The steep learning curve of the Tribes games has always limited their popularity, so it feels like bit of a happy accident that we got one with a cinematic single-player campaign. Vengeance's space opera story is predictable but surprisingly engaging, and its best setpieces invite the player to take advantage of levels' verticality in very rewarding ways. The fun is slightly dampened by some harsh difficulty spikes and annoying segments where the player is stuck defending an inanimate object for minutes at a time. Unlike Tribes 2 and Aerial Assault, the game doesn't come with multiplayer bots (which is especially strange given the strength of the single-player AI). Still, the campaign makes Vengeance worthwhile for both fans of the series and anyone who's intrigued by the concept of a Halo-like story mode with dramatically more complicated gameplay mechanics.