Are you an experienced FPS gamer? Have you played Quake? If you haven’t played Quake then you’re not an experience FPS gamer! I mean, seriously! Who at least hasn’t heard of Quake? Or id Software, at the very least.

  Well, if you’re like me and have been an id fan for a long time, then you’ve probably played Quake 3 or one of the distributions of it like Team Arena. I spent hours and hours playing that game long before Call of Duty 4 was even though about. Even after I became an avid fan of Wolfenstein, I still played Quake 3 on a regular basis. Seriously, I still love this game. I had to stop eventually though simply because no one played anymore. Anyone that didn’t use mods, at least.

  Fortunately for all of us old school Quake 3 addicts, this has changed! When the (open) beta for Quake Live was announced in February this year, I became quite excited and signed up immediately. I was, however, disappointed when I tried to play it. It was, for me, very buggy and wouldn’t run on any of my browsers except Internet Explorer (shudder) for some reason. I quickly gave up and moved on.

  My interest has just recently been sparked in Quake Live though. I got on for the first time in a long number of months, got my Xbox 360 controller laid out with xpadder (http://xpadder.com) and started up a match against Crash. My only response was “Holy crap!”. I was seriously impressed with this. I’ve been playing online matches since and I am completely addicted.

  Quake Live uses a modified version of the original id Tech 3 engine that was used in Quake 3 Arena. Thanks to that, the matches are still as beautiful, fast and intense as ever. Every map looks great so far and every part of the environment is as smooth as it should be. All of the weapons are just as gorgeous and as hard looking as ever. It’s just the most beautiful browser based game I’ve ever seen.

  Whether or not you can enjoy these graphics is a different question though. It is hard to run the game on high quality and not experience any lag for me, considering I’m on a laptop. I play, right now, on low-quality and everything is still vibrant and colorful. Textures just suffer a good bit, especially on the weapons. Does this make the game any less enjoyable? Not even close.

  All of the gameplay features from the original Quake 3 are still present and they all work perfectly together. It’s essentially the same exact game. Whether or not this is a good thing is only a matter of opinion. If you’re looking for anything new compared to the old game, you won’t be impressed it except for the fact that it’s browser based. If you wanted to be able to play the game you loved with a large, active community then you will have no reason to dislike this.

  Joining and choosing matches is actually easier than before. Now before you even start playing you’re required to play a match against Crash to determine your skill level. That saves you from being thrown to the wolves immediately and lets you get a feel for the game. This isn’t really a game you should be playing if you’re brand new to Quake 3 though because most players are experienced players from the old game so it’d probably be best if you have at least played the original. When looking for a match, you simply browse a list in the internet browser that you can filter to your liking. It is seriously almost too good to be true.

  Really, if you don’t believe me that there’s a fast paced, fun, browser based and capable version of an amazing first person shooter out there then go look for yourself. Just head on over to http://quakelive.com, register, and install the plugin. It is quite heavy on the javascript though so be sure to have all of the requirements met. It also, unfortunately, only supports Windows and Mac based computers. Sorry guys with Linux! Oh, right. Google Chrome is not supported. Sorry everyone.