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42 of the Best Commercial Linux Games
LinuxLinks writes "It is true to say that the number of commercial games released for Linux each year remains small compared to other platforms. Nevertheless, we faced lots of difficult choices compiling a list of 42 of the best commercial Linux games. The selection we have finally chosen covers a wide range of different game genres, so hopefully there will be something here that will interest all."
And all five people who bought them greatly enjoy them. So do the other hundred thousand or so who downloaded them via torrent because 'all software should be free', further throttling Linux game development.
The ultimate question:
How many commercial games can you play on Linux?
I didn't know EVE Online had a native client. Hm.
IAALS.
Or is this a more comprehensive list than they're letting on?
List the best free games. We're all well aware of the proprietary ones.
...were released in the last year? Last two years? Three?
42? why not 43? or how about 50? because there are only 42 commercial linux games
The title seems a little misleading. I think it should read "There Are Now 42 Commercial Linux Games!"
They include games with no real native client (EVE Online, which has a built-in Cedega-like engine), but they don't list The Ur-Quan Masters, possibly the best native-Linux game in history? Given how small their "Adventure" category is, they would have done well to include it...
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I would have nominated Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri but that one broke many a kernal ago on a glibc update. Too bad Loki is dead or they could have updated it.
Shh.
It is a commercial effort, by a commercial company to be sure that their product can be used on a Linux desktop. It fits the list.
(same story for Mac too, btw) , but they don't list The Ur-Quan Masters, possibly the best native-Linux game in history? Ur Quan is really a great game. *BUT* it an open-source project hosted on sourceforge. The whole point of the article was to point out effort from corporation making efforts in order to have their commercial product run on Linux too.
Ur Quan however great doesn't fit into *that* criterion. Given how small their "Adventure" category is, they would have done well to include it... Their "Adventure" category seems to have only survival-horror kind of game. They have actual classical adventure games (in the point'n'click sense of the word) - the "ankh" serie - but those are sorted together with the RPGs.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Foremost among these difficulties was finding 42 commercial Linux games.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
That's like saying 'the best first three letters of the English alphabet are a, b, and c'
I'm not familiar with many of the games on that list; but DEFCON is a game very worthy of attention. Minimalist vector graphics, ripped straight from the Big Display in every movie version of a NATO command center, minimal; but haunting, sound effects, and a disconcerting premise. That game is tougher on the nerves than anything I've played since System Shock 2. Which is pretty impressive for a third person strategy game.
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I wrote up a short review with screenshots for several fun lesser known Linux games that didn't all make the top 42 list:
http://www.linuxgames.com/archives/10260
Eve Online has no native client. IIRC it has Cedegar tied in. So it breaks their own rules. Sort of.
Kohan has a pure native version *and* a version that comes autobundled with it's own Wine/Cedegar offering instant one-click install and play and it isn't even mentioned.
Where is Tribes 2?
What about Rune or Heavy Metal?
The last time I tested Wurm Online (given, that was a while ago) it was crappy. I mean, really crappy.
I'm glad they mentioned Savage/Savage 2 though. The S2Games people deserve credit for a wonderfull game that runs natively on Linux since day one and was the first quality title that actually actively advertised their support for Linux.
But some of the games on this list are far outperformed by todays FOSS counterparts. The only indie game that I didn't know of and got me curious was "H-Craft Championship". Gotta check that out.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
...to testify on behalf of "Darwinia." Beautiful, moody, atmospheric, and emotionally engaging. Oh, it's also dirt cheap and a bargain at twice the price. Lovely, glowy, primitive "TRON"-esque graphics, swirly sounds, and easy to learn.
This is one developer that's definitely worth your time and few dollars. Skip the Starbucks for a day and try it out. Even though it's a linear-ish game, there's still replay value. Went all the way through it four or five times now and it's never the same twice.
I'm surprised that Shogo at least didn't make the list. I rather liked that game back when I was messing with the beta. =)
They forgot Unreal Tournament 2004. It has a full native linux port. Hell, it even has a fully 64bit port. Some people have had trouble getting it working but there's install guides out now that make it really easy to install:
http://www.mepisguides.com/ut2k4/ut2k4.html
UT2004 is a great FPS. I don't know how they left it off the list.
VMWare has some limited 3D support you can enable in version 6. It isn't that complete, but 3DMark 2001 does run and gets a respectable score, for older hardware. VMWare 6.5 has much more complete 3D support. It is still in beta and I've not tried it (I use VMWare in a production environment) but I've no reason to believe they are lying. It claims to be DX8, more or less, as in Pixel shaders up to v2.0 and actually makes use of the hardware in your system.
You are still going to get slowdown, of course, but I imagine they may make it workable. When it goes final, I'll get the upgrade and see what happens.
I am testing out the beta version of VMWare Workstation 6.5
This version does still buffer the video card, but it seems on par with DirectX 9.x and pixel Shader 2.0
I started testing with older games so far, such as Diablo II, which work fine. Soon I will try newer games. However, since it does not yet report the actual physical video card, some games will not work with it.
This is improved greatly over the past version, for use with Direct3D games.
Also, it seems WINE has improved greatly as well.
However, if you like to play power 3D games, then native Windows is probably the best choice for most games.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." Albert Einstein
Not restricted to Linux (Windows and OSX versions available too); a great game!
Where's Return to Castle Wolfenstein?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
No game is without its flaws, but Descent 3 delivered a unique gameplay experience for Linux and other operating systems:
http://www.lokigames.com/products/descent3/
It deserves mention in the list, perhaps in lieu of one of the more ordinary first person shooters listed.
I designed and run Vendetta Online (vendetta-online.com), another game on the above list. I don't have the cool realtime stats that Teppy does, but we have quite a few Linux people and a significant OS X population (around 30-40% of our userbase, last I checked). Our game is completely native on each platform, and includes a 64bit Linux client. We don't use any kind of portability/wrapper libraries.
