Featured Game: Nexuiz

This game rocks. 'Nuf said.

Year: 2005

Genre: First-person Shooter

Recommend: YES

If there is any doubt in your mind that open source games are fun, get rid of it. Nexuiz is an absolutely fantastic shooter with spectacular graphics, fast-paced gameplay, and low system requirements (by today's standard's, anyway). Don't get me wrong, though; Nexuiz can really stress even the mighty Radeon HD 7340 in top-of-the-line Brazos 2.0 netbooks. No matter what kind of netbook you have, Nexuiz is definitely worth your time.

What you'll need

Any netbook with 1 GB of RAM (512 MB for ION 2) can run Nexuiz. Make sure to balance the settings to match your graphics card's strengths and weaknesses. For example, the GMA 950 and 3150 don't have hardware transformation and lighting, so it would be smart to drop lighting and geometry to their minimums. Nexuiz really brings out the benefits of the Cedar Trail platform; I get playable framerates with geometry and texture detail maxed out at native resolution, despite Intel's horrid drivers.

Reviews and Awards

Nexuiz has been featured in numerous major tech magazines. In September 2006, PC Gamer included it in an article about the impact of free games. PC User put the game on its May 2008 and August 2009 cover disks. Maximum PC included the game in its March 2007 issue. Phoronix deemed the game "the best open source FPS we have played, with refined gameplay and graphics that take advantage of modern hardware." GameStop once held a PC gaming competition using Nexuiz.

Tips

IllFonic developed a game, also named Nexuiz,  released this year based on the original. Because the name is now licensed to IllFonic, the original Nexuiz developers created a fork named Xonotic. The game I'm featuring is referred to as Nexuiz Classic by IllFonic. Remember that now!

Sure, the graphics probably won't look like this on a netbook, but they're still gorgeous.