#7: Nexuiz

The prettiest of them all..

I’d say Nexuiz has the best graphics out of all of the Open Source shooters we’ve covered in this series. The game is just a visual treat. It was born as a modification of the Quake engine way back in 2001, later moving to the modified DarkPlaces version of it. That’s right, everything you see in this game is powered by bits and pieces of the original Quake engine.

Nexuiz is set in a futuristic/sci-fi environment aiming to bring deathmatch gameplay back to its roots with perfectly balanced weapons and fast paced action. A wide range of weapons are included in the game, and most of them have alternate fire modes, giving you the ability to have rockets explode in mid-air for example. The weapons are very balanced and the individual skill of the player is the main thing making the difference.

The game sports several standard game modes, including Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Domination, Last Man Standing, Arena Mode (Tournament style from Quake), but also offers two new ones - Rune and Key Hunt.

In Rune, five runes are positioned around the map, each giving you both a power up and a weakness. You only obtain points by killing people while in possession of a rune, so getting your hands on one is key. And in Key Hunt, each team starts with a key in their possession and must collect all of the keys from the other teams in order to win.

Besides multiplayer, the game also offer singleplayer play against bots.

The current version (2.4) of Nexuiz was just released a few days ago, on Feb 29, bringing with it a new menu design that makes it easier to surf servers, and also player setup and new game creation options. The game is available for Windows, Mac and Linux users.

If there’s one game you should definitely try from this series, make Nexuiz the one. It’s just that good.

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This series is a joint effort between That VideoGame Blog and a gamer who has played Open Source games to an extent where he even set up a bi-weekly online show about them over at SauceTheGame.com