The first thing that struck me about Tribes 2 was its similarity to Tribes. Well, perhaps it is meant to be like Tribes; after all, it is the sequel. But how much is to be expected from a sequel? Enhanced graphics, smoother engine, new aspects to gameplay... Tribes 2 has all of that, but I just couldn't shake the feeling I was playing Tribes all over again, and that nothing had really changed.

The improvements over Tribes are clear, new graphics to bring it into line with current and future hardware is to be expected, however, the interface is what is substantially better. In Tribes players often had to traipse through the frustrating method of getting new gear, logging into one of the inventory stations and then selecting what they wanted. With Tribes 2 there is a menu of preset configurations using the keypad, where the player merely hits a key and then steps up to the inventory station. Far, far better than Tribes 1, this helps speed up the process of getting back out into the thick of it.

The new graphics engine is very flashy and has lots of great new features, but nothing that really furthers game graphic techniques. The rain, or precipitation as its called in the options menu, is really quite impressive even given its high load on system resources. The review system ran it with a reasonable frame rate, but it soon ended up being turned off – along with most of the other settings. The textures, lighting, and fog are all very well done, but will need a very high end system to run with a decent frame rate. The models look nice, before you hit the graphics settings that is. By the time you're finished with tweaking the graphics they look rather like a tweaked Quake 3 model, devoid of finer texture details. Weapon graphics are impressive, with nice fat plasma balls flying around, and causing impressive damage. Shadows look as good as MechWarrior 4 ever presented them. The screen shots for this review were taken once all the graphics were changed to allow an acceptable frame rate, to show what it will look like realistically. Tribes 2 will look beautiful, but only play well if on a high-end system around the 1 GHz area with a Geforce 2 MX at the very least.