Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Ten years. Ten piggin’ years. And still no-one’s topped Quake III: Arena in terms of raw, pure deathmatch FPS solidity and grace. Id’s last great game turned a full decade old yesterday – even though it was born into an era of Voodoo 2s and 15″ CRT monitors, it’s fearsomely alive to this day. Frankly, it’s not going anywhere any time soon – it lives on both in its original form and as the free-to-play, browser-based Quake Live. And also in an endless legion of mods, modders, maps and lifelong gamers, all inspired by the precise majesty of its high-speed bloodshed. Gentlethings and ladycreatures, yesterday was our Thanksgiving.
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If there’s one area within gaming that I’m genuinely inclined to be unreasonable to the point irrationality, it’s in the FPS deathmatch games – the Quake III / UT axis. For me Quake III was almost the only game worth playing. Quakeworld was a little too fast, UT too fat and feature-obese, and so on. Quake III was minimalist wonder, and what Id started was finished by the modders who worked on things like OSP, Threewave, and Rocket Arena 3. It’s that last bit that has me the most concerned about Quake Live: Id made a fine game, but it was their community that completed it and honed it to the point of perfection. The browser-based system seems to make that community contribution rather more complex, as everything will have to be mediated by Id.

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