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GAMING ON GAMING ONLINUX The tastiest brain candy to relax those tired neurons

LINUX FOR THE WIN! 0 A.. Battle in real time strategy like an Egyptian.

ike an overdue Christmas present the Lteam at Wildfire Games has released the fifteenth alpha version of the epic open- real time strategy game 0 A.D. The latest alpha version Liam Dawes is the brains behind www.gamingonlinux.com, the home added some really essential of on the interweb. features that were previously missing, including a multi- A new army is inux has long been a viable player lobby, so it should now readying for battle! platform for gaming, but it is be a total cinch to find people only now that mainstream L to play online. are starting to sit up and take notice. Despite what many people In addition to being easy to 0 A.D. aims to be of AAA this strategy has paid off. They may think, the thanks for this play online there is yet another production quality, which have run several successful shouldn’t solely go to Valve for using playable civilisation – the shows in abundance. It was crowdfunding, and are now Linux as the basis of its OS: Ptolemaic Egyptians – with originally closed source, but the using it to fund programmers there’s a long history of gaming on unique units and team opened it up with the aim to make 0 A.D. even better! the Linux platform. was one of the first features included for them. of gaining new members, and http://play0ad.com major names to bring its games to our little platform, starting with and ending with its latest Linux port of Enemy Territory: Wars. Id’s involvement doesn’t end there though – it also open sourced many of its game engines, which have given rise A seriously slick open-source turn-based strategy. to some of Linux’s best-known first person shooter, such as . heering the cold, Not just Valve dark winter months The flow of indie games coming to Cconsiderably, the team Linux prompted a leading game store behind The Battle for Wesnoth to open up to Linux and push out the have released a new version Linux client, which was itself of this well known turn-based open sourced enable others from the strategy adventure. community to help out; even though licensing issues meant that the They have further tweaked number of contributors never really the UI of the game to make took off, this was progress. it more playable, including And we now have Steam, the an overhaul of the mouse behemoth of PC gaming. Who would interaction in the game, and the have thought that Valve would bring It’s like Game of Thrones its AAA games to Linux? Khalifate faction, which doesn’t without Sean Bean. My question to you, readers, is: will use magic, is now playable in Linux ever overtake Apple to become more multi-player areas too. the second biggest desktop operating Battle for Wesnoth has some been around a few years now, It’s currently Stable, meaning system? With Steam Machines using great single-player gameplay but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t game-breaking bugs should be the Linux based SteamOS it could finally be a possibility. alongside online multiplayer aged well! It is updated all the very hard to find, so feel free to Liam Dawes, gamingonlinux.com too, so you can play your time with new features, tweaks really enjoy this one. friends across the world. It has and bugfixes to keep it fresh. www.wesnoth.org

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METRO: LAST LIGHT ALSO RELEASED… The most graphically intensive first-person shooter on Linux!

raphics cards of a nervous disposition, look away now: what Gwe have here is probably the most demanding, hardware-punishing game on Linux. You won’t be surprised to learn that it’s a first-person shooter, from 4A Games called Metro: Last Light, which promises to simultaneously cooing with delight at its prettiness while screaming Boom! Take that slaver scum! with terror when an enemy jumps across your screen. Faster Than Light 4A Games is a Ukrainian studio, and Faster Than Light has announced a free DLC Metro: Last Light draws on the the work expansion pack to this infuriating game. of Russian novelist Dmitry Glukhovsky, Included in this free update are new ship particularly his novel Metro 2033. Set in layouts, and a brand-new alien race called The a bleak world that has been ruined by We don’t care if the future’s an apocalyptic Lanius, whose members don’t need oxygen to live. Not only that, but they will suck oxygen nuclear weapons, the game forces you to wasteland, as long as it looks as nice as this. out from any room that they are in. Scary! rely on your wits as much as brute force, www.ftlgame.com with limited ammunition forcing players to just yet, it will hopefully only be a matter of think rather than just run around shooting time now that we have 4A Games bringing at things. its catalogue to Linux. While we Linux gamers don’t have the http://store.steampowered.com/ Our hero catching up to his minions for another fight. prequel game (also called Metro 2033) app/43160

CORSIX-TH OPENMW Bullfrog’s classic hospital sim brought Massive open-world RPG engine brings back to life. Ooh, matron! Skyrim predecessor. Valve has graced us with another great free-to-play title: Dota 2. A multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), Dota 2’s Linux version includes some pretty nifty features not available on other platforms, as well as a pop-up notification when a game is ready to play – very handy for serial Alt+Tabbers. http://store.steampowered.com/app/570

Remember Theme Hospital from Bullfrog? The post-Christmas presents haven’t Go red power ball, go! Well Corsix-TH is an open source engine stopped yet folks! There’s another open for playing the comedy hospital simulation source with a brand-new game natively on Linux, and it recently release: this time it’s OpenMW, which released version 0.3 which further brings us The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind enhances the engine. RPG. This new version includes probably While the engine is free, you have to the most important features, including purchase the game assets from a site combat AI and spell casting, including such as GOG.com. This is one of the visual effects for magic. Awesomenauts awesome things about the Linux and Much like Corsix-TH, OpenMW is an There’s an expansion pack to Awesomenauts, titled Starstorm, which includes new playable open source community – rather than open-source engine designed to let you characters, game replays and custom game- being forgotten, games that we loved run Morrowind on your favourite open modes. This is another MOBA although it’s when we were younger get revived with source . It’s undergoing far simpler than Dota 2 and plays like a brand-new features. heavy development and missing some platformer. The community is a little friendlier, It may be in beta, but Corsix-TH is fully essential features from the original, but it’s due to it being a simpler game to get into. http://store.steampowered.com/app/204300 playable and extremely fun. well worth keeping an eye on. https://github.com/CorsixTH https://openmw.org/en

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