The game that gave birth to multiplayer online first person shooters; in many ways still the best FPS online product.
Even after nearly ten years and in many ways years ahead of it's time, Starsiege Tribes remains the absolute best first person online shooter even after the hyped Halo 3 has come out. The sheer amount of customization in terms of both characters, voices, and creating your own modifications to play online was astounding for its time, and still surpasses anything today despite the newer technology and higher expectations that many ungrateful gamers come to expect out of game developement companies.
Even Starsiege Tribes flaws were brilliant, as the infamous "Ski" bug was vastly exploited by all veterans and then implemented as an official feature in later titles when it became more about just being fun other than being cheap and getting the capture flag to your base faster than any vehicle was able. The game was just absolutely brilliant, and able to hold hundreds of players at once using one's own internet connection as a port, which was in itself an ingenious idea that allowed an unprecendented amount of people to play with each other at once; eat that Xboxlive and every other "next gen" console and game out there.
In addition, the bug were you could set mines in the air was also widely used and accepted as a tactic that many people used either just to fool around or to set traps that others would unwhittedly fly into with their jet packs or just walk into a field of death from which there was no escape.
Computer games have always been decades ahead of consoles in terms of technology and fads, what they are experiencing now is something that computer gamers had been and gone through nearly ten years ago; as time and technology is improving you are seeing the gap close slightly as consoles are becoming more impressive and cheap, but overall being held back by an ungrateful, impatient community of players which accounts for many failures of what could have been great games.
Now that this game is free to download, there pretty much is no reason to give it a shot other than having a family, a life, a dog, or going to work and/or college. Starsiege Tribes is addicting, much more so than even the infamous World of Warcraft, and will have you playing for years and years without rest trying to become victorious with your friends or newly acquired comrades in battle.
The implementation of premade voice emotes, insults, cuss words, commands, and other things was in itself ahead of itself as well; back when such things as team speak were not even thought of or perhaps even widely known, the simple two or three clicks of a button would display a voice command that your entire team could hear, or an insult that your opposing enemies will make you regret. This was all without the immature "Twelve year olds" and their talking, as these sounds were premade and appropriate while sending your message across.
Tactics and team work were so necessary in this game that it puts games like Halo to Shame; team work is always necessary in these types of game, but the sheer amount of things that you were able to do as a team is one huge difference between the two games, and Tribes just outshines halo in every aspect except graphics, being made many many years prior to the thought of there even being a game called Halo.
Destroying Generators, Command Posts, Base defenses, setting mines in enemy bases, setting up air strikes, capturing critical locations, obliterating vehicle posts, invetory stations, solar panels, manually controling base or field weapons systems from a command station (and thus also spying on any tresspassers), and the implemented voice coordination system are all just superbs.
Heck, if a group of old school Starsiege Tribes players were to play Halo as a team, give them a few weeks and they'd be slaughtering absolutely any premade team they face. Team work, timing, coordination, weapon range, and aiming are all inscribed in their blood, and they use actions instead of words when "bragging" about their skills.
So strap on your jetpacks, grab your favorite weapons with ammo, equip a health pack to your belt, wearing that energy pack on the back of your jetpack, secure those mines and gernades in your armor, and head out to conquer your enemies like a pack of wolves starving for victory.
Victory through skill and team work has never been so sweet.