All of the brief, bloody battles on offer take place on nine small maps. Matches play out with a maximum of just six players, and there are no classes, experience, or any other extras to clutter up the killing. Both are playable online with other humans, as well as alone with allied and enemy bots (which are just smart enough to give you a slight challenge in Team Deathmatch but dumb when it comes to Capture the Flag). There are just two modes of play in Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag. This is a simple, straightforward FPS with objectives that never get more complicated than shooting the other guy in the face early and often.

Guiding principles of the game design stick closely to the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle. Shiny aliens and lots of shooting make up a good chunk of what you find in the arenas of Nexuiz. The primary complaint is the platform itself, as this is the sort of old-timey strafe-and-shoot game that practically demands you play with a mouse and keyboard rather than the clumsier console gamepad. This $10 Xbox Live game soars, thanks to zippy, brutal matches set in sharp-looking sci-fi battlegrounds brought to living color with the CryEngine 3 engine. Innovation may be in short supply, but pure speed and excitement are not. One drawback of speedy arena shooter Nexuiz is trying to pronounce its name, which seems like it's supposed to be something like 'Nexus.' Even though the nomenclature is hard to get your tongue around, developer Illfonic has done a great job of resurrecting the classic craziness of run-and-gun multiplayer first-person shooter games like Quake III Arena or Unreal Tournament.

Nexuiz steam bots