![]() Some are tight and claustrophobic, channelling the action through obvious routes. The maps are functional but rarely inspired. This is a game where you can hit someone square in the face with a mortar and have them skitter away, only to finish you off with one hit from the default weapon. You respawn every time with a beefy shotgun, and with gameplay that never evolves, that proves ample for most encounters. Each has two fire modes, but few feel essential. The nine weapons on offer are a feeble selection, with little impact and sketchily explained benefits. It doesn't take long for the basic pleasures to run dry, however. And, for a while at least, it's a refreshing change of pace compared to the feature-creep of the modern shooter. No reloading, no sprint buttons or cover - just frictionless movement, springy rocket-jumping and the relentless rise and fall of the kill/death ratio to worry about. Four-on-four is the largest lobby the game can accommodate, and matches unfold in brisk, 10-minute bursts.Īt its core, Nexuiz is built on a solid bedrock of old-school action. Three maps are available for Capture the Flag games, the remaining six for Team Deathmatch. Sadly, in crossing the hardware divide and picking up a price tag in the process, it's lost a lot of its charm and left its indie roots clumsily exposed.įor your 800 Microsoft Points you get nine maps, divided between two game modes. It's the commercial incarnation of an open-source PC game, itself based on a Quake mod, that's been building an enthusiastic community since 2005. Nexuiz, as it happens, has better credentials than you might expect. With Unreal Tournament missing in action, and the rest of the pack chasing Call of Duty's cordite-scented tail, there's clearly a small gap in the market for an experience built on nothing more fancy than old-fashioned cat-and-mouse carnage. It seems strange to be pining for a multiplayer buzz when the landscape is strewn with first-person shooters clamouring for your attention, but Nexuiz taps into a neglected sub-genre in search of its fix: the arena shooter. It's a trap Nexuiz falls into almost immediately - and, for all its rudimentary charms, one it struggles to escape. ![]() Nostalgia is a comfortable trap, baited with the warm, fuzzy memories of a more innocent time when your mind was less bogged down with adult concerns, when simple pleasures were all you needed.
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