Are You Troubled by a Slow Computer?
Alien Arena 2008 7.1
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| Editor's rating | Not rated | License | Free | |
| Average user rating |
(199 votes)
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Limitations | No limitations | |
| Downloads | 637,997  |
Requirements | Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista | |
| Publisher | COR Entertainment | File size | 181.03MB | |
| Date added | June 5, 2008 | Alternate download links... | ||
You Know What They Say...
22-Mar-2008 08:48:51 AM
Reviewer: SceptreX
Pros: ...if you got the money, play the UT series. If you don't got the money, play the Nexuiz. If you don't got the computer for Nexuiz, play the Alien Arena.
Alien Arena is a fun game that runs on nearly any machine to some extent (though eventually you'll be playing Quake II wuth alien skins). The game looks nice for how well it runs, and the community is alright (though they will give PCLinuxOS fanboys a run for their money in terms of sheer fandom).
The weapons are balanced and fun. The game looks and sounds nice. It's on Linux and Windows (weeee Ubuntu!). It's fun for a few minutes here and there. So why the three stars?
Cons: The maps suck.
Looking at maps from Nexuiz or Unreal, we see complex designs and details that bring out the best in every asset of the game. In Alien Arena, we see boring hallways. And more hallways. Most of the time the celing is very large. Sometimes there are hallways off the hallways, leading into more hallways. But in the end, AA's maps all deviate from very simple corridors that go into more, leaving very little to the imagination, and making skill a very moot point online.
This would be fine if it didn't make the game so boring. There are some great fan-made maps on some of the third-party sites, but of course no one plays these maps because a good fraction of the fan base isn't technologically saavy enough to put a map file into their directory. This doesn't apply to them all, but goodness me, it would be nice to play a new map now and then...one that doesn't want to be like an office complex.
Some other things that drag it down: the so called "brilliant UI enhancements" that were bragged about in 6.10 were really no more than a main menu ripped right from UT 2004 (the rest of the UI looks exactly like ugly old Quake II). The bots are also pretty stupid compared to other bots from freeware games; you can't even play with them on CTF, they just run back and forth between the bases and shoot at whoever appears.
Regardless, I would say that for those it concerns, Alien Arena 2008 is a fun game that is worth a download. It's free, right? What could possibly go wrong?
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Replies from CNET users
23-Mar-2008 01:27:36 PM
Reviewer: AlienSexFiend
Dm-aquous, Dm-leviathan, Dm-bloodfactory, dm-chasmatic, dm-zorn, dm-command, dm-crucible, dm-vesuvius, ctf-icarus, aoa-morpheus, dm-violator, dm-babel, dm-turbo, ctf-icarus...
Those are examples of standard maps in Alien Arena that are absolutely NOT corridor based. I just thought I'd point that out, because your review is quite erroneous in regards to your assertion that Alien Arena maps are mostly corridor base. More than half of the 46 included maps are decidedely not. I don't mind constructive criticism, as long as it's accurately done.
20-Jul-2008 03:44:00 PM
Reviewer:
...But they are not much worse than Unreal and Quake 2 and 3 maps. I imagine that people will be making cool maps as his game gets popular.
The best maps were in Serious Sam, 1 and 2, but that game required some serious hardwarepower just to get it to start UP.
20-Jul-2008 03:54:06 PM
Reviewer:
About the corridor thing. I think maybe SceptreX (Is that cos yer using a Scepter WS Gaming Monitor?) never beat the bots on the single player maps and never got to those? Whatever... I just got done playing a few games with what humans I could find, and there were a few. One of the CTF maps did have a lot of corridor, but that was the only one. Most of the maps I saw had fantastic open spaces and interesting graphic things going on. Ragarding putting maps into a directory and into the CONFIG files of the game? I'm sure it can't be any harder than Quake 2 Lithium Mod, which had quite a LOT of user made maps and many many servers. And in NO place the UI looks like Unreal Tournament... Which is the worst part of Unreal Tournament, actually.
I disagree that the UI looks anything CLOSE to UT and Q2- No, Nope.
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Out of 199 votes
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