Lately, I've been reading about DLC. A lot of DLC. And, maybe it's just my imagination, but more and more companies seem to be announcing DLC before the game releases. Some even giving a general date(soon after the game's release, usually). I'm all for DLC. Really, I am. It's a great little feature to keep games from dying a few weeks after their release. But for the love of God, stop announcing DLC before the actual game has released. It makes you look greedier than you already are.

We all know how DLC can be ridiculously high sometimes(sometimes! Now always). So when we hear about a game for a few months, letting the hype set in, then announcing there will be downloadable content soon after its release just isn't a smart thing to do nowadays. Unfortunately this seems to be a growing trend, with the whole RE 5 debacle a few weeks ago, the announcement of Godfather II DLC, now we have the announcement of map packs for Dark Athena. It sounds as if the content is almost, if not completely done and they're purposefully holding back because they know people will pay for it. Thankfully gamers have caught onto this and have started calling the companies out. Does it work? No. At least not now.

The smartest thing to do is to keep your mouths shut, and release the content a few months after the game's release. Realistically you guys shouldn't start creating downloadable content until after the game has actually gone on retail, but we all know that'll never happen. Go ahead, keep developing it 1 month after you started on the actual game, as always. Just keep it to yourselves, ok? Thanks.

Also, new InstantAction podcast. Listen to it, yo.

And no, I don't mean the actual bases in Tribes. Well, some bases are pretty good, but they're just bases. Tribes 'base' is, essentially, Tribes in its birthday suit. No modifications at all, other than a few base alterations. There are 5 basic aspects of 'base': Defend your flag, go after the enemy flag, defend your flag carrier, attack the enemy flag carrier, and of course capping the flag(if you have it). You're constantly doing something. Simply squatting behind the enemy base isn't a smart move, and it's actually frowned upon. You'll sometimes get kicked for doing such thing. Now, I don't normally play on 'base' servers. While I originally played Tribes without mods back in 1998/99, since then I've grown so accustomed to mods that 'base' looked boring. No new armors? Weapons? Turrets? It really didn't seem appealing, and I never saw the advantage. How wrong I was...

Tribes base is easily the most intense version of Tribes you can play nowadays. Simply watching a game is intense, which I've done a few times. To me, base players completely outrank every other player on the other servers for one simple reason: teamwork. They actually work as a team, which is what Tribes is all about. Go to any other server and it's every man for himself. While this isn't a bad thing, working with a team like you do in base is much more thrilling. Now, I'll admit that I've been a bit worried about going into a base game, mainly because of how much I know I'll suck and let my team down. You can get away with stupid shit on other servers, but not here. base is serious business.

But, with the recent news of Tribes coming back, I knew I'd better at least get a feel of it. I decided to join a game about half an hour ago, and it was just as expected. Intense-and hard-as hell. Right off the bat luck was against me since the map was Dangerous Crossing, one of my least favorite maps. I'm not exactly sure why I don't like it. I just don't. I played the game anyways and overall I sucked, but had a few highpoints. About half way through the game I got a pretty kick-ass midair disc hit, something I rarely do on any server. It didn't kill the flag carrier, but at least I hit him. I then tried to stop being Rambo, calm my shit down, and think about what position I'd be most useful in. Going after the flag carrier just wasn't cutting it for me. These guys knew the map like the back of their hand, memorizing which routes were the fastest. I'd decided to stay at the base whenever our flag was back home.

Defending your flag on Dangerous Crossing isn't terribly difficult, but you've gotta have at least 2 guys doing it. One for each entrance. And, as time went by, I found out that simply blocking the enemy from grabbing the flag, instead of trying to kill him when he's outside the base, is just as effective. I've seen this done before but never really attempted it. As the enemy is flying into the base, you jump right in his path, causing him to come to a dead stop. This allows my teammates to easily kill him(and me). So it was decided. Defense it was.

