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Nexuiz To Run on CryENGINE 3

Jeff Gerstmann
Commentary

For the record, this is the existing Nexuiz, not the upcoming console game. This is confusing!
I'm not normally into "this game announced to use this engine and this middleware" news, but this announcement caught my eye. Nexuiz, the upcoming downloadable first-person shooter from Illfonic, is going to run on Crytek's CryENGINE 3. This is the same engine that Crysis 2 will run on when it's released. That's not really a big story on its own, but Nexuiz's path to the marketplace is a little... odd.

Nexuiz started out as a free, open-source first-person shooter for the PC, Mac, and Linux, and it runs on something called the "Darkplaces" engine, which is a highly modified Quake 1 engine. So it's not exactly advanced technology. In fact, the game's official site claims that work began on Nexuiz in 2002. So when the game was first announced as an upcoming console release, I figured it was just a way for this community-developed project to bring in a little bit of money, but that it'd probably look like a polished-up version of the original game. Obviously, changing to a modern engine opens up all kinds of weird possibilities.

Nexuiz (the original one) is kind of a cool game, and since it's totally free, you might want to give it a look if you've never seen it before. You can grab the latest version from the game's official site. Meanwhile, this CryENGINE-based Nexuiz game is due for Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network this Winter.