OpenArena 0.8.1

OpenArena Editor's Review

OpenArena is a first person shooter licensed under GPL.

OpenArena is a content package of Quake III. When I think of popular first person shooters, Quake immediately pops to my mind. Quake III was specially designed to be a multiplayer game. There is also a single player mode to practice. The more you practice, the more you'll unlock maps and learn the game-play. In single player mode you compete with artificial intelligence bots. On low levels they aren’t a real threat to you. If you chose a higher level of intelligence they will shoot if they have the chance. A particularity of the single player mode is the personality of the bots. Depending of the model character they can have special abilities as ducking or jumping. They may also chat with you or between them during a deathmatch.

OpenArena, as Quake did, focuses on multiplayer LAN and Internet deathmatches. The real action starts on Internet servers. You can pick up weapons from the ground, power-ups, armor and even special abilities like invisibility. OpenArena is a fast playing game, so the user doesn't always have time for switching to the last, more powerful, gun picked up on the way. By default, the game will automatically select it for you. In my test, I joined an Internet server for a few moments. Hours passed until I quit. The game-play is quite addictive. Internet games are fast even if you have a slow connection. I wasn't able to create a local area network game to play with other Mac users, but we managed to find an empty on-line server and took the fight over there.

Design and graphics are good, but not realistic. The whole game is fantasy like. The arenas where the action really happens aren't big, which means that if more than 10 players sign in you get a slaughter. Special gun effects are quite impressive for an open source game. In-game menus are Quake III style. You also get a voice that tells you things during a game the deathmatch status.

Pluses: free, good graphics and special effects, exciting multiplayer deathmatches.

Drawbacks / flaws: if you die, re-spawn is quite random, so you might end up between other players' fire.

In conclusion: If you like Quake, fast first person shooters, or just looking for a great free game to play with your friends then OpenArena is suitable for the job. You can also try other free first person shooter like Nexuiz or Sauerbraten.

version reviewed: 0.7