Nexuiz and Alien Arena: Head to Head review

Why does every argument about our reviews always end with the point that the game is free?

So what? A free product can't be bad? Does the fact that it is free give it special leverage over things that aren't?

It isn't fair to compare a free mod to a feature length game, at least not in a negative way, but just because you got it for free doesn't make it good.

When you release something into the public spectrum, there is always a risk of negative feedback and criticism. It goes with the territory. Whenever you put out a mod, you run the risk of getting bad reviews. Whenever we put out a review, we run the risk of being criticised for our writing and for how "fair" we were with it. It's a vicious cycle, but there you go.

I don't care if it comes with a supermodel or if it costs my soul: if it sucks, I'll say so. If it's great, then I'll say that too.

I'm sure Gothax? feels the same.

l0d1z: You have a slow graphics card, but turning off some/all of the effects should make it run much better. I've tried Nexuiz on even slower graphics cards than yours, and I've gotten it to run very smoothly by turning down the graphics. It's very important to download the latest version of Nexuiz, which performs better for me and has more graphical options. Try lowering your color depth down to 16 bpp, and lowering the texture quality (in the video section of the NEWEST version of Nexuiz).

Carni: Very strange. Nexuiz and Darkplaces run at about the same framerate for me. (Darkplaces with Romi's newest RTLights, the new hi-res texture pack, and Plague's hi-poly model pack).

well I did try to turn off most or all of the effects, and it did speed up a bit... but not much,
I still think Nexuiz is a cool gam though, even if the game runs slower than hl2, PEACE :D

ANOTHER BIAST MOD BASHING REVIEW
No constructive crit
No jokes or nice complements

STOP MOD BASHING IN REVEIWS!

sorry for the double post!

If you dont like the mod put a line in there " i am not a fan of it"
dont write a review to put it down.

2nd off if modders are to write reviews this bad expect me to write one with the same attitude, biast opinon and bashing
as you have written about other mods. (thats not a attack on got hax)(just other modder reveiws)

THIS IS NOT THE MODDB SPIRIT AND I WONT STAND BY TO SEE PPL MESS IT UP

good day,

Yeah thats how I felt when reading it.

I like Code Red more :P

LINK

TO

THE

GAMES!

Gee, that could have been handled in PMs.

I'll be sure not to do it in the future just to annoy the hell out of you.

Remember that you didn't pay anything for it, as both are totally free. Don't compare it to Half-Life 2 or some other big budget shooter :rolleyes:

unfair biased judgement.

oh and for the record, both games run at high framerates on my older athlon 950 and my current a64 3200

what, are you reviewing these on an intel onboard? Also, AlienArena doesn't have any shadow effects and it's based on quake2.

I think the review kind of was more of a bashing of both of them more than even explaining whats in the game itself, however the negative points do have some truth to them. I'd rather see a pros and cons on these games rather than comparing them for 'which one sucks more'

Cheap:
When I go to review/look at a game, I review in the stand point as if it's a title all on its own, in which these were. There are few FPS-based games that deliver an experience you'll remember for a long time, and these are no different in the game design aspect. So, seeing as these are total conversions, I went at it as if it should of delivered a brand new, breath-taking experience, something such as Dystopia, Hammy Bob, and others have accomplished. Neither really done the trick, so that explains what I said.

Oh, and for the record, maybe you should try running some of those graphical features rather than leaving the game at default settings, which looks like a respectful nine year old title. If you would have the SLIGHT bit of patience you'd check my profile, which most of the time indicates the user's computer specs. Common, you have how many posts?

I wasn't trying to compare the graphics in either title to something of today's standards, but with the type of performance you receive AFTER enabling most of the features, and the games STILL look like shit, it's really hard to appreciate the work when I get nearly quadrupled amount of FPS in the CS: S Stress test.

I do play with all the effects on actually...

There is no way possible that you get better FPS with that type of processing speed. What I'm saying is that I received that type of performance with the hardware that I currently have in this computer. Hard to believe that such performance is obtainable with the hardware you specified, but hey - it's the internet. Anything is possible.

