GamerNode: Previews - Quake Live hands-on preview

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This is the main failing a lot of multiplayer FPS titles have; the developers seem to forget that the player isn't experiencing any storyline, horror elements, or anything that would put them in a serious and concentrated mindset. They're playing with random abusive people, their friends, and people spamming emotes in German and Japanese. The servers on Quake Live are fast, efficient, and you will find yourself in a game, blasting through people at blistering speed within a minute of logging in.

This brings us to the skill level system id has implemented in order to make sure everyone's having a good, fair time. At the start of your experience, you're given the mandatory tutorial (a little patronizing in this case as Quake never evolves past controls for jump, shoot, and move), and then pitted against an AI character who will adjust itself to your skill level over the course of a first-to-fifteen match. It'll then give you a set skill level, and apply this to your server list; maps full of players around your level of competence are given a green tick, and arrows upwards and downwards represent the self-explanatory higher and lower skilled players inhabiting the map you've selected.

Once you're in the map, you'll begin to experience what Quake is all about -- speed. Respawn times are non-existent, and after Halo 3 and TF2 boasting respawn countdowns anywhere from 10 to a farcical 30 seconds, it encourages you not to worry as much about being "fragged", and just to jump back in and keep enjoying and learning the Quake skillset. The skills you'll need are variable, as the aiming is sometimes a little questionable in its efficiency to kill your opponents. I've fired a rocket point blank into someone's face, and nothing happened. Someone scored a glancing hit on me with the same weapon; I was currently undamaged, but I died. It's little slips like this that remind you why the game is still in beta.

id has gone to a lot of effort to stay in touch with their beta community, and it shows through their forums. Problems are fixed at lightning speed, and regular updates are something that can, for once in an online gaming experience outside the patch-fest that is World of Warcraft, be expected. There are still a fair amount of bugs and glitches, from server bots kicking you randomly because of an unnecessary set of criteria, to the occasional crash. But the game itself suffers no real problems, simply because it's a tried and tested formula, and has been for over ten decades.

Quake Live is something I strongly advise you to take a look at, even if you're not a major fan of the "lol shotgun" gaming experience. It's free, browser-based, and you can apply for the beta experience here if you'd like to be part of the community that really are shaping and changing what the release code of this title will look like. It's a huge gift from id to us, for years of loyalty throughout Quake and Doom, and it's a loyalty that's still being shown in the hundreds of people online at all hours in the beta, posting huge bug reports and bouncing around tens of feet in the air with a rocket launcher.

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