![]() ![]() It's crazy how much they managed to change the game for the worse. The netcode is just bad, so the online play isn't worth your time. ![]() They came up with a weird mutator power up system that should have just been a special game mode, and then made that a core game mechanic. ![]() They used an engine that can't handle the type of fast-paced gameplay that Nexuiz was known for. But they're just so random most of the time that there's always a question of whether you won or lost a match because of someone's crappy luck.They took an arena FPS that was slightly popular on PC, bought the rights to the name, and then proceeded to strip away everything that made the original game great and create.well this. Sure, they have strategic uses - swapping your position with an opponent at the right point in a CTF match can be a game-changer. Mutators are fun and all, but they do detract from what might be the most fundamental appeal of fast-paced arena shooters: the purity of the competition. Achievements unlock additional mutators, and points acquired by playing matches can be used to assign "pips" to each mutator, making them more likely to appear. Or another which replaces everyone's heads with the face of an art director. Still others are almost completely frivolous, like a the "farty poopy" mutator, which replaces all the sound effects with. Others are more straightforward self-buffs like invincibility or increased jump height, or negative effects to inflict on opponents like causing them to drop all their equipment, or see everything in a monochrome that makes it hard to immediately distinguish friend from foe. These can be enormous global changes, like reducing gravity, providing everyone on the field with jet packs, or granting everyone instagib guns for a short period of time. Throughout the course of a match mutators can be picked up which can be used to alter the match in over a hundred distinct ways. The one thing that truly sets Nexuiz apart from anything that's come before is its dynamic mutator system. Mutators are fun and all, but they detract from the most fundamental appeal of fast-paced arena shooters: the purity of the competition. No, every game doesn't need a sexed-up crack whore model or a giant eyeball running around on its hands, but that's just one more way in which Nexuiz manages to be utterly nondescript. As per usual for the genre you'll probably just end up falling back on the rocket launcher most of the time.Ĭharacter models are equally uninspired, featuring red guys and blue guys, with three minor variations of each that you probably won't be able to notice in the middle of the hyper-active action, anyway. Something situationally useful but difficult to master, like a sticky-mine launcher, would have been very welcome, but you won't find anything like that here. The BFGs and Redeemers of the Quake and Unreal series may be frequently impractical, but they're at least distinct and memorable. There's no single particular weapon or fire mode that really stands out as unique or original. Uncreative alternate fire modes mostly just mean a tighter spread pattern or higher damage shot with a lower rate of fire. The armory consists of a bog-standard, utilitarian mix of shotguns, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, and a sniper weapon. All together, it doesn't make for a bad game at all. Weapons include specialized guns with situational functionality and more general implements of destruction for rapidly changing situations. Maps are well designed and occasionally visually interesting, with item placement that affords multiple routes for acquisition and denial. It's fast as hell, and this PC version has been tweaked to play even faster than its console counterparts. To its credit, Nexuiz gets the fundamentals mostly right. There's not much overtly bad about Nexuiz, but it just doesn't seem to have much reason to exist, especially on PC. It seems like a new one would be something worth getting excited over, but Nexuiz adds a little novelty to the form, and what it does bring seems at odds with the purity of competition that has helped much older games endure. Rapidly paced, twitchy arena shooters don't surface all that often these days, but the genre is far from dead, at least judging from how many people are still way into competitive Quake and Unreal Tournament. Nexuiz is just as much an enigma as how to pronounce its name. ![]()
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