Quake has been around for some time now, but the best one for multiplayer was the one that was built solely for it: Quake III Arena. It is still played by thousands of people worldwide, even though Quake 4 has long since been released people still go back to Quake 3. It's probably no surprise that this new Quake Live (also known as Quake Zero) is based heavily on Quake III Arena.
First impressions are everything. My first real impression of Quake Live came from the public Beta that was opened the other day to many eager people who all wanted to play. To stop their servers overloading under the strain they implemented a queueing system. That's fine in theory, but in practice in can lead to some irritation.
Installation
After waiting about an hour and half in the queue it finally let me in - except because it needs to be installed it provided a link to download the installer. It's dead simple to install, just run the file and follow the installer wizard. However once it's done you have to restart your browser before it will work... this means another wait in the queue.
Customising your settings and training
After waiting a few more hours in the queue I was finally in. Once there you can choose one of a number of player models, your graphics settings, and other options such as display settings. So after choosing my player model and maxing out all the settings I was finally ready to play! First time you play it will take you to a training session where it will judge how skilled a player you are. You're told to "advance as far as you can, and then to take the closest portal". First time I did this I misunderstood and thought you had to complete every challenge for each of the portals to progress higher. The challenge was way to easy and it didn't then advance on to the next one like I thought it would so I went back to the "training" and then realised what it actually meant. To go to the next difficulty it's just some simple jumping, for Advanced it's a little harder as you have to use the blast from a rocket to propel you higher. The final difficulty setting requires you to get through a closing door before it closes which means you have to be fast. I couldn't figure out how to run faster so I decided to enter the portal for Advanced. After 15 minutes the final score was shamefully a close one, 14-9 to me though that was after quite a comeback - I was losing 0-8 for the majority of the match. So now the preparation was complete and I could finally move on to a proper match!
Playing Online
By the time I finally got chance to play online against others it was getting pretty late so I decided to join a game which was already going but with little time remaining. So after joining I was put on the red team with one other against 3 people on the blue team. At this point I should mention that Quake's ranking system will recommend games based on your skill level and the skill level of the players in the game. If they're about the same skill level it will put a green tick next to the game, or an up or down error depending on the difference in level. I thought I'd have fun with one of the games of "lower skill". It was amazing how wrong I was. Almost every time I spawned I'd be dead in less than a two seconds, and I'm not exaggerating. The few times I did actually manage to move before getting fragged I found my fellow Red team member seemed to think it was a free for all and killed me - one shot with that electricity gun. So it's hard to say what the gameplay is like after only one online match, though the offline playing was fun. The graphics aren't anything amazing but at the same time they don't need to be - that's not the point of Quake is it - it's a fragfest sort of game where you don't really have time to stop and admire the amazing textures or the number of polygons being used. Speaking of which, the polygon count for the player models are quite low, I think they may have been taken straight from Quake III Arena.
Summary
One of the best things about Quake Live is that it's free - once it's out of Beta it will be ad supported which is where their revenue will come from to be able to run the servers. So to summarise, it's fun, graphics are acceptable, sound effects are okay, music I think was non existent (don't remember hearing any!), and the controls can't really get any better than they are (but they're customisable anyway). I for one think I'll find Quake Live worthwhile to play once every now and then, but it's not the sort of game I'd stick with for any length of time.
The Future
Quake Live will continue to grow no doubt and sometime soon they should release clients for Linux and Mac which will be something that will please many gamers (can people on those platforms be counted as gamers?!). I can imagine them releasing more maps and player models in the future, and if they're feeling adventurous we may even get a few more game modes (though I doubt it... we've already got the standard game modes).
