Ever the Windows enthusiast, I’ve always been deeply involved in the world of PC gaming. It’s something I’ve always loved to do, and I’ve been through it all – from the early days of Minesweeper and Solitaire, to the casual gaming market of Elastomania and Peggle, to the full-on phase of Bioshock, Halo, Civilization (all of them), and – sadly, yes – World of Warcraft.
Needless to say, I love gaming on computers. Always have, always will. I’ve never been a hardcore console man, but I’ve been known to dabble in Nintendo’s awesome selection (SUPER MARIO GALAXY WHAT) every once in a while. So to say that gaming on Linux would be important to me is just about the understatement of the century.
I had heard a while back that Unreal Tournament III (UT3) was going to be ported to Linux, after being released to the rest of the world about two years ago. This game has always interested me, mostly because I get to fire ludicrous weapons and blow up aliens again and again and again. No such luck in Linux, it would seem – the ‘port’ is still under development.
A quick search of ‘gaming in linux’ on Google spits back a modest fifty million results, so you KNOW I’m not the only person interested in doing something like this. Several of my former WoW buddies (I kicked the habit) played in Linux with impressive results, and it’s been something I’ve wanted to emulate ever since we all started this experiment. While I have yet to sit down and attempt the installation of a legitimate Windows-only game into Fedora, I have made a selection of a few free (and some open-source!) games I’ve been keeping occupied with in the meantime. Hope you enjoy!
- Nexuiz – a free, open-source first-person cross-platform shooter (runs on Windows, Linux and OS/X)
- Scorched3D – a 3D update of one of my favourite games of all time, Scorched Earth
- Armacycles-AD – all ready covered by Tyler, this game is addictive as hell
Any other suggestions you might have would be fantastic! Next up is trying to get some Steam games running…
Urban Terror. It’s a counter-stike like game. Really fun.
I just downloaded Nexuiz – it’s awesome! Even better, it has quality settings that far surpass the customizability of most mainstream games, meaning that I got it to run like a dream on my shitty hardware, but that users with awesome hardware can also tweak it to look gorgeous at the same time. Can’t wait to try it on my Windows PC at home (which has a lot more graphical power). Even cooler, the zip file is ready to run on Windows, Linux, or Mac. Just unzip it, and hit the appropriate executable file. This game will be a new favourite for some quick online play.
So I just found this and it’s awesome!
A bunch of pre-packaged, or links to, games primarily for Fedora but I’m sure it’ll work with any Linux distro.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Games
I’ll definitely take a look at that list, and see if any of those are available for Debian. One of the best parts about Linux is that even if it isn’t packaged for my distribution, I can (usually) compile it myself without too many problems.
An oldie that’s recently ripened to V1.0: OpenTTD.