Tremulous Review

The Human Reactor powers all the human structures, except for the Telnode spawn points.

The Alien Overmind does for alien structures what the Reactor does for human structures. It distributes sentience between structures, only the egg spawn points do not require it. It is also needed for aliens to evolve.

Battle suits send blasts of charged energy from the Lucifer Cannon.

Tremulous. The addictive, fun, free FPS. Recently it went to stand alone, instead of being a quake mod, and is even better. Here is a quick review.

What is Tremulous? Tremulous is a free, opensource First Person Shooter Real Time Strategy Game. How is this achieved? The game has most of the guts of a FPS, but you need to have "structures" to get anywhere. These structures include a Reactor, machine gun turrets, an armory, Tesla coils, and a med station for the humans, and an overmind, a hive, a acid tube, and a trapper for the aliens.

Gameplay The game has a gameplay of Aliens vs Humans. Users can choose to be either class. Both have their Pros and Cons. There is no central plot, as this game is online only (no dial-up). The game usually keeps you addicted, and even if you loose, you will have fun. When a base is attacked, players stream towards it like ants, to defend, and die, and respawn. Humans The humans are masters of technology. Humans start out stronger, but deal less damage with the default weapon. The human bases can feature fearsome arsenals of turrets, that will send the strongest alien running instantly. Humans are rewarded "credits" for each bit of damage to an alien they do. Kills give large numbers of credits. Credits are also awarded for staying alive after a certain amount of time. These credits are used at the armory to buy and sell armor, weapons, tools, etc. The main human weapon is the powerful rifle, similar to the assault rifle in halo. This gun does moderate damage, and can rack up credits quickly. There are many other choices of weapons, including chainguns, flamethrowers, and the renowned Lucifer Cannon. This gun fires blasts of energy that explode in a cloud of radiation. The tools humans can use are a Jet pack, helmet with radar, armor, battery (for energy based weapons), and the maximum upgrade, the battle suit, similar again to the Mojiner armor in Halo. The structures humans need are an armory, a reactor, a medstation, and turrets. All these can be built in the beginning, with the "basic construction kit". When the humans advance to level 2, the first "Advanced Construction Kit" is available. This allows a defense computer to be built, which makes the turrets smarter, and an extender device, that puts reactor power anywhere on the map, and can be used as 90 second grenades, seeing as if they do not power any device in 90 seconds, they explode. Upon level 3, the battle suit an Lucifer cannon are unlocked, and with a defense computer in place, Tesla coils are released. Tesla coils zap any alien in a radius of the device, regardless of obstacles. Aliens The aliens are bugs. They have a variety of structures, including the necessary Overmind, the egg pods, and the acid tubes. The aliens start out with low health, but do lots of damage. Aliens are rewarded frags for kills, and they use these to evolve into stronger classes, including the deadly tyrant. Like humans, aliens need an overmind, eggpods, and acid tubes on the map to evolve to the next level. Most of the alien features are similar to the human ones, so i will not go into to much depth.

Graphics and Engine Tremulous is based on the Quake 3 engine. It started out as a mod for Quake 3, and has since evolved into its own game. The graphics are nice, with stunning particle effects, and good textures, but are not the best in the world. The engine is ready to accept new mods and maps, and these are easy to create, using Quake 3 tools.

Overall Tremulous is an addictive game that will have you hooked after one session. While still under development, it feels well fleshed out, and has great potential.

• Price: Free
• Company: Darklegion Development
• Operating Systems: Most Linux distributions and Windows
• Rating:3/5
• Download: http://tremulous.sourceforge.net/index.php?section=files
• Homepage: http://www.tremulous.net

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