Nexuiz is a multiplatform First-Person Shooter developed and published by Alientrap Games. It uses the DarkPlaces Game Engine, which is, in turn, based on the (heavily modified) Quake engine.
The game is a straightforward Arena Shooter. You're placed in an arena with other combatants, and the objective is to lead, via firepower, yourself or your team to victory. The game contains AI players for offline play except in a few selected modes.
The game includes 13 weapons, 36 official maps and 11 gamemodes, plus a huge plethora of other community-made maps. Nexuiz makes generous use of graphic effects, but in the gameplay part is more of a mixture between Quake and Unreal Tournament. It's also primarily multiplayer, although it has a tutorial and SP mode with some challenging missions.
The first version of the game came in 2005; it later received a 2012 remake developed by IllFonic and published by THQ for PlayStation 3 (later released on—and pulled from—Steam). Due to the conflicts which emerged from the sole existence of this version, the community fled on to create a Spiritual Successor called Xonotic.
The available gamemodes in Nexuiz are the following:
- Deathmatch: Classic free-for-all, every-player-for-themself mode. The one with the highest amount of points at the end of the time limit or the one that reaches the frag limit first wins the match.
- Team Deathmatch: Players are drafted into one of up to four teams and they duke it out until a team reaches the frag limit or there's a team with the highest amount of frags at the end of the time limit.
- Capture the Flag: Two flags located (usually) at opposite ends of the map. Two teams battle to steal the enemy's flag while preventing their flag to be stolen. Unique to Nexuiz is the fact that frags also count towards the score limit.
- Last Man Standing: Players are given a set amount of lives and battle to be the last player with lives left, who's then declared the winner.
- Key Hunt: Up to 4 teams are given each a key. All keys are assigned to a player. The objective is to frag all key owners and get all the keys for your own team.
- Domination: There are strategic points located across the map, and up to 4 teams battle for control of these areas.
- Runematch: There are five runes scattered across the map. Runes give points just by being held, but players can also score when fragging enemies when holding one, or by fragging a rune carrier.
- Arena: Arcade-style 1-on-1. Players take turns into the fight, winner stays, loser goes back to waiting queue.
- Race: Non-competitive, non-cooperative mode where the objective is to complete the circuit in the shortest time possible.
- Onslaught: Each team has a power generator, and they must destroy the enemies' generator. All checkpoints except one, and both generators, are protected by forcefields powered up by nearby generators. The objective is to link your generator with the enemy's by owning generators.
The game can be downloaded from here
(version 2.5.2). There's also a separate, officially sanctioned map pack comprised of several maps made for other games, but ported and adapted to this game, and which can also be downloaded here.
Nexuiz contains examples of the following tropes:
- Abandoned Area: The Desert Factory level.
- Announcer Chatter: Like every Arcade FPS, it has his fair share of announcements for kill streaks, remaining minutes, remaining frags and special events such as air frags, headshots, etc.
- Artificial Stupidity: As a result of the game implementing a waypoint-based navigation system for bots.
- Autosave: The game remembers each of the player's completed maps in the SP.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: A handful of levels are platforms (Soylent, Evilspace) or set at open space (Starship), yet the characters don't wear any space suit.
- Battle in the Rain: Ruiner takes place in an industrial setting in the middle of a rainfall.
- Boom, Headshot!: It's possible to do this with both the Sniper Rifle and the Nex. As expected, it has the accompanying announcement.
- Capture the Flag: The eponymous gametype. Unlike other games, your teams' frag count also count towards your team's score. Obviously, the quickest way to rack up points is to capture the flag (25 points).
- Charged Attack: The Laser can be charged for extra damage or higher jumps.
- Convection, Schmonvection: Final Rage is a castle with several areas full of lava. Stormkeep and Stormkeep 2 as well qualify.
- Cool Starship: The map Bleach takes place in one.
- Cut and Paste Environments: The all-common Aggressor map, already present in other games such as OpenArena, is also present in this game. There's also DM6.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: In a rare "same game" version. Normally the Rocket Launcher works with the primary fire button firing the rocket, holding primary guiding the rocket a la Half-Life and the secondary fire button exploding the rocket mid air. But when playing with the Laser Guided missiles mutator (i.e. Mission 17: Stormkeep of the 2.0 campaign), the Rocket keeps its primary fire, but holding it doesn't work anymore (hitting primary fire again will make the rocket to explode while in midair) and the secondary fire toggles the guiding laser. This leads to situations where players explode their own rockets in their own face, hurting or killing themselves.
- Difficult, but Awesome:
- The Electro combo. Getting to shoot those balls in the middle of a match can be quite the challenge, let alone get the enemies to step into them as they are one of the game's equivalents to mines. That said, at the right position, you can deal a lot of damage with them.
- The Rocket Launcher in 2.5.2. It has a new function where you can guide the rocket as an exchange for a slower speed. Getting it to correctly steer can turn it into a powerful weapon capable of dealing lots of damage to the heaviest armored enemies.
- Racetrack. Know when to use the Lasergun and you can beat this stage in a beat.
- For once, Video Game Flamethrowers Suck is subverted, as the game's version throws a fireball to the ground which hurts at proximity, dealing a lot of damage. Needless to say, you can burn yourself with it, but if you know where to place it, you can deal a ton of damage.
- Driven to Suicide: Aside of the usual methods, this can happen to a player in Minstagib if they run out of ammo during a long time."<player> committed suicide. What's the point of living without ammo?"
- Eternal Engine: Many of the maps, such as Aneurysm, Diesel Power, The Slimepit, Slimepit Revisited and Ruiner.
- Gateless Ghetto: Downer is set in one such area.
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: The Key Hunt gametype involves collecting all of the other teams' keys in order to score points.
- Grappling-Hook Pistol: The Grappling Hook. Unlike other games, there's a limited amount of shots you can do, so you might want to restock when it respawns.
- Grenade Launcher:
- The Mortar's secondary fire launches grenades.
- The Electro's secondary fire works the same as the Mortar, but launches instead small, bouncing energy balls which explode on contact with enemies (and Electro primary shots).
- Guide Dang It!: Match #22 of the 2.5 Ladder (Evilspace) is a Last Man Standing match. You won't notice this is the case (the only info given to you is that you only get a Laser) unless you start racking up deaths.
- High-Altitude Battle: The maps Blue Sky and Farewell take place atop a clean futuristic base and a castle atop of a mountain respectively.
- Hollywood Acid: Prevalent on both Toxic and The Slime Pit. Slimepit Revisited (reslimed) even features some acid traps.
- Idiosyncratic Combo Levels: Triple kill!note Rage!note Massacre!note MAYHEM!note BERSERKER!note CARNAGE!note ARMAGEDDON!!!note
- Item-Drop Mechanic: Weapons can fall from dead enemies after they're killed.
- Joke Item: The Tuba.
- Level Editor: The "swiss army" editor NetRadiant can be used in order to create levels for the game. It even comes with a Nexuiz gamepack.
- Lightning Gun: The Electro, of sorts, since it works more like the Shock Rifle than Quake's Lightning Gun.
- Mêlée à Trois: There can be up to 4 teams on a single match in some gamemodes such as Key Hunt.
- More Dakka: The Machinegun and the HLAC (Heavy Laser Assault Cannon), a heavier version of the Laser.
- No OSHA Compliance: Several levels are set in industrial areas with hazards such as lava (the Tutorial level and Final Rage) or slime (Toxic, Slimepit, Reslimed).
- No Plot? No Problem!: The game doesn't even have an Excuse Plot for the tutorial level!
- Recoil Boost: The Laser Gun, a starter weapon that deals pitiful damage but can be used to travel throughout the levels using a Rocket Jump-esque attack that deals less damage than the usual examples.
- Regenerating Health: A rare example of an Arcade FPS implementing this. Should the player's health be below 100, the less health they have, the quicker it regenerates, until it reaches higher nimbers, where they regenerate slowly. There's also the inversion: at higher health limits, it drains fast until it reaches lower numbers, then it drains slowly.
- Remixed Level:
- Basement, Bloodprison and Runningman have Capture the Flag adaptations.
- Runningman has a "1-on-1 remix", with the map adapted for one-versus-one settings.
- Stormkeep has Stormkeep 2, an expanded and remixed version.
- Slimepit has Reslimed, which, in addition to the graphical changes, contains a death trap in a key area.
- Rocket Jump: Using the Laser gun, one could reach new heights.
- Secondary Fire: All of the weapons implement this.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: The Shotgun. The Crylink is a slower but more damaging Shotgun, and projectiles can go through walls.
- Shout-Out:
- Several to the Unreal franchise:
- The game includes gametypes such as Domination and Onslaught.
- The Mortar's primary fire shots projectiles which can be summed up as Flak Shells.
- With the Electro you can shoot a ball and hit it with the weapon's primary fire, basically emulating the Shock Rifle, but with the ball bouncing on objects instead of travelling through the air.
- The game also implements a mutator system, even called as such.
- The message for weapon suicide is "You killed your own dumb self."
- And, of course, towards the Quake franchise:
- The Hagar is basically a projectile version of Quake III: Arena's Plasma Gun.
- The announcer has "You've taken the lead" and "You've lost the lead", also from III. There's also the "Impressive!" announcement.
- There's the DM6 (Dark Zone) map as playable. Justified in that it's based on the Quake map sources released under GPL in 2006.
- The entry text for the Warfare level says that Orbb was here before you.
- The Rocket Launcher in 2.5.2 can now be used to steer its rockets, akin to Half-Life.
- Grab any Powerup rune, and the announcer will scream "Test your might!"
- Several to the Unreal franchise:
- Single Player Gauntlet: The game has two straightforward Gauntlet systems (based on the version 2.0 and version 2.5 ladders) meant to guide the players through the different gamemodes and options the game has. It's used mostly to prepare the player for online play.
- Sniper Rifle: The Nex, whose shots can even pass through walls. There's also an Instagib-specific weapon, the Minstanex. And the classic Sniper Rifle is there as well, with an alternate fire which can shot a barrage of bullets.
- Sniping Mission: The tutorial ends with you shooting an holographic image of your instructor with the Nex.
- Splash Damage: Several of the game's weapons do this. In fact, it's easier to mention which weapons don't cause this.
- Stat Overflow: The game's health doesn't really have a cap, so players could pick up plenty of health items and reach big HP numbers, at the catch that the bigger the number is, the faster the health degenerates to the default 100 HP after some seconds passed without picking up items or being attacked. The reverse is also true, as health regenerates if it's below 100 (but players will still be fragged the moment it reaches zero or less) and some seconds pass without picking up items or being attacked.
- Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Damage done to your allies in team games reflect back on you.
- Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Subverted, as it fires a fireball which hurts upon proximity. See Difficult, but Awesome.
- Video Game Tutorial: An optional one in the single player screen.
- What the Hell, Player?: Kill a teammate and you get this response from the game:"Moron! You fragged <player>, a teammate!"
- A Winner Is You: The campaigns have no ending and are just preparations so you can actually go into servers to play against others.