Did you mention it's free? It's like free quake 3. Free.

Hi, and thank you for the review of our game, Alien Arena.

I just want to point out a few things that maybe got overlooked:

Those screenshots of Alien Arena look pretty awful, because detail textures and emboss filtering are both turned on. Emboss filtering is not something most people would care to use, it was added because a few players requested it. I personally find emboss filtering pretty ugly and never use it myself for taking screenshots or playing in the game.

I'd also like to point out that Alien Arena not only offers the standard DM, TDM, and CTF modes common to the Quake series, but also there is an All Out Assault mode, in which you can get into vehicles, as well as Deathball, which you can capture a ball and shoot it into a goal for extra points.

Both games run great on my computer with 60fps. :S

i'm pretty sure that if you look in the second paragraph, you'll see 5 words (24 characters) that are in RED that you can click on, and in turn be sent to the respective sites for both games

unless that was added after your comment :-p

You can really tell that the reviewer hasn't played these games much when he says that there aren't any "new ideas to keep this style of game play alive", and that they " any polishing to differentiate themselves from the original Quake" I've seen more of these "new ideas" in Nexuiz than in a lot of mods. In Nexuiz, there's a weapon just for "rocket-jumping" with, the laser. There's a grappling hook. You can remote-detonate the rockets. There's an alt-fire mode for every weapon. There are many gamemodes that aren't in the original Quake, like Domination and PowerPillz.In CodeRED, there are vehicles. "Gothax" is telling me, that despite all of these new ideas, that these games don't differentiate themselves from the original Quake.

Nexuiz IS NOT an "ancient engine". Graphically, Nexuiz is FAR more advanced that Quake. It is just about as related to Quake (graphically) as Doom3 and Half Life 2, which are also engines based on Quake.

Also, I don't have the performance problems the author does in Nexuiz. It runs very smoothly for me with all effects on. I've checked the Nexuiz forum, and almost all people with a decent system don't have performance issues either. (There's a Nexuiz benchmark thread, but it was deleted once the forums were moved). One or two people have strange performance issues with Nexuiz for some reason, but for the rest, Nexuiz runs decently. I DO agree that Nexuiz could use some tweaking and optimizations, but I don't get really low framerates that the author does.

I had serious issues wit nexuiz when I first got it on initial release. It ran at lower than 5 fps on my system and didn't even look that good. I hear they have added some major speedups in the later versions though. Maybe that could be the problem.

What do you guys not get? I commented several times on how Alien Arena's presentation was much more favorable over Nexuiz's. Read it as you will, but I've mentioned several times about good things in each game. I'm not going to give a mod a great score just because it's a mod.... now that's being biast. If they done a bad job, they done a bad job. No escaping it. If I want Quake game play, I'll go buy it for 20 dollars at wal*mart.

There are no excuses for bad "reviews".

I really hope you don't write any more of these.

This isnt bad cheap.. your really not nice its his first review and i think its fine just to many big words. Leave him be and give some constructive critisism on WHY its bad not just saying theres no excuses for bad "reviews.... ok? your not helpful by bashing reviews its his FIRST one give him a damn break!

how? He's not being constructive to free games in the first place. they're different than mods because you don't need to buy a game to play it.

Dont' let him neat freecraft, freeorion, or freedoom.... or any free software game in general then.

Are you just completely blind here? I'm going to give you a few comments that describe GOOD points to each title (or an individual one), and translated for the individuals such as yourself:

"Several distinct engines have displayed their ability to support up-to-date graphical features, but with the release of Code Red - Alien Arena and Nexuiz, we now have the right to question how much developers are using in a game engine." - Meaning, GOOD job developers. You have ran the shit out of an ancient engine and are making other developers look like dirt because they can't even put some of the graphical features in these two titles in their one year old engine.

"Although each highly resembles Quakes’ game play, not every aspect is disappointing." - Meaning, while the game play is highly reminiscent of Quake, it still has great qualities.

