PC Gamer - October 2011

Tagging a mid-air enemy with the Spinfusor is still one of gaming’s coveted skillshots.

Leaping off a speeder bike at high velocity flings you for ward—a great maneuver for making a move for the flag.

Ascend’s arsenal

New looks for Tribes’ sci-fi weaponry

Arx Buster
Grenade Launcher
Chaingun
Laser Targeter
Mortar Launcher
Phase Rifle
Nova Colt
Repair Gun

surface of a map, using the downward slope of hilltops to accelerate, and then sling-shotting yourself over more hills and crests to chain that momentum.

We load into Dry Dock, a rolling landscape with the occasional conifer, overlooked by elephantine capital ships that crawl through the skybox. I pick a light-armored loadout, and hum out a wide, flat bunker embedded in the ground connected to our base. I make for the first mound I see, floating to the highest point of the hill—but not over it—and then letting off the gas as I sled down the other side. I’m skiing.

And it feels natural, more than it has in any other Tribes game. What Ascend seems to eliminate is that hidden magic of how to initiate the technique—starting a ski is relatively easy, but maintaining it isn’t.

There’s no auto-correct or training wheels that do the work for you—it’s still a balancing act of maintaining momentum and direction while keeping your speed high.

Todd Harris, COO at Hi-Rez, describes the studio’s approach to adapting skiing— once a glitch within Tribes—into a primary mechanic: “We have certainly embraced skiing more so than within previous Tribes titles. We’ve added a UI overlay that clearly communicates to the player how quickly they are moving while skiing—that helps motivate you to ski fast enough to hit the red-zone. We have no code-enforced maximum speed, meaning an experienced player can have a huge movement advantage. We’ve also incorporated ski routes into our level design process so the playable maps really take advantage of the ski mechanics.”