It doesn't meant they were a success, but you said Freedom Force was a joke, and it wasn't. The scores don't prove anything, but support that is wasn't a joke.

Any game that diesn't sell well and make a lot of money for the studio is a joke.

I think this isn't necessarily true, especially in an era where returning to underground/cult IPs that didn't sell well is becoming a more common strategy. Shenmue 2 and Nier were both games that didn't make back nearly enough to support the developers, and yet they both have anticipated sequels on the horizon that devs/fans/news outlets are taking seriously.

A joke in that almost no one bought it and it's utterly forgotten, look at the Wikipedia entries for those titles vs other games ;)

Tribes: Vengeance was awful. Irrational/Vivendi destroyed the franchise and back-stabbed an amazing modding community.

Amen. They could have phoned in a re-skinned/graphically updated Tribes 2 and it would have been an improvement.