EnemyLines7

EnemyLines7 is essentially the same as EnemyLines3 only a bit more difficult, and missing some convenience-features that make it less fun over all.

The only difference between this one and EnemyLines3 is that the things you're shooting at stay in the sky, and fly in formation, instead of randomly dropping from the sky. 'Story'-wise (big double-quotes with fingers around the word story, here), you're in a battle-mech this time, your opponents are bombers (not robots), and you don't have a jetpack, you have 'jumpjets'. It's all cosmetic, mostly.

Your health is actually the city's health, which makes you a giant target. Combine that with the fact that there isn't really anywhere you can go that gives you a great vantage point to defend against the waves of bomber-planes, and you can see how the game is more difficult than its precursor.

The limited amount of booster fuel is as annoying as it was in EnemyLines3 but it probably matters less - if there were enough of it that you could spend a lot of time in the sky, then it would totally change the way the game was played; as it is, you just don't use it very much.

EnemyLines7 feels like an attempt to retool EnemyLines3 that the author got really bored with and never finished. Something about the way the jetpack (oops, jumpjets) moves means it's really hard to tell exactly where you're putting your feet down, which wasn't a problem in 3, and there's only one level that just goes on n' on in this one. It also forces you to quit the game whenever you get a game over, and then re-start the game from your taskbar/command-line for another go, which is just annoying.

Basically, don't bother with this. There are 8 EnemyLines games by this guy, and a lot of them are very different; I'm not sure why the Ubuntu people decide to only offer packages of 3, and its decidedly inferior demi-clone 7, but I'm sure that there's no reason at all to play 7. 3 is better, and 7 adds nothing. Unless you have a bomber-fetish; then 7 is all that will satisfy, I suppose.

EnemyLines 3

EnemyLines3 is a first-person shooter that scratches the same itch Solitaire does. It's a quick, simple to understand, infinitely replayable, and essentially mindless game. It's awesome!

There are four game types, and all of them feature the same simple mechanics: stay alive, while shooting these weird-looking little robot dudes who fall from the sky and eat buildings. There's a timed-game, where you beat the level by staying alive for a certain length of time, a kill-based level where you win by killing a certain number of the little guys, a find-the-keys level where you have to find all the keys to win (that seemed redundant, didn't it?), and a base-defense level where the goal is to keep the bad-guys from eating a specific square of building.

The graphics are old-school 3D as all-get-out, but somehow appealing anyway. My favorite is in the timed levels, because after you've gotten about halfway through the requisite time, there's a lot of building-less space, and you just see legions of the bad guys coming at you, moving in unison like faceless undead zombie hordes... of cuteness. Anything that combines undead zombie (robot) hordes and cuteness is okay in my book.

The sound's as simple as the graphics, but not really as charming. A 'zap' for your laser gun going off, a white-noise like sound for your jetpack (did I mention that you have a jetpack?), and an explosion when ever you kill a critter.

It really feels like 2D side-scrolling shooter gameplay more than anything else. It's fast-paced and fun, with minimal emphasis on tactics or strategy compared to the average FPS. Your health, ammo, and jet-pack fuel are all indicated by bars in the top-left corner of the screen, and can be replenished by waiting, or by picking up color-coded extras.

For a quick FPS-fix, this is great. The game actually connects to the developer's website after each time you die, to update the high-score list - someone had an awful lot of free time on their hands at some point, so I got nowhere near getting on the actual list, but if you're driven to compete, there ya go. For a small and very limited game experience, EnemyLines3 is just what the doctor ordered. If you demand a campaign or plot with your FPS (or multiplayer) then you're going to want to look elsewhere.

bzflag

bzflag is multi-player only, and I don't review those. This is a placeholder, in case I get an itch to play a multi-player game. If that happens, and I play this one, I'll go ahead and review it.

I've done like five or six entries today, and only one or two actual reviews. This has been a disappointing streak. Hopefully the next game will end it.

BattleBall

BattleBall puts me in the unique situation of wanting to praise a game I don't really enjoy at all. It's not really pretty, it's missing a bunch of features that it should have, and it's not even fun. But the idea behind it is amusing, and there's the solid core for a really fun game here.

Basically, it's soccer played with combat vehicles. The players are all tanks, divided into teams, and each team has a headquarters. Points are scored by running into or shooting the ball, so as to move it down the field to your opponent's headquarters. Your gun doesn't destroy anything, but if it hits another tank, it causes that tank to spin around out of control for a second, and if it hits the ball, the ball bounces off of the projectile.

And you can turn into a helicopter.

How could it go wrong? The sad and simple truth is that the game is just annoying to control, to someone whose been using mouse+keyboard or dual-analog controls for way too long to go back to the keyboard. If I could mouse-aim, or alternately have one analog-stick for movement and one for aiming, the rest of the faults of this game would be forgiveable. I'm sure when it was new, it was awesome. I remember thinking my friends were crazy for trying to play some old FPS with the mouse (I think it was the first Quake, but it could have been something else; long, long ago, y'know?).

The other problems are legion, but excusable, because they don't affect the fun of the game, just the friendliness. The biggest one is that all aspects of game-configuration are via command-line. Which is normal for Linux software, but not normal for modern-day gaming. Some sort of front-end for the game would mitigate that completely, without even changing the code. I have no idea how the multiplayer would work - apparently that's all handled via Linux command-line programs somehow.

