Circuit Jerk

This is the third in a series of impressions of free full-product PC games.

There is a certain set of people who remember what it was like in the beginning. And the beginning wasn’t Doom, and it wasn’t Duke. The beginning was Quake, and without it, all of this petty, rotten online shooting bullshit wouldn’t be here. The beginning was Quake, and to forget that is to lose all sense of place. Enter Sauerbraten, an attempt to bring back the purity of the sport. You run, you jump (a lot) and you shoot them before they shoot you.

There are some simple graphical flourishses that can be ratcheted up or down if you feel so inclined, but you shouldn’t. The V-sync will lock even the oldest of rigs in at 60 FPS, a sweet spot that you might as well forget about in most shooters that shipped in the last 5 years. But, you can slide your way into a cool 120 FPS without too much effort or bucks. And that’s when the frame counting begins.

I got invited into a couple Vent servers after a few hours of play, and these guys know their shit. But I could tell that far before I heard their voices. The way they’re following you, with their eyes ticking away the frames between their hands, a rocket and your flesh… it’s… it’s a forgotten art. Now, sure, as they were quick to point out, Unreal Tournament 3 is a direct descendant of this zen state. But that game is probably has the most identity issues in the entire modern fleet of online shooting. While it’s clearly catering to the frame counters, to those who don’t wait to respawn, to those who know where the rockets are and don’t bother with much else, it’s also got a top-of-the-line engine to sell. To pile all of that gloss and glitz on top is a waste to those whose first act inside of a new game is to strip every possible particle out.

That’s why, even though they were talking that other game up, these kids were in Sauerbraten. We cycled through a couple of modes that night: an interesting regenetive take on king of the hill, a clumsy capture the flag, and a sniper rifle-only mode (the old days weren’t all good). But it was the instagib deathmatch that gave us the biggest rush: Simple, to the point, solid as a rock. As it was in the beginning, is now and shall ever be.