Warsow
Warsow is a free 3D multiplayer FPS developed with eSports competition in mind. Based on Qfusion, a modification of the Quake II GPL engine, the game has a cel-shaded look mixing flashy cartoon colours with dark, medieval textures.
The gameplay is focused on stylish movement based on tricks, combined with balanced weapons. Aside from classical moves from the Quake scene, such as bunny hopping, circle strafe, double jump and circle jump, Warsow adds more variety with wall jumps, dash, dodge (similar to Unreal Tournament) and ramp slides (similar to Quake 4) controlled by a special key.
The levels for the different game types contain respawning health items, armour shards, full armours, weapons, ammo and special items. There are 7 weapons to choose from, including a rocket and grenade launcher, an electrobolt, a riotgun and a plasmagun, combined with a power-up system with a weak and strong mode for each weapon.
Comments
Warsow is easily understood as Quake with walljumps and dashes. Quake and clones such as Warsow own a smoothness other shooters don't have, deliberately avoiding current conventions such as headshots and achieving unrestricted speed in the process through movement mechanics used to build momentum, usually jumping and in this case dashing too. The only obstacles to such unrestricted movement are speed caps and other means to deal high unavoidable damage, such as hitscan railguns and sniper rifles, meaning players take less risky jumps while navigating maps and are less aggressive than what they could be. Yet besides all of this players are never stuck in one place to hug the ground like in the vast majority of shooters. The fact we are not dealing with headshot conditions also means perfect aiming isn't that important at low levels of gameplay. Military games are twitchy in that players must always aim at each others' heads, dying should they shoot a millisecond later than their enemy, and while quake avatars die fast they are more forgiving to players' skills than that. At high levels of gameplay perfect aiming turns into another tool besides your guns, while gameplay objectives shift to map control of the most powerful health and armor pick ups rather than just sticking to the moment to moment combat. This lack of headshots also makes for more readable enemy health, armor and generally gives a good idea of the damage players inflict, making for better info to help the most skilled players emerge along with their best plans. Warsow is free, easy to set up compared to quake games and many many lesser shooters. Otherwise it plays as straightforward as any arena, players running for the strongest health and armor pickups, thinking in terms of situations and all that, simple is best.