When comparing AssaultCube vs Nethack, the Slant community recommends AssaultCube for most people. In the question“What are the best open-source games?” AssaultCube is ranked 24th while Nethack is ranked 29th. The most important reason people chose AssaultCube is:
AssaultCube is extremely fast, small, and network efficient for an FPS game.
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Pros
Pro Minimal resource usage
AssaultCube is extremely fast, small, and network efficient for an FPS game.
Pro Cross platform support
AssaultCube runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Pro Fast-paced multiplayer FPS gameplay
AssaultCube does a good job of adding fun, fast paced shooter gameplay (like in Counter Strike) to the open source world.
Pro Activity in multipayer
Many people online. You can play it every time you wish.
Pro In-game level editor with support for realtime multiplayer editing
Admins of a server can enter edit mode for a map during gameplay, updating components of the map live without needing to run other software or develop any code or image assets.
Pro Variety of fun game modes
Pro Has a decent number of community servers
Pro Depth
The gameplay is very deep due to the amount of skills and systems present in the game.
Pro Potential for enormous skill growth
Nethack is a game that you can play for hundreds of hours and still not master. But you'll have tons of fun attempting to master it.
Pro Over two decades of constant development
Nethack was first released in 1987. The latest version, 3.6.0, came out in December 2015.
Pro ASCII and tiles available
Nethack is able to run on simple ASCII graphics or use graphic tiles instead.
Cons
Con Few weapons
Few weapons. Really. One assault weapon, one pistol, one sniper rifle and one shotgun. Boring.
Con Lack of gameplay refinement
AssaultCube does not have that many weapons (though they do have some variety). Additionally, the game is not very balanced, as spawn points are sometimes in vision of other enemy spawn points.
Con Outdated graphics
Based off the original Cube engine, which has dated quite a bit.
Con Burden of knowledge
There's simply too much information that the game expects you to know before you can properly take advantage of the systems in the game.
Con Feature creep
NetHack has an overwhelming amount of features mostly because the development team found them cool at the time, but with little thought of their greater impact. For example, a Nethack staple is Sokoban as a built-in minigame, which feels out of place in a dungeon crawler.
The extremely large amount of items and abilities break the game's balance and coherence.
Con Outdated controls
You need to study a wiki just to learn the most basic controls. The game is broken in this regard.
Con ASCII Art
Con Run of the mill story
The story of the game is pretty generic fantasy fare. It features orcs, elves, and trolls in an effort for the hero to save the world. While it does not detract from the gameplay, it does seem very familiar to those interested in the genre.