Tremulous Review
By William Bokunic. Tuesday, 11. September 2007, 04:09:06
Review of the first person shooter, Tremulous.
Game Name: Tremulous
Game Type: First Person Shooter
Geared Towards: Hardcore Gamers
Price: $0.00
When I first heard about Tremulous, about two months ago, I loved the concept. Aliens vs. Humans? I'm all in. The modern FPS is usually some type of soldier vs. soldier game, which can get boring, so I wanted to see what kind of game play you got from a game where you can play as aliens. And what you get is an amazing game.
This isn't like normal FPS games though, it's got various forms of RTS built right into the core. You build onto your base to protect it and supply your race's soldiers with artillery and health.
Set in futuristic times (for obvious reasons) you either choose to be a human or an alien, and each with their own little abilities.
Humans
Ah yes, us. The human race. What kind of cool things do we get? Well, let me tell you. You select to be either a rifle user or a machine guy. This is just to help you get started though, in both choices are, in the end, the same. You can buy the same weapons, armor and other accessories as one another, and even switch jobs. Earlier today I was a rifles-man but I had to build some turrets, your main form of base defense, so I switched out my weapon for a machine tool.
You also get quite a selection of weapons to buy [note – your currency is generated for each kill you make] that cannot help but remind me of Doom. You can start out with a rifle, but also get various other machine guns such as the classic chaingun. But you can also buy a flame thrower or a chainsaw-like weapon. All to combat your enemy, the aliens.
You are also provided with armor (both light armor and a full metal case), a helmet with built in radar (I actually give up the better armor so I can use the helmet as I find its radar function invaluable) and even a jetpack if you so choose to fly.
As a machine guy you can build a limited number of useful things. You're mainly going to be building turrets and maybe Tesla coils if the game advances that far. But you can build other things like spawn points (you tend to lose if you run out of these, as you cannot respawn) and medical stations (essential as it quickly heals any soldier that stands on it).
And now for the aliens.
Aliens
The aliens are slightly different from the humans. Indeed they do have a fighting and building starting job option, but they are not interchangeable. Once you pick one you stick with it until you die. Also. While the building class can fight, it sucks horribly at it.
The fighting class starts out as an extremely small, extremely fast creature. They're almost impossible to kill by the humans unless the humans have someone with a flamethrower. Normally these things are killed by turrets and later easily killed by Tesla coils. Now, while they suck early on, aliens learn to evolve after enough kills. They have many stages they can evolve to such as Basilisk (which doesn't resemble the mythological creature) and Dragoon. Once they evolve they slow down a bit but become far more deadly. In their near final stages, if three of them gang up on a base it could very easily be eliminated and the humans lose.
As for the building class, they also evolve, but these evolutions don't do as much. They have the ability to build organic barricades and acid traps to halt or kill the enemy. Typically these are more prominent very early on so as to build base defense, but then slowly dwindle down to maybe one or two later in the game. Once the fighting class evolve enough, base defense isn't as needed as they can constantly swarm the humans and force the humans to defend their base until it's adequately defended and they can counter-attack. The aliens more often than not win, but they suck early on so humans have a good chance early on.
As a last note, pressing “C” allows aliens to crawl onto walls and the like, so when fighting humans the alien can easily dodge attacks.
Bugs:
1) Problem: After playing the game, the minimizing button on every application will stop functioning or disappear altogether.
Solutions: Log out and back in.
2) Problem: Sometimes the maps won't load and you'll be kicked back to the menu, with no mouse.
Solution: Command+Option+Esc. The program will instantly close.
Analysis:
Graphics: 8/10
Since the game is free, you can't expect fantastic graphics, but not only that the game was designed on an older OpenGL engine. Still though, the graphics are pretty good and on par with some of the more modern DirectX 9 games.
Sound: 6/10
The sound effects are fantastic but the game seriously lacks in music. Sure, music does exist, but it's barely audible as well as being, primarily, audio loops.
Gameplay: 10/10
This game is fun. Not many FPSs will keep me coming back for more, but this one does. I seriously recommend this game if you want to have some fun.
Class Design: 9/10
The aliens are extremely unique. Even the visual perspective changes (such as lines becoming curves for example) as well as the expandability of both classes.
Total: 33/40 (82.5%)
Conclusion:
This game isn't perfect, but for a free game it's really good. I'd play this more than many commercial games that are similar.
WIDGETIZE