It's circa 1999, and I'm in my freshman college dorm room, playing a game on my Windows 98 computer. It uses a clunky CRT monitor that takes up most of my desk, but on that monitor a series of images flashes by -- walls, a floor, a skybox overhead, more walls, more floors. Quickly, there's a flash of an colorful icon on the screen, and in first-person view I bound towards it. Just as I grab the quad-damage and jump off a cliff, an opponent appears in my peripheral. While falling through the air, I instantly move my mouse around just so, click the button, and my rocket lands perfectly alongside the enemy avatar, bursting it into a spray of gory red pixels.

A real-life cry of anguish is heard from down the hall, where my floormate has just had to click to respawn. I smile, and run off to look for more prey.

That's the feeling that made playing Quake 2 so magical back in the day, and Nexuiz is a direct descendant of that line. It was originally an open source shooter based off of the Quake engine, and developer IllFonic has now remade the game in CryEngine 3, set for release on Xbox Live Arcade next month. And though the Microsoft booth at CES 2012 is a long way away from my dorm room in both space and time, just a few minutes of gameplay pointed me right back to that formative experience.