” The fact that the developers have taken the time to revamp something ancient such as the Quake Engines makes both titles worth playing.” – Meaning, PLAY THESE TITLES NONETHELESS BECAUSE THEY ARE WORTH THE DEVELOPMENT TIME PUT INTO THEM.

” Although times have changed and the technicalities of a soundtrack have advanced further than the working of a keyboard, the audio presentation in Alien Arena and Nexuiz are a fresh of breath air. Along side the classic male announcer, the echoing screams for mercy and blasting weapon sounds entices your senses into keeping on all edges while struggling for the safety for your life.” – Whole god damn paragraph is a commenting on how well the audio side of each game is done

Is this isn't clear enough, get your fucking eyes checked and attend school all over. Learn to stop riding the developers and look at a game for what it's worth. Thanks.

its because if the card cant support the effects, dp doesnt run them. in example my onboard 32mb card ran darkplaces better with everything on much better than my x700.

sucky hardware just means you cant see half the stuff ingame graphically. And it is the team's fault for making dp run worse than it already does with everything on, i dont know how that was even managed, but it was a good effort on their part either way. Unfortunately in my opinion it just became a generic 'i cant believe its not ut2k4'..

Hopefully zymotic their next project will be much better. However their steep pc requirements turn me off almost completly. But I'll support it none the less.

yay, down to personal insults.

Gothax, if any of those things where what you intended to say, then why didn't you say them in the first place, instead of insulting everyone and making a shitty review?

You can say that again Joe :P

First of all, Nexuiz is not a mod but a full standalone game. It's based on the Quake engine, but Half Life was also based on the Quake engine but does not count as a mod. A similiar situation with SoF and Quake2, SoF2 and Quake3...
Actually Nexuiz should get a category in the ModDB since mods for Nexuiz are already in development - which category could those mods fit in?

Second, comparing those games to Quake alone is extremely narrow-mindet. The Nexuiz gameplay for example is rather resembling the UT gameplay than the Quake gameplay (I don't like UT btw). Alien Arena resembles the Quake2 gamplay (not Quake once again).

Nexuiz was developed because some people where unsatisfied with most (if not all) of the newer shooters. They wanted something oldschool and the created something oldschool. I don't the motives of the AA developers but I guess they're at least similiar.

Of course it's just bad luck if someone reviews games with gameplay he does not like - I could review CS-style games for hours and whine that they are all the same and all boring, nothing new, trite, all trite... ;-)

Actually the AA gameplay, like Nexuiz, is much more like UT than Quake II. (Alt-fires, mutators, vehicles, deathball(think "bombing run") etc), so yeah, the comparison's to Quake seem a little off, IMHO, for both games.

yeah, plus their engines are NOT NINE YEARS OLD. That's not a reason to hate a game.

You might as well call Source 9 years old because it's based on q1 tech still.

Carni,
I wrote a review of his "mod review" because he mentioned it being his first one, and it was clearly a misguided review. I don't write reviews for public use that get published anywhere, but if he does, I think he should be informed on how to do a better job down the line. As for the debate comment, thats just retarded. This is the internet, about the only place to do such as things is in disorganized comment sections. This topic just happens to be one that I am rather passionate about and unfortunately the article writer was not, and it shows.

ImTheDarkcyde,
It's no secret that DarkPlaces' netcode requires a relatively low ping. But when you are playing on a server that has a relatively low ping, it is arguably among the best and most comprehensive netcode's around. Not to argue that Alien Arena has bad net code, Quake II had great, and yes, probably more versitale netcode. One thing many people tend to forget about DPs netcode is that it is very scalable (from 500b/s to 25,000b/s with a default at a relatively "normal" broadband setting of 10,000b/s, whereas normal may be too high for some)

ducttapedemon,
Indeed, otherwise writing would never really improve. Once again, why I wrote a "dreaded" review of a review.

