Alien Arena
Posted by ithamore Sat, 13 Oct 2007 09:00:00 GMT
Joe Barr at Linux.com recently reviewed the Quake II-based Alien Arena and declared it better than the Quake III-based Tremulous which use to be ”. . . the best free software FPS game [he had] had the pleasure of playing.”
From the review:
“If you’re a gamer but not familiar with Alien Arena, think of Quake III or Unreal Tournament and you won’t be far off the mark. If you’re not familiar with those icons of the first-person shooter genre, think massive, sustained, unrelenting, ankle-deep-in-blood, kill-or-be-killed carnage which can be enjoyed solo, just you against the bots on your PC, or, if your taste in killing tends toward living targets, in multiplayer mode on a network server.”
Also, here is a bit on Tremulous:
“Tremulous is basically a struggle between two teams: the humans, a species I will assume you are familiar with, and the aliens, which look like bugs and sometimes crawl along walls and ceilings. During the game, each side progresses through three stages, with advanced abilities and equipment coming in during the second and third stages. There is one major difference between the species, beyond being on different teams. Humans can upgrade their equipment. Aliens can upgrade themselves. Both species have structures peculiar to themselves.”
I haven’t tried either game, since I’m not into FPS’s, so you’ll have to tell us what you think about them and which is better in the comments. And, for the record’s sake, this is the first time Slashdot (the source) has been “officially” TIGSourced [Edit: on the new TIGSource that is], the unofficial Mac version of Tremulous is available here, and the images I used were nabbed from the games’ websites.
Another good thing about AA is that it has bots for single player fun. No such luxury in Tremulous - gameplay mechanics too complex maybe. But AA felt way like Q3 - different textures and effects but same feel. With the exception of maps where you can take some sort of armed hover vehicle for a corridor ride…
Grrreat. An infernal server error right when I decided to post.
I like how 95% of the Alien Arena review is describes how to install the software and navigate the menus, then right at the end it’s all “hey, best game evar!” with absolutely no rationale.
Wow, Alien Arena sounds fun (and looks great). I have been replaying Quake 2 recently and was really surprised to find.. this.
I just wanted to echo what Gr.Viper said. AA definitely feels like a Quake 3 “total conversion” more so than it’s own game.
Tremulous is still better since it’s not just a Quake 3 rebuild.
AA isn’t a Q3 total conversion, it uses a modified quake 2 engine. btw Alien Arena is the third game of the great Code Red saga, other two (Battle for Earth and Martian Chronicles) have an impressive single player mode. Code Red games style is also heavly inspired by the movie Mars Attacks. Saying that AA is like q3 is like saying that half-life is like far cry
I’ve tried two of the three AA games, and I thought they were both pretty terrible. They feel incredibly amateurish, even compared to other mods.
And by AA games, I mean Code Red.
So, Cycle, what mods would you suggest are better than Code Red games? Also, which 2 of the 3 Code Red games did you try?
I would personally recommend Nexuiz instead of/over these two.
Warsow, Tremulous, all those hl2 mods…a few ut2k4 mods… just to name a few.
When it comes to online FPS games, I’d rather pay for a game than play amateur ones. I mean, being open source and free is cool… but in the end it all comes down to the fun factor. And these games aren’t fun for me.
Impressive work, though.