Notes from the Tribes 3: Rivals playtest – it’s fun, but is it Tribes?

Of course I was going to insert myself into the recent Tribes 3: Rivals alpha playtest – as a Tribes: Ascend player who’s mourned its demise for years, the reveal of a new, heavily Ascend-inspired ski-shooter was like seeing a long deceased pet rabbit miraculously come back to life. Cured, judging from Rivals’ more palatable monetisation plans, of the myxomatosis that killed it in the first place.

From what I played, Tribes 3 can definitely bring back happy memories of zipping around, nicking flags and copping Spinfuser blasts, and the finished article may well have the chops to create some new ones. At the same time, the playtest build was conspicuously short on much of what makes Tribes really feel like Tribes.

This was surprising, considering how much it looks and sounds like Ascend, even copying over a lot of the 2012 game’s SFX and music. These could just be placeholders, mind, and in fairness, some of the biggest omissions – namely vehicles and the VGS comms system – are apparently planned but just not present for early tests. Which is fine! Yet I’m still concerned about how quiet Tribes 3 can be, and that seems more down to the default Capture the Flag mode being 5v5 than the lack of Shazbot spamming in chat.

While standard team sizes have varied across the Tribes series, public matches have always been vast affairs with a lot of moving parts: multiple flag cappers and chasers, sneaky solos looking to sabotage the enemy’s base, squads of heavy defenders, and flexible mid-field disruptors all having space to do their own thing. The main mode in Tribes 3 has tiny teams but still quite sizeable maps, which end up feeling colder and emptier as a result. It’s harder to specialise, too – I love nothing more than grabbing flags and speeding back home with a gang of chasers on my tail, but so often was my own base short on defenders that I had to abandon a run to go back and hold the fort myself. Usually as a woefully ill-equipped Light class.

Thankfully, there was a 12v12 mode hidden within a custom lobbies menu, and this was far more enjoyably hectic, despite (or perhaps partly because of) everyone being able to focus on their preferred roles. This took minutes to queue for, however, whereas the front-and-centre 5v5 mode took seconds, so I hope future builds don’t keep it tucked away.

There was also a bit less drama in the skiing itself. Sliding down hills to build up speeds for a flag cap or chase attempt will never not be enjoyable to me, but I did struggle to consistently reach the high velocities I remember hitting in Ascend. And I think my own skills can share the blame here with the jetpack, which burns through energy noticeably quicker in Tribes 3. All too often it’s outright impossible to scale certain hills before spluttering out of gas, and even successful high-speed flag grabs can soon turn to disaster as minor trajectory adjustments gobble up the energy reserve.

I know I’m essentially wishing that movement was easier, which to some Tribes fans is a crime deserving of eight months in prison. But I don’t just want easiness, I want to go fast. Going fast is the best thing in Tribes! Don’t you want to go fast, but more?

Indeed, most of my favourite moments of the playtest came when I did manage to click with the tweaked traversal, barrelling up and down and over the map like an oiled golf ball. When it all goes right, the sense of momentum is intoxicating – on one flag run, I’d built up so much speed, and was so focused on maintaining it on the escape, that I triumphantly landed back at base with empty hands. I was so in the zone that I’d failed to notice how I’d actually missed the flag on my approach, and had just torn across the map in a blind delirium. Still, was fun!

Tribes 3 makes some changes for the better, too. Instead of Ascend’s largely equipment-locked classes, here you can just choose from Light, Medium, or Heavy soldiers and build a class from a wider assortment of gear. This flexibility is freeing, and I was even able to spec out a respectable flag-capping Medium fella, trading off maximum speed to exploit his increased weight and more consistently hit the download slopes that can keep momentum going. This class system also effectively gets rid of dedicated hitscan snipers, which helps cement the sense that Tribes 3 is ditching the capital-B Bullshit that upset weapon balance in Ascend. I loved it, to be sure, but there were definitely some overtuned cannons in there. It’s much less annoying when deaths are plainly my own fault.

So yes, I enjoyed the Tribes 3 playlist, and was sad when it ended. Even so, I’m hoping it evolves considerably, leaning more into the thrilling, large-scale combined arms battles and blistering flag chases that it’s surely capable of. Even if intimate 5v5s can produce some satisfying moments, and can probably fill a competitive niche for more communicative, tactical play, they’re not Tribes at its best.

Still, getting there needn’t be an uphill ski. And since the whole point of this playtest was for developers Propehcy Games to gather feedback, here’s mine: more drama, more speed, more efficient jetpacks. Pretty please with a flag on top?