Biased is really the wrong word here. In fact, it can't be summed up into a single word. The only word that comes to my mind is "wrong." Maybe "misinformed." But alas, there are many more that have to go with them. Gothax?: I am not insulting you as a person, just a reviewer in the case of these two games. Your perspective is completely incorrect from my point of view. Hopefully you will take my critique of your review with understanding, but that is for you to decide.

Let me start with the review itself.
You open by dating Nexuiz's and Alien Arena's engines as being nearly a decade old. Ok, we have two games here. Why were these two games chosen? The comments section has made it quite clear that these are both completely free games both from quake variant engines (though as you incorrectly *imply* both being Quake 1 based. Yes, I can say this as you later refer to them as "an ancient engine" referring two just one base engine.). Ok, so after reading the comments, a user knows they're both free. Why isn't this a part of the review at all? Something had to draw these two games together! Why do readers have to rely on user comments to learn this? Further, the fact that these two games were compared to each other based on that fact proves that a game being free does take factor in how it should be reviewed (more on this later). Ok, so we got the first two lines covered. No, wait, that was just the first line! Ok, so "where two seemingly similar games are weighed on the same scale, for better or worse" you say? I fail to see this. The only place you are weighing these two games against each other is their graphical options and performance in one small paragraph. So we have an intro and 7 paragraphs, of which, only 1 paragraph does what you say in the intro.

Ok, so on to the paragraphs 1 through 4, which I'll refer to as the "history vs. technology" section. You start with a long rant about technology. That is to assume, unless you say otherwise, that these are professional works with the latest technology an end user could ever want, and that these games are a fore-runner to said technology. One might say, oh sure, we're on ModDB, so these developers are not pros. Problem there is this isn't a standard mod review, these are full content games with wholly created original (or license allowing re-used) media. Akin to a total conversion, but with more twists along the way, something defiantly not mentioned. So we're not reviewing a mod, but a game developed by amateurs. I must have missed that in your review. On to more talk about technology and hardware and aging: "Due to this very limiting factor, few engines have actually stayed in the long race for dominance in the gaming market." That is largely incorrect. Very few game engines have had public source code. In fact, the only original content first person shooters that have been released freely that I have seen have been based on one of two “series” of engines: Quake (Quake 1/2/3) or Cube (Cube, Sauerbraten). Granted there have been other engines with open source such as Doom and Build (Duke3D, Shadow Warrior, etc), however, no, or at least very little, new content came from those; only patches for their original intended media. So in this “long race” we’re in, we’re really only comparing the engines that people have the ability to make a complete game from (If I’m wrong here, why didn’t it say otherwise in the review?).

