Nexuiz

Nexuiz is the perfect fusion between speed and accessibility. A minimal amount of choice in game modes ruins longevity and some online problems can sometimes be frustrating.

Nexuiz offers an old-school gameplay, but finds its own identity by adding some interesting features. If you're a fan of the genre you can't miss it.

At a cheap 800 Microsoft points, the game certainly merits trying. It goes without saying that as more people purchase it, the game's experience will only become better. Until then, long load times and a tough reward system ensure that it certainly caters to the niche of insanely fast-shooters, but might be unforgiving and underwhelming to other types of gamers.

Sure, Nexuiz is a fun shooter, but only under the right conditions. Unfortunately those right conditions are pretty rare, leaving you with unbalanced teams and terrible music.

Nexuiz meets the bar of quality you'd expect from a console arena shooter, and does very little to rise above it. If that's enough for you, Nexuiz will not disappoint.

The overall impression is of a thoroughly mediocre arena-shooter that never quite manages to deliver. On a crowded online market Nexuiz is reduced to a short term affair without much longevity. As this is a game that relies solely on an active multiplayer community, it's hard to tell how long Illfonic can manage to keep this going. Unfortunately, Nexuiz is not the game to revive the arena-shooter.

As beloved as the subgenre and the original Nexuiz mod are among a certain crowd, this Xbox Live Arcade remake is nothing more than a haphazard port of a 2005 mod for a game that came out 10 years ago – except you have to pay money for it. Those of us older folks who are nostalgic for the gameplay Nexuiz emulates likely have a PC that runs any of the dozens of excellent alternatives, and the younger console crowd has plenty of more modern shooters to choose from.

It's hard to forget that even after the numerous PC updates, you're playing a nearly seven year-old game, and after a few hours, it feels that way. If you are looking to take a trip back to the glory days of Quake mods, Nexuiz is what you are looking for. Just don't expect to stay for long.

It's a solid little shooter, but there are so many different ways to shoot people online now that it's hard to get excited at a game like this one. [May 2012, p.60]

Nexuiz fails to transform or improve previous experiences of a genre that has great references.

With a better matchmaking system and more multiplayer options, it would be easier to recommend. As it stands, with so many quality shooters in the budget download market (or even the free-to-play market, for that matte), the few intriguing pieces of Nexuiz aren't enough to lift it above the crowd.