Most Popular Free, Arena-Style FPS?

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:I think your looking for

[retyurecvb]

I'll second that. It plays identically to Quake III Arena, only it is entirely open source and available in the repositories of several major Linux distributions as well. I can't imagine why anybody would play Quake Live when, as far as I can tell, this is the same thing minus ads. But then, I haven't played the Quake Live beta, so there may be something I'm missing.

Quake Live is awesome.

[bluephone]

Quake Live is awesome. It's really fun. BUT, needs more people, frankly.

To that end... I have some invites. Ask nicely. :)

Re:I think your looking for

[Chi-RAV]

or Warsaw http://warsow.org/ [warsow.org]

Warsow, WoP, ...

[Johnny deBris]

I personally love Warsow (www.warsow.net), a Q2-based free (GPL?) FPS, and also World of Padman (www.worldofpadman.com) is quite fun at times, and I think both still have relatively active communities and some servers up at times. Other options include FEAR Combat (projectorigin.warnerbros.com/fearcombat/main), the free multi-player part of F.E.A.R., or free online-only games such as WarRock (www.warrock.net), though both options would require a relatively beefy graphics card. A game I also love personally is Iron Grip: Warlord (http://igwarlord.isotx.com/), which isn't free but they have a demo which allows you to go on-line, it's an FPS tower defense style game, and a lot of fun to play...

BZFlag

[KlaymenDK]

I'll probably be modded down for this, but there's also the very neat BZFlag [bzflag.org]. True, players are tanks instead of humans, but technically it's still a "Free, Arena-Style FPS" (okay FTS).

There's always Skulltag..

[Anonymous Coward]

If you wanna go oldschool, there's always doom II... Check out Skulltag. It's got tons of new game modes and a whole slew of features, like OpenGL support, that make it play more like current-gen games. Supports up to 32 players. Community is still going strong and there's always someone playing.

http://www.skulltag.com

The Real Dark Horse is...

[Anonymous Coward]

I enjoy Alien Arena, but one I don't see mentioned is Armagetron. Shame, really.

Re:Urban Terror

[Lumpy]

Urban terror ROCKS but is not arena type combat. Many nimrods play it that way, but it's actually team combat with strategy.

Re:I think your looking for

[Anonymous Coward]

most pupular doesnt neciserilly mean the best.

as an avid quake fan, I have found myself contiuing the obsession in a gamne known as nexuiz.

its got some really quite impressive rendering features while still beain able to run on an older pc, and since its based on the quake engine it flies on the internet.

in every major continent theres servers running 24/7 and a nice community of us nexheads to keep you on your toes.

thousands of maps to choose from, hundreds of players and all the classic game modes you'd expect from a good fps.

runs on windows linux and mac

http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/downloads.php

Re:Quake Live is awesome.

[neomunk]

Speaking of the original Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, I LOVED that game. I played it regularly for years. It provided me with as much enjoyment as nearly any other game in my life (right up there with Sierra's AGI and SGI adventures), so even if the fun/cost equation didn't throw a divide-by-zero error it would still be good fun value. There were no ads or anything of that sort either.

I haven't tried any of the others, but I will now that I know about them.