I thought the game had no options at all, but then a quick look at the man file (another way in which this game shows itself to be part of the Linux, rather than gaming, community; most of these Linux games have no man file at all, or useless man files with no real info) showed that it's configurable as all-get-out. Up to six teams, with the number of players limited only by the processor of the machine it's being played on (apparently, rather than a bunch of clients connecting, it generates the graphics for everyone playing, and does all the software-running, on one machine; everyone else plays on connected terminals).

But you set up all of that via the command line. It doesn't appear to even have a configuration file of some sort that you can set it up in; you have to type out a half-dozen flags, the names of the team-members, and all the options every time you begin the game, from the command line. Unless you want to play it one on one, one human player against the AI, so that was how I played it.

BattleBall has no sound, and very primitive 3D graphics that are actually quite charming. It shows its age (at least, I hope it's old; I can't find a website for it anywhere, and there's a new game from a commercial developer with the same title, which made the search confusing) but it's easy to interpret and looks fine.

With a configuration utility or internal game setup, and the ability to use a modern control system, this would actually be a great game. It's bizarre, and intriguing, and would promise a lot of multi-player fun. As it is, it's a distraction for ten minutes while you take in the premise, and then it's not really worth touching ever again.

Alien Arena

Alien Arena could proudly do battle with retail software on an even footing. It's really pretty, and it also feels really polished. This totally blew me away - I was expecting something vaguely like Unreal Tournament only crappier. Let's face it, nine times out of ten, the free open source option is usually substandard as far as graphics go, and often as far as features go, in comparison to its retail equivalent.

Not so, this time around. Alien Arena is fast-paced and frantic, with four-star look and feel (alliteration!). It's great. Primarily for multi-player, it features a number of varied game-types with the option to have AI bots playing in the multi-player maps. I didn't actually play with anyone else(*), but I played against bots on a server-game I hosted, and it worked fine. The basics like Deathmatch and Capture the Flag are all available, and it also had a couple of game-types that sounded bizarre (but may be mainstays in the genre; I played UT and UT2004 a handful of times, years ago, so I'm not an expert).

From looking at the website, there seems to be an active community. There are rankings, clans, tournaments, and all the meta-type stuff that makes for a more immersive multi-player experience. For an entry price-point of zero dollars, this is an awful lot of bang for your buck.

The single-player experience is not as fully fleshed-out, but it almost seems unfair to dock it points (imaginary points, since I'm not actually scoring anything) for that. My biggest complaint is that there doesn't seem to be any way to save your progress, so you always start at the same level, and have to work your way through the maps from the beginning each time. Outside of that, the biggest thing it was missing was versatility as far as game type goes. As far as I could tell, the only thing available to single-player was Deathmatch.

Graphically, it's very nice-looking, although a bit stereotypical as far as dark steel corridors n' neon lights go. The website likes to talk about its retro sci-fi art-direction, but honestly, the only thing that's retro sci-fi about it are the character models. There are vehicles, though I didn't mess around with that much.

The weapon models are all quite nice, and the weapons themselves are unique, with visually impressive attacks. I found most of them to be a bit annoying, as most of them have long delays for powering up before discharging their ammo (exceptions being the chaingun, and a few of the beam weapons), but they were quite powerful to make up for that, and also just a lot of fun to look at. Every weapon has an alt-fire, which is always nice.

I think the designers struck a good balance between power and speed that allows for a lot of variability in the play experience and allows players to have favorites. The choice of weapon really matters a lot; in days of yore when I was playing FPS games multi-player at LAN parties, too often it seemed like there was the rocket launcher, and then there was everything else. Weapon-balance has come a long way since then, and it shows in this game.

The level-design didn't strike me as particularly creative, but it was also never particularly lackluster. The levels are varied, though they tend to feel like retreads of levels I've played before in other games, visually. They're certainly good enough to impress me with the game overall, graphically and fun-wise.

The soundtrack is nice, and the sound-effects are good as well. It's typical battle-techno type stuff, but it's well done, and sets the mood quite nicely. (If you do a manual install, run the file 'crx.sdl', and not 'crx', to start the game; 'crx' messes the sound all up, or at least it did on my system)

One minor note: the version that Ubuntu installs is 6.05 - the most recent version is 6.10, which came out in October of last year. Presumably Ubuntu's packages will catch up with the next major release? I'm not sure how that works. I tried both (You have to manually download 6.10 from the website) and the only thing I noticed that was really different, outside of an additional weapon, was that I didn't like the font the pop-up messages use in 6.10. They were larger and easier to read, so it's probably just a question of form vs. function. There are some minor changes to the rules (items spawn quicker, etc.) in an attempt to alter the flow of the game, and apparently a great improvement as far as the network code goes, making lag less problematic.

If you're looking for a UT-style multiplayer FPS, you really ought to give this one a look-see. It costs you nothing, it runs flawlessly on my slightly outdated Athlon XP system, and it's damn good. It's probably not as pretty as the latest iterations in the QW or UT franchises, but you wouldn't kick her out of bed. Trust me.

*See the inaugural post on this blog. I'm not interested in playing multiplayer games.