Most Popular Free, Arena-Style FPS? 205
anomalous cohort writes "I am a casual gamer. Go or Chess are my games of choice when I am up for a serious intellectual gaming challenge. Otherwise, I just want to blow off some steam in a free, arena-style FPS such as Alien Arena, Nexuiz, Sauerbraten, or Tremulous at the end of a long day. Either way, it is very rare for my gaming experience to exceed 30 minutes. The problem is that attendance for these games has dropped off over the years. Finding a game with about two humans and two robots is perfect for me and very rare these days. My question is this: What is currently the most popular free, arena-style FPS for the casual gamer that you know of?"
That reminds me, how is the Quake Live beta coming along?
Re:Quake Live is awesome. (Score:3, Insightful)
Meh, Q3 works just fine. Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to find a good DM or CTF game without the idiotic excessive mod... Still, I'd appreciate if you could send an invite to mobby.6kl gmail com so I could try it out, and perhaps challenge you to a duel ;)
Anyway, my suggestions are Q3 and UT99. They're not free, but should be very cheap by now and are as fun as ever. There aren't too many servers or other players, but then this isn't Battlefield so you only need one other player for some good 1-on-1 DM action.
Then there are a few actually free games, which are mostly derived from other mainstream titles. These include the original Enemy Territory, FEAR Combat, Crysis Wars and at least one other I can't remember. They're supposed to be pretty good though I haven't played any of them. Then there are a bunch of other free games, where you often have to pay real life money to buy equipment. That's pretty retarded in itself, but they also seem to such hardcore in all other ways so I'd avoid those.
List of Alien Arena players (Score:5, Insightful)
It's possible to see a list of Alien Arena players online here:
http://chaingun.org/browser/ [chaingun.org]
The servers with the most real, breathing, living players are listed first.
This makes it slightly easier to find servers with real people on. The trouble is that there are quite a few servers and people tend to flock to small subset as group (obviously wanting to play together). It's hard to find any pattern as one set of servers may be popular for a few days and then another set of servers.
Evenings are a good time to play - it seems that most people are like the OP and want to let off a bit of steam after work. And what better way than with a nice big chaingun? :)
As for most popular, that's bit of a loaded question. They all play differently - really it's down to personal choice. All of the free FPS mentioned in the article are excellent and have a dedicated following. They're good quality considering they're produced by the effort of a few dedicated souls just for the hell of it, so it's worth giving each a try to see what appeals. :)
Wikipedia also has a list of free FPS, which includes some other gems not mentioned in the article (like Warow, OpenArena and Cube):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_first-person_shooters [wikipedia.org]
Quake 3 Arena (Score:2, Insightful)
Why play anything else when the perfect game is already out there? It's basically free these days.
Re:Combat Arms + Enemy Territory (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll second the ET motion.
I played that game probably more hours than any other game ever.
Good depth of play within a fairly simple mechanic. Combination of classes, skills and weapons fairly well balanced.
Re:Slower pace? (Score:3, Insightful)
WoP! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Urban Terror (Score:4, Insightful)
You somewhat lose the urban assault strategy style game play when people can run at Mach 5, wall jump up a 3 story building, and then immediately slide crouched 40 yards executing a perfect headshot with a pistol.
I love Urban Terror, but it is definitely not a strategy-heavy FPS.