Alright! We’re finally on to paragraph #2! I almost have no problem with this entire paragraph! Almost! “… have displayed their ability to support up-to-date graphical features, but with the release of … we now have the right to question how much developers are using in a game engine.” In your comments you appear to call this a compliment? I’ve re-read this sentence over and over, and despite being a poorly written sentence to begin with, I find no hints of compliments in it. In fact, it reads more as that the engine developers have gone too far and that we, the end-users, should be questioning whether or not they should have done it. Not that your own comments on this line were much better, but it least it was clearly a compliment of sorts.
And here comes paragraph #3 running in with the opener “Unfortunately.” And you wonder why the comments all think this is a negative review? Reading on, we see you are onto the topic of game play. How about you at least talk about it first? Pointing out positives after an opener such as unfortunately is still tainting the complete picture. Discuss what is there (or not there) first, and then give us your opinion! Then you go straight into the misconception of “Quake Series’” again. Neither of these games is meant to be another Quake or Quake II. They are meant to be shooters with a fast paced game play and old-school slightly unrealistic combat. In fact, when most mention Quake and multiplayer, 90% or better will replay with: “Oh, you mean Quake World.” That alone should tell you “Quake” alone isn’t a good comparison for multiplayer game. Quake World wasn’t Quake; it was a professional Quake mod. Yes, Quake itself had some arguably fun multiplayer game play as well, but it was quite simple in base, something the two games being “reviewed” here are far from. Ok, onto what you summarize as the developers purpose. Sure they’re trying to create something that will “forever be remembered” to a degree, but they’re also trying to give something that isn’t really offered anymore in current games. You mention in your comments: “if I wanted Quake game play, I’ll go buy it for 20 dollars at wal*mart.” As has been heavily stressed in the comments and completely missed in your interview is that both of these games are based more on UT style combat than Quake. Sure, they have some Quake elements, but they also have some Doom elements, and Half-Life elements, and so on down the line. Also keep in mind that people may not be looking for generic “Quake style” game play, but more specifically Quake 1 or UT99 which are far harder to find around anymore. You then mention that there is no “new ideas to keep this style of game play alive.” While I (and some of the people who have commented) would beg to differ, at the very least, they are combining them into one game, and a game which is free on top of that. Users won’t have to go out and by 6 games to fill their thirst for game variation. Here they can download only two for a wide variety of game play that you seem to have completely missed. For example (and as comments have shown) there are many game play types in both games. I can think of 9 types from Nexuiz of the top of my head: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture-The-Flag (ok, there are the ones every game has), Rune Match, Instagib, Minstagib (hey, those are the same! Right? Not really, play them and you will see), Rocket Arena, Last Man Standing, and PowerPills (playable on modded servers, will be included in the next release). And that’s just what already exists. Community support has shown there certainly will be more. While “no new” game play directly can be labeled here, I’d say combination and packaging them together warrants it as being more original than you seem to claim. So now we are told they only have “average weaponry, tightly knit environments, and power-ups sprawled around maps.” I’m sorry; I thought we were reviewing the multiplayer first person shooter genre here! Sure there are games that have more than this. But this is what these games were designed to be! Adding more moves into the market of real time strategy, a direction many shooters seem to be headed in. Another thing you forget to mention here is that both of these games are in continuous development. While they do have milestone releases available, neither is completely finished with their ultimate goal. And then you shoot out a “they’re Quake-like” compliment. I laughed at that. Yeah, they have some Quake in them, but so much from other places too (hey, we’ve covered this!).
So here we, depressed, come to paragraph #4, the end of the “history vs. technology” section. Or as I like to call it, the “Look at me, I’m filling up white space! I’m really just repeating what I said in the first three paragraphs, only being vaguer!” section. That is not a personal attack, but a “style” attack. Have *I* repeated myself thus far? Sure, but I have to because of how often you did, and how many times you got off track. At least I’m admitting that its there. If I were writing such a review, what you wrote as paragraph #4 simply would not exist.
Look out! Here comes a new section! Glorious paragraph #5, where the comparison stated in the intro ALMOST happens! Hey, the two games are mentioned as having comparative features, and we even get a list of some of them! Then what’s this? A compliment? Whoa! A+ But whoops! There came sentence #3 blind-siding us. Sentence #1 tells us: “hey, look at all the cool new things in this engine!” But then sentence #3 comes in and says: “but we’re still old, so we should fly faster then a fat man sliding across ice!” I’m sorry. I must have forgotten what the first paragraph told me. I recall something about new technology making it more difficult for old technology to “stay in the race.” So we’re finally into performance. Sort of. You mention “goodies” and poor performance and don’t tell us what you’re testing is based on? We’re reading YOUR review, we shouldn’t have to go into your profile (which is hard enough to find in itself) and assume the specs (yeah, way over there in the bottom corner) there are what you are testing from. But ok, you have an “average” system, where are your results on “average” settings? Looks like you went straight for the cookie jar here and readers get a tainted review because of it. A review should have much more range to it. Then we’re on to comparing engines to modern engines and tweaking by the developers. Whoa there big fella! Slow down and think for a second. Do you see it yet? I’ll give you a hint: this is a head-to-head review. Aside from that, you just re-entered the professional game developers’ realm again! I cannot speak for Alien Arena, but the Quake-based engine Nexuiz uses is a Quake engine for modders. That’s right, it *IS* a Quake engine. You can rip that executable/binary out of the Nexuiz directory (with its required DLLs if you’re not in a *nix variety… whoa!, enter a whole new ball game here, more to come…), rename it to Quake, and it will play with all of Quake’s data as if it were designed to (harr harr harr!). In fact, said engine is included with other games that have the same feature… The only thing that differs from each of them is the icon they compile in, if there is one. I know Alien Arena uses its own modded engine of a modded engine that was based off of Quake II. A bit hard to follow, but there is probably a good chance it still runs Quake II content. If it doesn’t, that’s another review point. These are the types of things users don’t really see or know, and in this case, the reviewer as well. It does make a difference when it comes to performance.
So here is where you should have maybe done some comparisons of the two games. Wasn’t that the point of this entire article? How did each game compare in “low” settings, “medium,” etc... How do said modes differentiate themselves? You still haven’t done any real game play comparison either just for the record. You’ve mentioned they *have* game play, but that’s about it. Another thing you completely missed is the communities of each respective game. It is something overlooked, but I feel both games have remarkable communities.
Phew, onto paragraph #6, we’re almost done! Umm, I can’t really complain about this one, except for you’re really not comparing (head-to-head?).
So here we are, face-to-face with the concluding paragraph #7. This one’s another beast. You describe them as being “half-way enjoyable” based on the fact that they are based on older engines. How is that comparing them again? What part of them was half-way enjoyable? You really never talked about either game individually. You then talk about features in quality over quantity. Shouldn’t that have been covered a long time ago? Like somewhere in the how they played at different settings section that you didn’t write? Then you FINALLY make a bold statement that says one might be more memorable than the other with a little bit of a description as to why. While I may not entirely agree with what you said, at least you were FINALLY doing what you said you would in the title of this article, and my comments should pretty much only be me arguing that I felt otherwise.
And then you end with a compliment turned insult: “…but the developers have proven that while you can indeed teach an old dog new tricks, but it doesn’t always produce desirable results.” And you wonder why people feel you were so negative throughout the article?

