And, to be honest, don't expect to be bowled over by the gameplay either. It's not that it's not amazingly solid--it is, of course--but it's much more an incremental improvement on the original
Tribes than a major revolution. Fans of the first one will love it, and people who never got into the series will like it too.
First things first: the game needs patches out of the box, which is a bad thing, but the patches are automagic if you try to play the Internet version of the game, which is a nice thing. Sierra/Dynamix have been working on the game constantly since its release, and there have been a large number of patches to come out for the game, tweaking gameplay and making it run more consistently.
Secondly, the single player campaign . . . isn't. It's basically a number of tutorial missions that happen to have a bare modicum of goal-based play in them--capture a tower, hold the fort, whatever. Those of you expecting a full-blown experience in the single-player arena are going to be sorely disappointed. There's not much here, to be honest, and while it's fun for those who have never played Tribes before, it's pretty much superfluous. It doesn't help that the bots are eminently dumb, often standing around doing nothing when they should be out patrolling, or protecting, or doing whatever a human would be doing at the time. It's a little frustrating, and while you may want to cut your teeth on the single-player campaigns, they're not going to hold anyone's interest for an extended period of time.
The core of the game, of course, is the multiplayer mode over the internet, and that's where Tribes 2 really starts to shine. Anyone who's ever played the original Tribes can tell you how markedly different it is from any other multiplayer action game out there. The maps are absolutely huge, tons of players cram into each of them at once, and tight team-based action is the name of the game.
Indeed, that emphasis on tight team-based action is both Tribes 2's blessing and its curse. Dynamix put in a number of non-team based game types in Tribes 2, but you'll be hard-put to find many non-CTF servers. Most of the Tribes 2 community originated with the original Tribes, and almost all of those played CTF. Because of this, a lot of the new modes aren't getting much airplay, and it's pretty much team-based or nothing.
Some of the game modes available are the ever-present Deathmatch, the well known Capture the Flag, a version of the classic Headhunters called 'Hunters', a team-based version of Hunters, and a Hot Potato-style game called 'Rabbit'. In the end, though, CTF is where you'll find almost everyone.
Not to say CTF isn't immensely fun. It is. One of the things about Tribes is that it offers infrastructure management, along with raw combative firepower. You can adjust your weapon loadouts for the position that you have--base defense, quick strike, sniping, whatever--and there are a number of deployable items that can make your team stronger. Sensor nets are amazingly useful, as they let you track your opponents properly; deployable turrets can help keep your base secure; vehicles let you tool over to the enemy base at a much quicker speed. Indeed, vehicles are a key part of gameplay: you can use them to assault the enemy bases, and a number of them support 'outside players' who are along for the ride.
There are a large number of weapons, ranging from the mundane (blasters and chainguns) to the rather unique (the energy-sapping death ray and the always-fun mortar). There are also a number of vehicles. Unfortunately, the vehicles are very hard to control, and hopping into the cockpit of some of them is an absolute pain. Ground vehicles are rather neat, but they're also irritating to drive, especially on the crazily-sloped maps that most of Tribes 2 takes place on.
