Today I introduce you to one of the most clever MMOFPS-RTS game I have yet to play, Tremulous. There are two opposing factions that you can play in Tremulous, these are the Humans and Aliens, having their own sets of unique abilities and structures to rip each other apart. Besides point-click shooting mayhem, Tremulous spices things up with the ability to build your base anywhere on the battlefield! This unique system provides players an RTS (Real time Strategy) feel of the game, not just shooting around and scoring points throughout the match. Team play has a big role in this FPS-RTS game wherein players must cooperate with each other to attack and, most of the time, defend their base from the opposing faction.

From the start of every match, players must meet a kill quota for them to achieve a higher rank of technology/evolution, called "Stage", unlocks more building and arsenal at their disposal. This system of achieving a higher faction "Stage" plays a big role in a match, if your team dies too many times too quickly, the other force might crush your team due to the simple fact that they have more arsenal at their disposal. This kill system not only promotes team play among players, it also paves way to strategic positioning of base defenses depending on the current game situation.

One of the two factions you can play in Tremulous are the Humans. Humans specialize on technology and long range arsenals to annihilate the Aliens, ranging from a chainsaw to a plasma rifle. As humans progresses through their "Stage" they gain better base defense including the dreaded tesla coil that instantly kills any unevolved aliens who wishes to sneak inside the human base. This faction relies heavily on team play because aliens have the ability to "sense" where they are, specially a rookie human who ventures from the safety of their base alone. Unlike the Aliens, human structures do not self repair so they must attend to it from time to time, because if one structure gets destroyed, it will explode and damage anything within it's radius. One of the feared human arsenal is their battle suit which provides them with high defense and immunity to head swipes from aliens, partnered with a rocket launcher, this walking fortress is indeed a force to be reckoned with.

The second faction in Tremulous are the Aliens. These aliens specialize on tearing humans up close. They have the ability to "sense" where their enemies are, and to stick to walls and ceilings to ambush their enemies. As aliens progress through their "Stage" they are given a choice to evolve into more cunning and larger aliens. Unlike human structures, all alien base items can regenerate without any assistance, aside from that, aliens can build most of their defenses on walls and ceilings. One of the alien's base defense that humans always watch out for are their trappers which immobilizes humans within it's range for aliens to snack on. Aside from the alien's clever base defenses, they can choose to evolve into different alien forms that have their own special abilities. These abilities ranges from the fast jumping marauder that can zap multiple enemies with electricity, or the feared Tyrant that can kill an unarmored human in one swipe of it's massive claws.

All in all, if you like first person shooters with a bit a of Real time Strategy in the mix, and you don't mind graphics for that matter, you might want to take a look at Tremulous. Also, Tremulous is an open source game that runs on quake engine, with that in mind, there are a lot of contents from players and developers making stuff for this game as it grows. For those who has a Mac or Linux, rejoice! this game runs in Windows, Mac and Linux!