First thanks must go to the Xbox live Community Network for giving us the opportunity to review Nexuiz on Xbox Live Arcade.
Nexuiz is an FPS (First Person Shooter) which is part of the House Party Pack available on Xbox Live for all Gold members. And yes, yours truly had the opportunity to play the game and provide you with a hands on review.
Lets start of with abit of the basics and expectations.
When you hear of a game that’s a first person shooter, what comes to mind? Games like Call of Duty and for those of you who are PC gamers, Counter Strike amongst others as well. Now, me being me, when I got the opportunity, I looked it up and saw that it was a different kind of FPS. One that I haven’t seen on the Xbox or PS3 at least (in my last 6 years of gaming). An arena based FPS. OK, so some of you are asking, what’s this? Have you seen or played Quake? Or Unreal Tournament? Those are Arena based FPS’s. So that’s what made me take up the opportunity to play this game. As on the PC I absolutely loved Quake and Unreal Tournament!
So far on the Xbox ive always and only played the Call of Duty games on and off and as most of you know, im absolutely terrible at them. However, was still optimistic about this one though.
Right, so down to the game, gameplay, menus and everything else you’d probably expect from a game review. Knowing that the game uses a modified version of the Quake engine so graphics wise I was expecting the same if not better.
The game starts off with a brief story of how you end up as one of the players / fighters in the game. You can ofcourse skip this if youre want to get down to the shooting and killing ofcourse.The menu gives you the chance to view settings, join a game / create a game on Xbox live, go through training and credits. So I decided to face the bots in a capture the flag style event and chose a totally random map.
Its always going to be Red vs Blue in the fights. The game does take a few moments to load but for what was about to come, I think it was worth the wait. There are plenty of weapons which can be accessed with the press of a button and during the loading screen, you are given a few tips as to what each of the power up icons mean and what they do.
It started off with a line up of who the bots were and how many. 4 aside, which looked simple enough. I know being an amateur FPS, I ensured that the bots were easy. So I know what to do, I have to Kill as many as I can in Blue and try to capture the opponents flag and take it back to base. And at the same time protect my colleagues when they are carrying the flag. You start of with a plain shotgun and collect weapons along the way as well as shields, power ups and body armour.
I must admit that the general first impressions of the game are not good at all. You feel as though you don’t know what you are doing, running around like a headless chicken and there is this heavy lazy voice that’s telling you that the enemy has captured your flag and dropped the flag. However, it sounds alien when you actually think about it and plays the part perfectly! Bad yet good! I must admit at this point after the first round, I switched the game off to play something else. But then when I went back to it, I realised that the more I played, the more I got a hang of the fast pace, moving around, floating, jumping and ground boosts. At one point, one of the bots activated a low gravity power up. As a result of that I kept on falling off the cliff and plunging to my death which was actually quite funny.
Controls are pretty much standard and easy to learn and you will pick up on which weapon does what in the arena the more you play against the bots in training. This might I add is a great addition to the game. Training mode. The aim may be to fulfil all the goals and you get achievements for certain goals completed as well, but if you want to know and learn rather than pick up at random, shoot find out its not effective and get killed as a result, its better to go through the training mode first. Might I add that I finished the training mode with 22 kills and 3 deaths with 8 flags captured! And most of you will agree, that was only because I was playing easy and not against anyone on XBL. Well guess what fellas, it doesn’t matter to me. I found it an achievement. Probably one I wont replicate on COD MW3, but it makes me feel great!
Overall, the game is decent and as mentioned the more you play it, the more you will enjoy it.
Yes, there is no “campaign” as such nor a story line. The graphics are nothing when compared against games like Call of Duty or similar FPS’s on the Xbox, however the overall feel of the game is great and its pure fun once you get a feel of the game and kill bots left right and centre with a blast of a charged electric ray or a rocket launcher.
It is also true that the target market may be limited due to the way the game handles (fast paced and the low gravity makes it abit unrealistic) and the fact that it’s an arena based shooter that’s usually on a PC where you have a keyboard and mouse, but this is on the console and you use a controller, but that’s the whole aim of it.
In my opinion, the game will be around for a short while, and can be enjoyed. But the FPS addict will probably always revert to the likes of COD for the more hard core battles and gore as well as challenges.
However, for a mere 800 MS points, and part of the House Party Pack, it’s a decent game which will pass the time well.
Well, hope you enjoyed this little review. Keep your eyes peeled for more and enjoy as we bring you reviews and more gaming events for you to be a part of.
Developed by Illfonic
Published by THQ.
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