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Well, technically, yes, there have been more games ported to Linux, back in the Loki Games days. Stuff like IIRC Call To Power or Railroad Tycoon (IIRC) 2. Well, those are the two I actually own. There probably are a few more.
That said, do note that the list is already containing some... rather... "classic" ones. Gorky 17, for example is a 1999 games for example, so it's rapidly approaching a decade old. So is Creatures 3. Knights and Merchants is from 1998. (And even back then it was a crap game, with some of the worst pathfinding (among other sins) I've seen in a RTS. And not very popular either. So it's... unsettling to see that as one of the best games for Linux.)
Quake 3 was a good game, back then, but it's from 1999 too. Ok, they have Quake 3 Arena there, which is from 2000.
Don't get me wrong, there's newer stuff in that list too, and some good stuff too. But, nevertheless, it's basically 42 games spread across 10 bloody years. Yeah, so some would be closer to one end than others, but that doesn't invalidate the point much. You're probably better off trying to use Wine than waiting for those commercial Linux games to trickle in.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Also known as "All 42 Commercial Linux Games."
What, no love for Puzzle Pirates? Sure, it's Java really, but that doesn't make it any less Linux compatible.
another ruined twitter sockpuppet posting at -1. good riddance and only three or four to go.
I've played Doom 3 and Quake 4 and both runs better on Linux with a Nvidia card.
-er cards, then how come they ( simulated-they ) can't be "provided" to the guest OS?
Although the game has a surprisingly loyal fan-base, CogniToy's MindRover definitely showing its age. The original version was a product of the 90's right about the time when BattleBots and Robot Wars were starting to gain notice here in the U.S.
What really set this game apart from the crowd though, was that you could actually construct full-fledged autonomous vehicles with fairly sophisticated AIs and weapons, all without writing any code. Instead, you were presented with a number of Lego MindStorms-like sensors / motors, which you'd then wire into a complex system of visual logic gates similar to drawing a program flow-chart.
While the game was presented in 3D, most of the actual game was limited to 2D movements and input.
Eventually though, I'd like to see a modernized version of MindRover that truly expands into the complex nature of a fully-realized 3D world, allowing for much more challenging AI development. Perhaps it could also include modes where an AI can be designed to assist within a manual control scheme.
8==8 Bones 8==8
I'd guess that it has happened eleven times, with the following previous answers:
110110
2000
320
204
130
105
66
60
54
4A
46
42
Only one problem, Adams swore that he did not write jokes in base thirteen. Sadness. Otherwise, we might be able to figure out the next answer to be 3C.
I distinctly remember playing UT2k4 at a lanparty on Slackware when it was released. What gives, if they include games that are arguably considerably worse than UT, why skip it?
CNR- with its roots in Linspire - has the right idea.
But I tend to use it as a reality check and on that level it can be depressing. "The Year of Linux" software looks like a shareware catalog from 1992.
CNR lists 23 commercial "games," only three of which are worth even passing notice: Postal 2, Flight Gear, and Bridge Construction Set.
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This sounds DANGEROUS!! It is nice we have Live CD's, hell, more often than not I find myself using knoppix to fix seriously screwed up windows machines, but I trust open source software. I thought we all learned never run a desktop, untrusted code, as root, or really anything that doesn't need root privileges.
Running commercial, proprietary software from a Live CD means handing over your entire system. There are enough jail breaking tools and exploits to do damage to user accounts, not to mention the crapware that stuff gets installed unexpectedly, and now you are going to let that same industry run their own Kernel? NO THANK YOU.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
Huh? They listed Ankh 2 under Role Play but it's a classic adventure.
By the way, if you'd like to support the development of commercial Linux games you should consider pre-ordering Jack Keane at ixsoft.de. If 200 pre-orders are reached the game will be ported to Linux. It's from the same company that's responsible for the wonderful Ankh series of which the first to games are already available for Linux.
-nahooda
Sigs suck!
I may as well advertise a little here - I'm working on a multiplayer tank combat game with native Linux support, and I recently made my first Linux release. I don't really know what I'm doing regarding packaging Linux games at the moment, but I've got it wrapped up in a .deb that works on the most recent Ubuntu. Check out the Mandible Games main page, or the Mandible Games development log.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
It would be presumptuous of course to think that his choice of a new alias was more than a coincidence.
It's been said before, but I thought I'd spell it out.
TFA has 2 requirements. one is "Not require Wine to run."
EVE Online requires Wine/cider to run. It is a not a native client, so it shouldn't be on the list. That cuts the games down to 41. Any others that shouldn't be there?
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
I hope I am not being overly pedantic here, but there is nothing non-commercial about the GPL or any other free software licenses. In fact, you can pay money for Free softare games if you like. What they really mean is proprietary. In the article, they do however have a clearer definition,
To be eligible for inclusion in this list each game needed to be:
My only complaint is with the title of the article.
Yeah where the hell is Tribes 2?! That game ran great on Linux and I absolutely loved it, and it still runs fine on latest Linux distributions like Debian. Yet they didn't list it cause it was released what seven years ago or something? I bought it from tuxgames online store back in the day and it did cost me a pretty penny (~$65 at the time w/ S&H) at the time around 2002, but then Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory came out for free sometime during the summer of 2003 and I spent more time on that for a few years off and on between it and Tribes 2. Descent 3 also had a native port done by the same guys who did Tribes 2 port Loki Games. Not sure how well D3 ran on Linux though since it wouldn't run worth a crap on Windows even.
I cannot believe they actually listed Eve-online, no where close to being a Linux game. They should have listed only games that were natively ported instead of the "oh it runs on Linux, kinda.." garbage.
This space is not for rent.