Ok, so that was my review of the article for the most part. So now, for those who actually want to know a little more, and information as to things that should have been thought about *before* the article ever took place:

Why shouldn’t Nexuiz or Alien Arena be compared to commercial games?
They’re available to everybody. They are done by people on their own time, so profit is hardly a motive. Would you compare shoes to a car? Both aid in transportation, but the R&D and materials going into them are far different.

Why shouldn’t Nexuiz or Alien Arena be compared to mods?
More or less, they could be, with a few exceptions that some people feel more important than others. 1) Mods generally require you to have already purchased a game. And 2) Mods generally have less work to do to become complete. Very few even have the ability to touch the actual engine they run on. Nexuiz and Alien Arena have a lot more code they have to maintain as well as their content, and since they use custom engines, they also have to support their communities in more ways as well. Full content games in general are just more work (not to say mods are easy, far from it!).

Why shouldn’t Nexuiz or Alien Arena be comared to Quake or Unreal Tournament or ...?
In a way, once again, the somewhat can be, but it once again comes down to two major factors. 1) These games are trying to combine game play and style from many games. And 2) Anybody can download this without running into potential legal problems, and run them on more modern equipment.

Which brings us to another issue completely missed by this article: These games aren’t just for Windows. They both use SDL (the Simple DirectMedia Layer) and support many platforms, which include, but are not limited to Linux, Unix (BSD, etc…), and Mac (I know both already support OSX, I suspect both will soon support OSX x86), and others. While this may represent a minority, it represents more than many commercial games, many of the games Nexuiz and Alien Arena were based on are not available on these platforms in the first place.

