this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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The thing is, the genre of arena shooters basically died entirely off, there may be niches of people playing old games like Quake 3 Arena (or Quake Live, basically same thing) but there is little innovation going on, it is more like nostalgic revisiting. Xonotic (formerly known as Nexuiz) is one of the few exceptions, it is an arena shooters/movement shooters that struck out on its own (years ago) with a movement style heavily inspired by Quake but with a much more creative and fun approach to weapons featuring alt fire modes for each weapon in the spirit of Unreal Tournament. Xonotic incorporates lessons learned from the decades the arena shooter genre has been around in a way other arena shooters/movement shooters have largely failed to do. For example the blaster being added to the starting weapons seems like a relatively trivial choice, but it is actually key to the success of Xonotic long term. The blaster being a starting weapon encourages newer players to experiment with rocket jump techniques while also putting rocket jump movement mechanics at the center of high skilled play. If you always spawn with the blaster, than it is natural to train with a focus on incorporating blaster rocket jumps into your movement at a deep level and that naturally nudges players to push the envelope of competitive movement and positioning.
For this reason, and many others including the extremely high skill ceiling of the bots you can play against offline, I think Xonotic is definitely a game people shouldn't just look at and think "oh, another outdated 90s shooter that plays like the rest of them that I have already played to death". Not to mention that Xonotic is a free and open source game that you can download directly from most linux package managers (on the Steam Deck just search for it in the Discover package manager while in Desktop Mode). Finally, to return to my original point, for people playing Xonotic on a powerful gaming computer, the age of the Darkplaces engine (continuous development stretching back to 1999 with Quake) is more a curiosity than anything, but for a mobile device with a limited battery, the extreme efficiency of the Darkplaces engine that Xonotic runs on takes on a whole new context. As intense as the action gets in Xonotic, my Steam Deck's fan never even spins up except on an initial level load for a brieffff little whir.
If you want to zoom around arenas mindlessly blasting bots in a shooter where you can feel like you are always improving your shooter skills (that has a basically unlimited skill ceiling), that you can play in brief spurts on the go, Xonotic is.... accidentally perfect. You could play a singleplayer boomer shooter, but the gameplay just isn't going to be as fluid or deep as Xonotic even if Xonotic is just endless battles in multiplayer arenas with no meta progression (although the singleplayer campaign has a series of challenges that are genuinely fun to play through while still keeping it feeling fresh).
I explain my thoughts further, but the post got long and I didn't want to take up a huge amount of space for people who aren't interested
This duel between two high level Xonotic players is a good example of the diverse dynamics to Xonotic gunplay and movement. Movement gets EXTREMELY fast at points with huge leaps of mobility possible with the blaster, but also there are moments of slow tension and posturing. The movement in Xonotic, especially when you incorporate blaster jumps, is just fun as hell. Bunny hopping and swooping around feels so good compared to the uninspired movement mechanics of most modern shooters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zp5md9iRrU
Ok, so I made an argument for Xonotic as not just another 90s shooter to forget about, but you might have a stereotype in your head that playing a Quake style game with joysticks like the Steam Deck has, would be hell... It is true that if you aren't familiar with playing console shooters with a gamepad and have only ever used a mouse and keyboard (like pretty much 100% of other arena shooter players lol) you might find it difficult. However, if you have familiarity with playing halo or whatever.. all you have to do is to incorporate gyroscope mouse control as a complement to your joystick aiming and once you get comfortable with it you can easily compete in most shooters with average to above average mouse and keyboard players (no autoaim required) though of course you are going to have a big disadvantage with a lower resolution & refresh rate monitor. What then about strafe jumping? Wouldn't that be annoying pressing the jump button every time or having to hold a jump button (usually one of the face buttons, A on the xbox)?
This is where things start to become almost comical with Xonotic unintentionally being the perfect Steam Deck shooter. Using the below control scheme strafe jumping somehow feels MORE natural with joystick movement control than with a mouse and keyboard, which sounds like an absurd claim given how this genre of shooters, next to the rts genre, is the genre of gaming that the superiority of mouse and keyboard control is considered most dominant. I stand by the claim though, for someone who hasn't played a Quake like game it is easier to learn to strafe jump fluidly with my steam deck control scheme as you don't have to climb the un-intuitive learning curve of developing the muscle memory for timing when to press left and right movement keys to keep momentum, you just move the joystick in the direction you want to go and off you swoop into the sunset.
My steam controller mapping for Xonotic is:
That last setting is the real kicker, when you push the movement joystick (left joystick) to its full extent you automatically start strafe jumping which honestly makes strafe jumping feel more intuitive than using a keyboard and mouse. Keeping momentum through complex direction changes is also easy since the joystick is basically already integrates that for you, you just pick a direction and push the joystick. You might need to adjust these values for your particular Steam Deck.
Link to video demo of me playing Xonotic with this control scheme:
https://lostpod.space/w/wm3bjx31XikfRWYtYF7Pjg