![]() It’s not a huge draw that is going to keep players coming back if the gameplay hook isn’t enough, but I appreciate that it doesn’t noticeably change player power levels while offering a way to customize your experience to your personal tastes. As you play, you earn points that can be assigned to weight the die roll toward particular mutators that you prefer. Nexuiz makes a minor concession to the notion of persistent progression, which smartly ties into the dynamic mutator system. These add a nice dimension of randomness, and offer opportunities for teams to execute interesting strategies from time to time. You may get a personal boost to your shotgun firing rate, give your whole team double-height jumps, or replace all sound effects in the game with fart sounds for everybody. Once a mutator is available, you’re prompted to choose one of three effects with a press of the d-pad. These can be found as pickups on a level or awarded for kill streaks, and temporarily change the rules in powerful (or sometimes just goofy) ways. ![]() The best part of Nexuiz, and its sole noteworthy innovation, is the dynamic mutators. The maps themselves are decent enough examples of the kind of symmetrical, fixed weapon spawn design that was popular a decade ago, but they’re nothing special compared to the better class of Quake/UT/Counter-Strike levels. Since you can only play six-player games until the planned 1.1 patch drops, this is a problem. ![]() ![]() Each of the nine maps is keyed to one of the two game types, and they only work well with a full complement of eight players. So long as your preference of mode is for team deathmatch or capture-the-flag, it has you covered. Nexuiz is a throwback to a beloved era of gaming, but the genre has moved on in so many ways that this lackluster attempt isn’t terribly necessary. Then again, I wasn’t playing them with gamepad controls or waiting 15 minutes for matchmaking. I loved the glory days of fast-paced shooters like Unreal Tournament and Quake. ![]()
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