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Most Popular Free, Arena-Style FPS?

Posted by Soulskill on from the making-pixelpeople-explode dept.

anomalous cohort writes "I am a casual gamer. Go or Chess are my games of choice when I am up for a serious intellectual gaming challenge. Otherwise, I just want to blow off some steam in a free, arena-style FPS such as Alien Arena, Nexuiz, Sauerbraten, or Tremulous at the end of a long day. Either way, it is very rare for my gaming experience to exceed 30 minutes. The problem is that attendance for these games has dropped off over the years. Finding a game with about two humans and two robots is perfect for me and very rare these days. My question is this: What is currently the most popular free, arena-style FPS for the casual gamer that you know of?" That reminds me, how is the Quake Live beta coming along?

2 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. List of Alien Arena players by tttonyyy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's possible to see a list of Alien Arena players online here:

    http://chaingun.org/browser/

    The servers with the most real, breathing, living players are listed first.

    This makes it slightly easier to find servers with real people on. The trouble is that there are quite a few servers and people tend to flock to small subset as group (obviously wanting to play together). It's hard to find any pattern as one set of servers may be popular for a few days and then another set of servers.

    Evenings are a good time to play - it seems that most people are like the OP and want to let off a bit of steam after work. And what better way than with a nice big chaingun? :)

    As for most popular, that's bit of a loaded question. They all play differently - really it's down to personal choice. All of the free FPS mentioned in the article are excellent and have a dedicated following. They're good quality considering they're produced by the effort of a few dedicated souls just for the hell of it, so it's worth giving each a try to see what appeals. :)

    Wikipedia also has a list of free FPS, which includes some other gems not mentioned in the article (like Warow, OpenArena and Cube):

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_first-person_shooters

    --
    biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
  2. Re:Urban Terror by aicrules · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You somewhat lose the urban assault strategy style game play when people can run at Mach 5, wall jump up a 3 story building, and then immediately slide crouched 40 yards executing a perfect headshot with a pistol.

    I love Urban Terror, but it is definitely not a strategy-heavy FPS.