GamerNode: Previews - Quake Live hands-on preview

Quake Live hands-on preview

The odd thing about playing a PC FPS online is you briefly begin to feel like you're in a different universe, where the laws of normal communication, mouse dexterity, and response time don't apply. It begs the question of whether some CounterStrike plays actually possess precognitive abilities when it comes to putting a round through my head, or whether people in Quake Live have faster reactions than a 4 GHz processor.

Quake has been the standard for hardcore online FPS players for more years than I've had hot dinners, and it shows in the sheer amount of people who've already plunged into the beta for the title. This being said, you do need to factor in the fact that it doesn't actually cost anything to play, as people will more often than not pounce on a title that costs them nothing and plays like a dream over a title that costs slightly more.

This game does indeed play like a dream, but if you're looking for a Crysis engine-based, crisp, bloom-filled experience, you're going to be disappointed. The graphics haven't been updated, and frankly I would say that's practically self-explanatory as running a game as detailed as Halo 3 in a browser window would require more RAM and internet speed than the Pentagon's server hub.

The graphics do serve the purpose though, with colourful characters and environments to help make everything that little bit clearer, and they work to an astonishing degree. Red and Blue teams are almost radiant in their neon splendor, and it makes the task of finding them a lot easier. Gears 2, take note, because not everyone wants to spend twenty seconds trying to spot a sniper among textures the color of a rainy day.

The environments themselves are what we've come to expect from multiplayer maps over the last ten or so years; ramps, bridges, bottomless pits, and of course, the Quake jump pads that will launch you fifty feet through the air, across the map, and into the blue base. I've had experiences where I've met someone in mid-air, taken them out, and watched their corpse land on the other side. Brutal, but glorious. If only Halo 3's Narrows map had aimed the man cannons at each other, we'd have had a lot more fun. But the folks at id are the kings of online FPS map design, and it shows in little touches like this.

That said, if you're aiming to blow someone's head off while squawking to your mates about it over MSN, you're going to need two things: an efficient use of your alt-tab command, and some weapons with which to wreak your merciless havoc. Weapons are something id have been doing well since Doom, with equipment like the BFG, and Quake's wonderful Lightning Gun. All the weapons you're familiar with in the Quake series are featured in the browser incarnation of the franchise, and they've all got a realistic amount of damage tied to them, but aren't too serious.

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