Sauerbraten is a free open source first person shooter.  I tried this game because of a desire to know the quality of open source games in comparison with games that cost money.  I thought it held up really well, but it was not as polished as games coming out of big development houses.

Install

The installation for this game was very simple, but took a long time. The installer was 256mb which is small for a video game.  I noticed a high level of professionalism even from within the installer. Once the game launched it was at a reasonable resolution and had settings that I liked. It immediately launched with a familiar interface which I really enjoyed.

Game Play

Sauerbraten is a quake or unreal tournament rip off, but it adds a few twists that work out well. The games I played had a red team and a blue team. Each team has all the same abilities and weapons. You start with a pistol and some sort of melee weapon that I cannot describe. You then need to capture as many checkpoints as possible; a check point is basically a lamp post with a glowing orb. When you get close to the checkpoint a glowing orb reaches out a lightning like tendril and you see that your team is starting to occupy that checkpoint. When your team has total control of a checkpoint you can receive weapons, ammo, health, and armor from the checkpoints. Different checkpoints give out different goods. This game play mechanic is simple, but creates some fantastic battles. Sauerbraten is very addictive; you battle for every checkpoint like it’s your last. This game has a fast and frenetic pace. The weapon selection is nothing new, but really feels well balanced. While an individual with a rocket launcher can give you a bad time. They are not invincible.

The game does have a couple of oddities, like the zoom button is nearly impossible to figure out. I got killed about six times while I was figuring out the right key. In the end I had to re-map the zoom to be the third mouse button, which is the normal location for zoom. I am sure I would have found more idiosyncrasies if I would have played longer.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics were superb and modern it wasn’t like playing Crysis , but I was very surprised at how good they were. The landscape views, particularly the starting view of a castle on one level was spectacular. The player models were some kind of orc looking thing and every player had the same model (Editor Note: There are other models this was apparently map specific). This turned out to be pretty annoying, but I can live with it. The gun models were very well done and believable. The in game music was amazing, if you like hard rock and heavy metal, I do! It was like listening to older Metallica riffs, but fit the game really well. It also didn’t just sound like a soundtrack rolling off in the background, it actually sounded like a video game score. The sound effects were badly overused. I started to get tired of the dying noises quickly, the gun noises were good, and the announcer voice was too low and kind of awkward.

Overall

Barring the worst name ever, Sauerbraten is a really great game open source or not. I am going to be putting this game into my regular line up and playing it often. I really enjoyed it and it will only get better with a bigger a community. Come play!

Download Sauerbraten Here http://sauerbraten.org/