Multiplayer FPS

Cube 2: Sauerbraten

Sauerbraten is an old-school first person shooter (FPS) that's also really old. The previous major release was in 2013. Since then it has been languishing on SourceForge. The game itself offers the usual fare of reflex-fast baddy blasting through everything from dark Medieval corridors to tropical islands in the sky. There's also the usual array of weapons, from shotguns to sniper rifles and era-defining heavy metal music. You can play capture the flag and team tactics, among a huge variety of other modes, and you can spawn bots if you'd rather practice against your CPU than other people's brains. This is all what you'd expect from such a game. But there are some original elements too, such as being able to edit the map in-game, and the almost 200 new maps that come in this first major update for so many years.

These kinds of games are never judged on their originality. Instead, they're judged on their playability, and this is a difficult quality to define. It often takes hundreds of playing hours to decide whether an FPS has got it, and there are enough people still filling the online lobbies of Cube 2 to suggest it's a game that does. Certainly, the limited, twitchy fast movement, small area, and weapon accuracy make each map a seriously challenging environment that needs to be mastered. The good news is there's little modern complexity, such as roles and upgrade trees. Because the graphics are old, they're now lightening fast even on old hardware. This release ports the graphics to SDL2, so the game will continue to work for some time yet. But more importantly, there are still many people playing it, and it's a perfect way to spend 20 minutes after a day of video calls.

Project Website

http://sauerbraten.org/

Cube 2 offers some of the best classic FPS gameplay this side of the millennium.