Intro

First, I am not a gamer for any platform (Windows, Linux, Playstation, Wii, Xbox, etc). That wasn't always the case. When I was growing up, I had about every game console that existed....the first generation atari that did pong, the third generation ColecoVision, the atari 2600, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64. I even own a playstation and a playstation 2, yet I never really ever played them -- and only a handful of times in the last 10 years, with the most recent being guitar hero 3 with my daughter on the Wii on christmas day. I still own the atari and colecovision and they still work too.

My point is it takes a lot to excite me enough to play a game. I have never really every played computer games, outside of solitair and killbill. I wrote about Frets On Fire recently and it received some pretty good attention. So, I decided to take a stab at another game or two or three....just to see what I have been missing over the years.

Nexuiz

Nexuiz is a 3d deathmatch game project, created online by a team of developers called Alientrap. It is available for download for Windows, Mac, and Linux (all the same archive).The first version was released May 31st 2005, released entirely GPL and free over the net, a first for a project of its kind. Since then it has been downloaded over half a million times, and the game is still being updated and developed, currently at version 2.3 and new releases being developed.

Before I get into telling you about Nexuiz by alientrap, take a look at one of the screen shot here which you can click for a larger version (more later in the article).

I wanted to start reviewing some linux games because I know they have come a long way since I started using Linux back in 1994/1995. The first one I did was frets on fire, much like guitar hero because it is what guitar hero was based off of (and Linux had it first!)

Today, I fired up Nexuiz because it was included with Sabayon Linux from a DVD install and it looked interesting. I found a problem with my opengl from a new sabayon linux installation - the screen was horribly slow and I was aging quicker than my mouse was moving. I also found a quick fix too and posted it here in the sabayon linux forums (this should only be related to sabayon linux and not other distributions).

I don't want to cover the installation of Nexuiz because I believe their web site covers it well enough (basically just extract the zip file and play the game). It is also likely in your distributions release format such as rpm, deb, etc. - so check your distribution repositories first. However, I will provide a link to the download.

Game Play

Here is a video I did showing game play -- you have to remember I am not a gamer...but my heart is beating a lot faster right now after just finishing this video.

Here are some pictures too (make sure you see the video link above though, it is much better. Also, click images for larger versions)