I would really like to start playing a duel game on a regular basis but at the moment there's nothing to play. QuakeLive is just a re-release of the decade old Quake 3 only with more bugs and without mods or decent maps so is of absolutely no interest to me. I did hold out some hope for Rage but the recent Shacknews article eliminated that so there's pretty much no hope of anything from Id.

I had high expectations for Severity but the game has been removed from Escalation Studios' projects page so has presumably been quietly cancelled.

Apart from Id the only company to have delivered a moderately successful duel game is People Can Fly who are apparently working on an "unnamed action title". Without even knowing if it's a first person game it's hard to get excited, but despite that it's probably the best hope at the moment.

Painkiller: Resurrection is another possibility as it will contain "multiplayer improvements and features aimed at the competitive gaming community" which sounds promising. It's also initially a PC exclusive (with a possible Xbox 360 version later) so it's defiantly being designed with the PC in mind. One possible issue is that it's being developed by a company called Homegrown Studios who I've never heard of but I'll still give the game a look when it comes out.

Mindware (the developers of Painkiller: Overdose) are working on Dreamkiller which looks a lot like Painkiller. Other articles about the game say that multiplayer details will be announced at a later date. I never played Painkiller: Overdoes but heard it wasn't as good as the original. Hopefully they'll have learned what they've did wrong and improve things.

These three are the only games I know of with any potential to be a decent duel game. All of them are in some way related to Painkiller which is a little concerning because I didn't really like the feel of Painkiller or the weapons, though I never played it extensively. Without anything else to play I'll give these three a more thorough try.

Are there any other games to look forward to that might provide a decent duel experience?

Viewsonic have produced a 120Hz LCD monitor prototype:

http://www.viewsonic.com/companyinfo/pressrel...lease=2094

I'm amazed nobody had done this sooner. When you put a CRT at 120Hz next to a 60Hz LCD the difference is like night and day. Most people don't think you need 120Hz but if they actually saw a direct comparison they'd be amazed by the difference. The motion on the CRT is so smooth it's like wiping your arse with silk.

What's not clear from the press release if if this monitor is like 120Hz LCD televisions which only accept a 60Hz signal and interpolates the other 60 frames. I suspect this might be the case since most manufacturers don't seem to perceive there to be a need to support a 120Hz signal. Hopefully it'll be a true 120Hz monitor and I'll finally be able to get rid of my FW900.

After playing QuakeLive I was going to slit my wrists. All the negativity surrounding the game used to irritate me but when I got a beta key and played for a while I realised the negativity is justified. Quake needs to be allowed to die peacefully instead of repeatedly diluted and rehashed Star Trek style.

I was looking for something to replace it and while I didn’t have much hope for seVerity I took a look at the forums. While browsing the forum I saw a couple of videos linked that don’t give that much information but sound quite positive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8OmnIjIUsQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GafRW-_p-w8

People may have seen those videos before but the only video I'd seen was Romero's original announcement. The key points in the videos I picked up on were:

-Attempting to combine Quake and CS into a single game so there’s a single platform for competitive gaming and a single community
-PS3 and Xbox 360 versions with cross platform play leading to a potentially much larger audience
-Focus and making it enjoyable for spectators to watch which may improve the game’s chances at getting more attention and wider coverage
-The option to vote for your physics model so players who want CPM style physics can have that and players who don’t can have VQ3 style physics

Everything about this sounds promising and he seems intent on making a high skill, high speed, highly competitive game. This is the complete opposite to id(iot) Software whose only interest is in dumbing down Quake until it’s not worth playing. id have never cared about the competitive gaming scene, shipping Quake 2 without multiplayer and Doom 3 with a pathetic multiplayer mode. It’s these long gaps between decent multiplayer games that has killed the competitive scene.

They’ve also been lowering the skill requirement since Quake 1 by slowing the game down and simplifying the movement control. Johnny Carmack even tried to remove strafe jumping in Q3Test by implementing a two jump limit because he thought that having people jump around the map looked stupid. It’s clear they care more about the appearance of the game than how it actually plays. They’ve been incredibly lazy with QuakeLive, rehashing old maps, failing to include advanced physics, ignoring the spectators by not even including GTV, and ignoring the console market.

While idiot Software have been very lazy and have got everything wrong it seems Tom Mustiane knows exactly what competitive gamers want. Instead of dumbing it down he wants to increase the skill level with advanced movement and greater speed so hopefully we won’t need multiple mods to make the game playable as you do with id games. It’s great to have someone who really cares about competitive gaming leading the project and I just hope he’s able to deliver on his vision.

There’s not much news on the seVerity forums but Tom Mustiane has posted as recently as April saying “Severity is still very much an active product. We are continuing to keep it in the dark until there is something really ready to show. The closure of the CPL doesn't affect the game at all.”

EDIT: I don't understand the negativity towards seVerity. If it was someone completely inexperienced working on the game I could understand the lack of optimism. However, Tom Mustiane has a lot of relevant experience:

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,23505/

I've got high hopes that he'll deliver.