Overall I know I could've done better. Hell I could've capped the flag if my head wasn't up my ass. Scenario: Our flag is at the base. 2 guys, including me, are defending each entrance. I see our flag carrier approaching the base, so I step back to get out of his way. What I wasn't expecting him to do was throw the flag at me. I quickly realize this, but was too late. The enemy had already returned it before I had time to know what happened. I let my team down big time, but we still ended up winning with 7 points. It was certainly intense, and I can safely say I enjoyed it. I'll probably give it another go sometime tonight, then play on modded servers for a while.

Well, I'm still not sure if I'll be able to play the next incarnation of Tribes. From what I understand, they'll be releasing a standalone version of the game, as well as having it playable in a browser at PlayTribes.com. I'd much prefer to play on the standalone version. But even then, it kinda sounds like it'll be in OpenGL mode, which just won't work for me. That was my main worry. Still, they've yet to really get into details, so I could be totally wrong(which is what I'm hoping for)

InstantAction's newest podcast has an interview with Justin DuJardin, who worked on the game with Alex Rodberg(I think?) for about a year. If you're interested in knowing just how Tribes on IA will work, I'd highly recommend giving it a listen.

Edit: Also, they'll be showing off 'Tribes IA' (dunno what else to call it) next week at GDC. Not sure what exact date, maybe all week. Read up on it here.

You should know by now how much I enjoy Tribes, so imagine the surprise I got when I read that InstantAction would be bringing the game to browsers. 'Surprise' doesn't even come near to how I felt. As of now I can't play any of the games on their website, which sucks, but I still support them. Since Tribes runs perfectly well on this beast, I'm wondering if it might just be possible to play it in a browser. The graphics will obviously be lower than Fallen Empire: Legions, which works in my favor.

There's really not much else to say about this. I'm still in shock about it all. Really hope this brings back the Tribes community, or at least gives people a chance to play it who couldn't before.

After Firefox decided to act up and give me massive text lag on sites like Twitter and the Bungie forums, I decided enough was enough. Reinstalling it didn't help, nor did disabling/uninstalling every add-on I had. I sure as hell wasn't going back to IE, so Chrome was my only option(other than Opera, which is a fine browser). I tried Chrome before, back when it was released initially and really didn't like it. I tried it for maybe 5 minutes and uninstalled it. I just couldn't get used to the tabs for some reason, which now don't bother me at all.

After using Chrome as my main browser for a little more than 2 days, I can safely say I like it. The speed is what I like best, which isn't all the surprising seeing as there aren't any add-ons available. As of today however I'm starting to see the negative aspects of Chrome. Such as:

No format options when creating a post at Xbox.com or writing a new blog here. Not only can't I bold or italicize posts without enterting HTML codes, I can't even write simple paragraphs. They're all bunched together. Reminds me of the time when I had to use Windows 95 for a few months...

The Reply and Rate Thread buttons at Xbox.com disappear whenver I hover my mouse over them, making it almost impossible to click them. I have to be quick if I want to give my input at all on the site now.

Like I said earlier, no add-ons. No Flashblock. No AdBlock Plus. Nothin'. I can only assume they'll eventually give us add-on support in the near future. I hope they do...

Certain flash videos aren't too smooth. Sites like Vimeo and MegaUpload skip a bit, which is annoying beyond words. They play fine in Firefox and IE.

It's not 100% stable(but what browser is?). I had it crash on me not too long ago. I've also had it freeze up on me quite a few times, which is annoying as hell.

I'd like to have a File and Edit menu up top, instead of the 2 buttons on the right that seemingly control everything. I'd much rather prefer a scroll down menu to see my history, instead of hitting Cntrl-H or Cntrl-F for find.

A Properties option when right-clicking on...anything. I never realized just how much I used this little function in FF until I couldn't in Chrome. See, I have Photoshop. And when I need dimensions of said image I'd simply look at its properties in FF. Now I can't do that. Unless I'm totally missing something, this should be a basic function in every browser.

Those are some of my biggest complaints while using Chrome so far. I'll still use it, since FF is no longer installed on this PC and the only other browser left is IE. I have no idea how this post will turn out. Probably a jumbled mess just like at Xbox.com.(edit: Yep. Had to go back and format it with HTML codes)