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Review: BZFlag 3D Tank Game
GonzoJohn writes "LinuxOrbit.com reviews the 3D Tank game BZFlag. 'Have you ever been walking down the street, minding your own business, and suddenly look down to find something you hadn't expected? It might be money, it might be a decoder ring, it could be anything. But the almost universal reaction is pleasurable. 'That's a nice surprise,' you think as you stoop and pocket whatever good fortune has dropped in your path. The same thing can happen in the strangest places. For example, a recent post on our message boards inquired, 'What's your favorite flag in bzflag?'. Not being familiar with the game, I had to ask "What's bzflag?' Little did I know that such an innocent inquiry would result in an almost indecent obsession with a very cool game.'"
If I looked down and saw something I hadn't expected, I think I'd close my zipper.
linux games need better names. bzflag sounds like a compression utility or something. i bet we'd all be playing it if it was called something like 'armoured smashing-fist 2000', not bzip2.
BZFlag is an excellent example of a game which places gameplay above graphics. THe graphics are certainly not like Q3A, but instead made mostly of simple polygons. There are some interesting effects (such as the smoke from the Guided Missile) but clearly the focus is on gameplay.
:)
The gameplay is simply excellent! It is amazing how such a single game can produce such varied gameplay. For example, several friends and I have been playing BZFlag with max 1 shot delay and good flags only. Of course, each of us developed our own strategy and all was fine until we decided to increase the max shots to 5. Interestingly, all the strategies we used went to waste since they actively took advantage of the 1 shot reload delay. With 5 max shots delay, different flags became more important (ie SuperBullet is vastly more useful in 5 max shot delay).
All in all, this game is very addictive. Highly recommended
Ahimsa Paramo Dharma Nonviolence is the highest form of religion.
The official BZFlag website dosen't ist the OS X version, but you can find the port Here (3.2MB)
...and everything begins to sound like a poorly translated Anime title...
Liberating Music Player Sonique
Archaic Compiler f77
Multi-Purpose Text Mangler sed
Tireless Text Locator grep -r
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
This is really a gem of a game but I urge people setting up servers not to do the easy thing and hike up the shots to 10 or something and allow jumping.
The game is *much much* more fun without jumping, though it doesn't immediately seem so. You start to learn how to drive correctly and defensively and it is a much richer experience.
Games with and without these options can be described as follows:
With jumping and lots of bullets: You spend most of your time jumping up in the air dodging other people's sprays of bullts, spinning around and landing in directions you just don't want to land in.
Without jumping and lots of bullets: You actually can play cat and mouse. When your opponent's 2 shots are gone and you've dodged them, you can release at will. Much more interesting game. The other is just silly, but that's how people tend to start and they never learn better.