So to end my rambling, Gothax?: I hope at the very least you take this into consideration and use the information in your next article. I think everybody who has taken the time to make comments here deserves to see this article rewritten to what is was really supposed to be. I’m not even writing a true comparison and my “comment” is almost 4x longer than your “article,” and my comments are far from complete, but I’ve already expanded this by more than the limits of 1 comment box, so it at this for now…

don't review a mod review, thats just stupid haha. If you don't like it write your own review on the game itself, not your opinions on your review, and join a debate team while you're at it.

dp has shit netcode, i dont care what anyone says

Alien Arena for the win

Every writer should take critizism.

carni - haha. When this atrocity is a primary feature on the front page of the web site it's something to worry about

darkcyde - stop living in the past. DP has netcode more advanced than even qw.

debate groups are good if you're willing to argue with me over someone else's review. Thats just retarded, I think the review is actually a large representation of the people who tried nexuiz, and I don't know where everyone is getting that Nexuiz runs good, because it absolutely doesn't and LordHavoc the maker of darkplaces is quite aware of the issue. I think the biggest atrocity is all these people bitching about an opinion, whether published on moddb's holy front page or not, makes no difference. If you think making it more easily accesible to people will somehow put both these games at a disadvantage you're all absolutely wrong. More people will download a negatively or obscure title pimped out than a well known one or one with amazing reviews, especially people here who hate other peoples' success. Everyone loves to watch a trai nwreck, and sure the review bashed both mods. But then again, both mods were judged based on a few simple points, it isn't the reviewers fault they fell where they did. If you feel he didn't play the game enough to get more than just a jist of it, then write your own. Otherwise you're just fighting over nothing.

I wasn't fighting. I never said he had to change his opinion. I was simply criticizing his review style and trying to give some advice on how to correct it.

I agree, if the reviewer gave thorough reasoning as to why he didn't like the game, I wouldn't complain about this review. However, I think that the review is unfair/misguided/etc. because of several reasons (many of them described in WillisDM's long post). For example, if the reviewer actually explained why he didn't like the gameplay, I'd be fine with that, but instead, he says that the games are just the same as Quake when in fact they have many different weapons/gamemodes/etc. that are clearly different. If he reviewed those DIFFERENT gamemodes/etc. and said that he didn't like them because , then I would be fine with that.

As far as performance is concerned, yes, DarkPlaces should definitely be tweaked for better performance, but no, you shouldn't expect top-notch performance on a system that's not high-end with high-end features on. For example, take RTLights. RTLights are a high-end feature that isn't even supported by Half Life 2. Turning them off makes the performance much better for me, but the game doesn't look like crap with them off either. In fact, it still looks quite good with nice bloom and particle effects.

Well, many comments here say: "write your own review!"
Do you mean those who made negative comments should actually write another Head To Head Review of Nex and AA for the frontpage? To prove better?

And what's wront with bad comments for bad reviews? If a game sucks, it gets bad reviews. If a review sucks, it gets bad comments...

because people are overzealous and take reviews like these to heart, thats why.

I see most of the poeple here are idiots that cannot read...
I played Nexuiz and it ran slow like 5-10 fps ugh.. sure thay have done a good job..
in the graphical area but thats it... it's existance makes it cool, becuse someone made use
of a cool engine... I don't know anything about AA, but Nexuiz was'nt all that, even if it is free

l0d1z: quiet on the self-deprecating line today?

Which version of Nexuiz did you play and on which settings?
The very first release had everything turned quiet high to show off effects. But that wasn't a good idea because most people did not manage to turn some of the effects down if it ran too slow but just complained about the game running slow...

l0d1z:

From your profile I see that you have an Ati radeon 9600 se graphics card.

It is a pretty old card and if you're playing Nexuiz on its highest settings with that card, OF COURSE it would run very slowly on the graphics card you have, because Nexuiz has very high-end graphical effects. My advice would be to lower the settings, and start by turning off effects, especially realtime world lighting.

actually Nexuiz ran like crap for me on the lowest settings with everything turned off. Darkplaces isn't exactly optomized to it's best when it comes to these effects, which is expected. But then again don't use it if you're playing it online anyways. Regular darkplaces over the internet runs great, the Nexuiz builds run unbelievably slow.

it's not the team's fault you have a sucky computer. I can run it fine on my a950 :rolleyes: