Note (2/26/2013): In the wake of the dissolution of THQ, the multiplayer servers for the XBLA version of Nexuiz have been shut down. If the game sounds fun, there’s always still the PC version, which is still functional as of this update.
Nexuiz, the third title in Microsoft’s “House Party” 2012 promotion on Xbox Live Arcade, is an arena-based first-person shooter which initially began life over a decade ago as a freely available quake mod. This new commercially released iteration from Illfonic may be gussied up to match modern technical expectations, but the game’s lineage is immediately felt the moment you jump into a match.
Intense and fast-paced, Nexuiz’s design sensibilities are clearly rooted in a bygone era. One where there was no sprint button because your player character already moved quite swiftly in the first place and where the word “gib” was an everyday part of a gamer’s vernacular.
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Having never played the original 1993 real-time strategy incarnation of Syndicate, I didn’t quite understand what all the hubbub was about when Swedish developers Starbreeze announced that they would be rebooting the series in 2012 as a first-person shooter. The trailers that I saw for the new game showed a fast-paced, sci-fi themed, cover-based shooter in which an augmented agent infiltrates competing organizations in a battle for corporate supremacy. While I saw hints of Deus Ex: Human Revolution on display, Syndicate loyalists saw…not Syndicate.
