Alien Arena: A Nod to Quake and Unreal Tournament Deathmatches
If you love Quake (I do!), and Unreal Tournament, then you have to check out Alien Arena. I was perusing this month’s issue of Linux Format and I came across their mention of it in their HOTPICKS. At first, I thought this was a new release. But it turned out that this game was originally released in 2004 as CodeRED: Alien Arena!
History
Digging a little deeper (into the game’s wiki entry), the game makes use of a modified version of Quake 2‘s physics, with additional dodging functionality added to the gameplay. It even makes use of the id Tech 2 -based CRX game engine with ODE. This was the Quake 2 engine used for Quake’s 1997 release, with ODE added – how cool is that?!
On the topic of this game being a product of the 90s, the aliens look very much like a darker, cyborg version of those in Mars Attacks! (1996):
Whilst Mars Attacks! was itself based on sci-fi flicks from the 50s and 60s. Mars may have contributed to the influence of the character design – perhaps in tandem with the 50s and 60s sci-fi scene at large. Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) and This Island Earth (1955) are the most notable examples of films that portray the martian as some big-headed fiend, with the latter showing the wrinkles of the brain like that seen in Mars Attacks! and Alien Arena. Whatever the case, this gets a big thumbs up from me.
Graphics
The graphics are not comparable to the top-performing consoles of today. However, they remind me more of the graphics capabilities of the Xbox 360 and PS3/4. They are still a far cry from the graphics of when the game was prefixed by CodeRED (2004), which was very much what was possible with the N64.
This is not to say that the graphics of the most recent version of Alien Arena are bad. They’re are not. They are just not hyper-realistic, not yet anyway, and that is okay.
Gameplay and experience
The game has many modes of gameplay, including deathmatches and capture the flag. Whilst there is no single-player story mode, you can practice against bots with different levels of difficulty. This is useful for honing your skills before in-between matches on servers with other players online.
I found the gaming experience to be really enjoyable. There was no lagging, no pointless cinematics, just jump-in-and-shoot-fun! I really like the original concept of using retro-style sci-fi motifs and graphics, combined with a Quake shoot-em-up experience. This game is always evolving and completely open-source, so if you have no money to spend but want to kill some time, maybe even throw a LAN party – for the love of humanity, just download it!
