Hello Blender Underground, It is I your one and only... The original ninja Of Underground. Ninja Krow, again finding time to install play then review another game. This Time a Totally open source game with it's own 100% original coded engine.
The Game in question today is Sauerbraten a Sequel to Cube... Now I'm not talking about the Movie series here where a bunch of people wake up in side of this huge construct that is hell bent on killing each one of them with a series of traps and other nasties... No This Is a game totally unlike any First Person Shoot I've ever played before in my life.
Now I've only played Sauerbraten and not the initial title that started the series, However from what I've played it's totally addictive. On the plus side it's Open Source and cross platform From Linux, MacOS X, and Windows. so there is no really reason not to at least try this game out. it contained in about 300MB file give or take a few megabytes, and should only take a few minutes on a broadband Connection to download.
Plus the Game is Free Open Source, so On top of getting the game, You are also getting (Or at least can get) the source code that makes this game. which is As i said before 100% original Code from the ground up based on Cube 1 which is 100% original Code from the ground up. It's not a 3rd party engine.
What Makes Sauerbraten so different from other FPS titles is how the game works.
this is take right from the Sauerbraten web site...
The Sauerbraten Website wrote:
The aim of this game (The Project and Game itself) is not necessarily to produce the most features & eyecandy possible, but rather to allow map/geometry editing to be done dynamically in-game,
Yes you read that right...
"to allow map/geometry editing to be done dynamically in-game,"
That means that no two Runs of the same map base is ever the same twice. Even if you go and do the exactly same arrangements as you always do. another player will likely, and very often, do something totally different then what you have seen before in the Map design portion of the game. Thus and endless degree of variations.
Most maps are just husk maps to give the over all landscape and theme of the Level and then the players run around like mad men adding to the landscapes things they wish to use later for tactical advantages or just for the fun of it.
Now the Graphics I would say are not the NEXT Gen Standard Fair You would think. Their not the focus of the Development and/or design team for this game. some of the enemy look really lowpoly almost Hexen 2 or Unreal 1 (Not the Tournament branch of the Unreal series. but the first ever Unreal title and also the first single player title of this series.)
Still the weapons look awesome if a little low poly and honest with some of the Huge maps loaded with details, a lower poly character and weapons is a good trade off.
The visuals mostly go into the Maps them selves. And they can be stunning to look at and stunning in size. Like an entire country side Town with Castle and farm lands and all the common stuff you'd expect see from the area theme like that.
Game play is quite fast an furious if you have a few players who know how to work the game really well. and at least I have found a few player that are very helpful with a crash course styled get you up to seed real time tutorials.
In a few round these guys got me heading into the right directions and had me thinking about what I was doing and made me think about why I was doing what i was doing during the configure phase.
Weapons are the standard Online Multi-player sort. Not really balanced for AI Solo-player gaming. this game was meant to pump out lots of hurt very quickly at times. they look awesome with a lot of them looking like weapons from WW2 all they way to current era weapons. and maybe a little beyond. I have yet to see all the weapons...
As I am typing this I'm grabbing a hold of Cube 1 and downloading the crap out of it... going to give it a try and see how i fair with that one as well...
If you want to play again unlike anything you've played in the Style of FPS... Grab Sauerbraten right now @
http://strlen.com/sauerbraten/ and then download the binary copy for the system you are using...
If you are an Ubuntu user, It's in the repository and can be found under the "Add/Remove Application" program in the Applications menus or via Synaptic.
All others follow the instructions it should be easy to install..
For originality, fun and the addictive cool Factors I'm scoring this game As high as I have ever scored anything... a 12 out of 10... but since 10 in the max I'm going to have to round down to 10 out of 10...
Give it a try and see what you think...
Stay tuned for my Next Review where I give the first Cube (Game) a run for it's money and review it as well...
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