Quake Live Free, (Let's You) Die Hard On Steam Today

Quake Live launches on Steam later today. At the time of writing, it's fewer than 12 hours until the free-to-play variation of Quake 3 makes its way onto the service, after four years running via its own site. Bethesda have released a lovely 'launch' trailer to mark the occasion, which acts as a fine reminder of everything that's great about the game.

I used to watch Quake 3 trick videos as a lad and was constantly frustrated that their balletic chicanery was always scored by a soundtrack of death metal. I'm glad that Bethesda's video editor went the other way and chose to highlight the graceful loveliness of Quake 3's movement with something more gentle.

My actual experiences playing Quake 3 were very different again from the video above. I played for hundreds of hours and could rocket jump adequately, but never possessed the mixture of situational awareness, timing and reflexes required to be, you know, good at it. I'd mainly practice railgun shots on The Longest Yard, or run giddily around the pillars on The Very End Of You with a 1v1 friend, til one of us became disoriented and fell into the void. It was great.

It might be even more great now that it's on Steam, and after the quality-of-life features like loadouts and auto-jumping which were added at the end of last month. It always felt like Quake Live hadn't had the audience size it deserved, so maybe this is the point where more people pick it up and give it a try.