Xonotic 0.8

A new version of the everything and then some FPS Xonotic was recently released. It still remains my favorite free arena shooter, with this release adding more maps, a new weapon, nicer GUI as well as loads of other improvements, balancing, etc. Especially interesting is the new Invasion mode, in which players face off against monsters trying to stay alive. The sheer amount of content in this game is staggering, and just playing around with all game modes and maps, not to mention all GUI settings and graphical effects is enough to make one very impressed. There's still very few maps for my favorite game-modes, Assault and Onslaught, though. But I'm hoping this will be fixed for the next version, which already seems to be in heavy development.

Not sure what is happening here, but it's a cool screen showing off how good the game looks. :)

There is a bunch of populated servers, so the game has an active playerbase. Hopefully this will increase with time too, as the release is still relatively fresh. However, few servers play the "main game", so to speak. Most add a bunch of modifiers and new modes. While these are often nice too, I would like a few more servers just playing the content that comes with the game. Feels better like that for some reason. The list of single-player challenges is an alternative for those who want to try the various parts of the main game though, and is a nice alternative to playing online.

Complex and detailed levels with a quite uniform theme makes the game look polished.

Another awesome feature of Xonotic is it's stat page. You can go to stats.xonotic.org and look at your stats as well as other players stats. It's even possible to list certain servers, games, etc. Impressive stuff that makes playing online so much more fun, competitive and exciting. Since you make a record, it really feels like every match is important. The page has a really nice design too, that fit's the games theme.

Graphs and bars looking all futuristic and sciency. This could be YOUR stats.

Finally, I must mention that this game has vehicle support! Very few open FPS games have, and it opens up for some very interesting variations on gameplay. Vehicle CTF is a personal favorite, for example. I'm also hoping vehicles will make it into Onslaught and Assault modes in future releases. Then I can finally replace Unreal Tournament completely with this excellent open alternative.

This screen is a bit old, but it looks so cool I had to include it anyway. You can drive this thing. :D

Get it while it's hot, and read more about it on the newly re-designed xonotic.org!