015, the game was released as freeware by Hi-Rez Studios. Reception. The game received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.