Free to Play, Every Day: Tribes: Ascend

Do you like shooters? Do you like sci-fi? Do you not want to spend $60+ on a console game? Do you hate the angry children on Xbox Live so much that you want to punch them through the internet?

Have no fear, because Tribes: Ascend is here.

Tribes: Ascend is a free-to-play first-person shooter on Steam (where else would I have found it?), and I'm quite enjoying it. Compared to something like Halo or Call of Duty, Tribes is very intriguing because of how well it performs graphically and gameplay-wise, considering it's FREE. Unbelievable? I think so.

Many game modes you find in AAA shooters can be found here as well. Capture the flag seems to be one of the most popular, and there's also a "Slayer" type mode where two teams battle over a flag and have a limited score. Scores go down when members of your team die, but if your team is holding the flag, the enemy team loses their score twice as fast. King of the hill and Territories can also be found, though I haven't tried them myself.

There are a couple of reasons why this game interests me so much. First of all, there is a unique mechanic referred to as "skiing". With the absence of snow in most of the maps in this game, you'd think that would be difficult, but take note of the image below:

Each class (which ranges from glass cannon to tank and everything inbetween) is equipped with a jet pack and hover boots. The jet pack gives you a relatively short elevation boost, and using the hover boots appropriately with the slopes and terrain will allow you to slide across the huge maps with no friction, just like if you were skiing. Combined with moderate jet pack usage, you can climb almost any hill and speed down any mountain to fly across maps at blistering speeds. It's a really cool mechanic and it's core to playing the game, so I highly suggest looking up video footage or tutorials for it, because not only should you learn how to ski properly if you want to play this game, but it's really cool and fun too.

Secondly, Tribes uses a very similar currency system to League of Legends. Just for playing games, you will earn experience that you can spend on new guns, new classes, upgrades, usable items and augments, and more. All of those things are also purchasable with another currency (whose name escapes me at the moment) that you buy with a credit card, in addition to other premium content available only through this method.

It's amazing to me how a game like this exists in light of other games like Call of Duty and Halo. While I have nothing against either of those game franchises, the Tribes series came out before either of them. The original Tribes shooter released 11 years ago was critically acclaimed, and while I haven't played it, I think I can safely assume that this free game is a great successor, and I think anyone who enjoys shooters would love this one.