I love Open Source, but yeah...Open Source games still kind of suck.
Everyone once in a while, a bunch of upstart geeks in a basement somewhere get it into their head that their going to create a free game that will blow the socks off of the shooter community. First it was Cube, now it's Nexuiz.
Following a tip from Asmodeos in Ars Technica's GESC forum (thread link), I decided to download Nexuiz and give it a try last night. The system requirements are very modest (you can view them towards the bottom of the page here). However, the game it reminded me of the most (both in appearance and gameplay), Unreal Tournament, is old enough to be significantly easier on a computer. If Nexuiz's engine is sophisticated enough to require the extra horsepower, the maps it comes with don't really show it off.
The first thing I noticed was the slightly clunky setup interface once the game is started. Slide bars don't work the way you'd expect them to and are used for a lot of options that don't require a slide bar. Select your team color with a slide bar? Sure, that makes sense. The game also doesn't appear to detect anything about your hardware other than your display resolution, so make sure you thoroughly inspect all of the options in the setup to make sure you're getting the most out of your machine - at install the game is set to ridiculously low video settings for most modern computers.
Once I got into the game, the first irritation was the lack of a sighting mechanism. That can't really be blamed on the game, however. I'm just so used to playing Call of Duty that the inability to right-click and bring my weapon's sights up is a little disorienting at first. Once I got used to that, I started exploring the map and picking up a few weapons to play with. The weapon selection is pretty standard, including a shotgun, machine gun, rocket launcher, mortar (a grenade launcher, really) and two weapons I can't describe - one that appears to shoot a small ball of energy and another that looks like a miniature grenade launcher. You'll have to forgive me for forgetting the names, I'm writing this about twelve hours after trying the game and away from the computer on which I have it installed. Perhaps tonight I will fire it back up, grab a few screenshots and add some edits to this posts. Anyway, the weapons are okay but nothing special. I was surprised by the frequency with which you can harm yourself with your own weapon. Pretty much everything but the shotgun can cause damage to you if you fire it too close to a wall, etc.
I didn't get a chance to play a map against anyone (human or bot), so really this mini-review is incomplete. I will attempt to play a bit with some bots this evening and maybe do a second part to this tomorrow morning. I really want to comment on the physics and the engine itself, which are...underwhelming.
As I stated in the GESC thread, if you want a fast-paced sci-fi shooter and you happen to be one of the few people on Earth that doesn't own a copy of the UT Game of the Year Edition, then by all means grab yourself a copy of Nexuiz. Otherwise, stick to UT for your crazy-fast fantasy deathmatch.
If you're just looking for a multiplayer shooter on the cheap (or free), you're much better off with something like Enemy Territory for team play or a used copy of UT for deathmatch.
-Sam
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