Quake Live (beta) [2009]

Quake III Arena was a big thing for me at its release, one of the first first-person shooters I truly invested myself into. It was fast-paced, arcade-type action, with simple, yet memorable weapons. The railgun. The BFG. Of course, the rocket launcher. Friends would come from all over my neighborhood to play. Good times. Now, like some wet dream of mine, it's back. It's free. It's playable in your browser, with a Steam-esque friends utility built in for organizing games with your comrades. Also included is the latest trend in games, in-game achievements.

To those who have never played Q3A, it's a straightforward FPS in terms of your objectives, with these game modes: Deathmatch (kill everyone else until a frag limit, or time limit, is reached), Team Deathmatch (kill the other team), and Capture the Flag (you know this one). Also included is Duel (one-on-one with someone) and Clan Arena (kind of a Duel for clans). While those are basic game modes, the action itself while playing is unique to Quake. Your character is very mobile, with a relatively fast run speed compared to other FPS games, and also bolstered by the jump pads usually strewn throughout a level. You can also rocket jump. Yeah, that's as fun as it sounds. Those aforementioned jump pads throw your character to where they point, and often times connect with others so you can quickly get out of a sticky situation and find yourself in an entirely different area of the map.

The characters that populate it consist of space biker mercenaries, re-animated skeletons, aliens of all kinds, and cyberpunk chicks on hoverboards, among others. You can choose any of those at your leisure from the settings menu. Settings vary from combat on hovering platforms in the vacuum of space (where knocking people off with splash damage, and not falling yourself, is often key to success) to the tight quarters of occult temples. An in-game announcer details the vital things as well as when you do something like frag several people in rapid succession. Further increasing the frantic gameplay is the fact that usually players are constantly spawning all over the map, with no delay. Also notable is the no-frills HUD which is highly customizeable.

The game is in beta, but the gameplay is smooth, and I've yet to experience any bugs in either the game itself or the browser-based UI. The game is seemingly intact from its Quake III: Gold iteration, with no trite additions to gameplay or weapons. The HUD has been streamlined, however. As I said, the game is played directly from your browser, that being IE or Firefox in Windows XP or Vista, but id plans on branching out to OS X and Linux eventually. How the browser connectivity works is summed up on Wikipedia:

“The program is a modified version of Quake III: Gold and executed as compiled code on the user's processor, the user downloads the game in the background as a part of the registration process and interacts with the program either through a browser plugin that can be embedded on the webpage or as fullscreen.”

No Flash or derivations thereof. After signing up, you download the client while going through a quick tutorial and training match with Crash to determine your skill, as the game suggests servers for you based on your talent relative to the players there. Note that you don’t have to follow these suggestions.

Quake Live is a terrific idea, executed well, and hell, it’s free. If you’re looking for a game to try out with friends, give it a shot. Nothing to lose.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

http://www.quakelive.com/