Quake Live: Browser Based Quake III

I remember back in 2000 when I was living in my dorm at Florida State University, about ten of us would prop our doors open and load up Quake III and play hours of deathmatch. Now id Software is releasing it in a browser-based form called Quake Live. Poor college students should read up and prepare to lose days playing this free, but complete version of the game.

As mentioned above, Quake Live is a free browser based version of Quake III: Arena. All that is required from the player is to sign up for a free account and install a small plug-in enabling the browser to play the game. Once inside the menu, the game installs itself while giving the player the option to choose character options. A smart choice rather than make the player sit watching a loading screen.

When players have completed skinning their character and customizing settings, a training option is given, most likely to keep interest as the game continues to install in the background. The training is not anything new for even the greenest FPS player, but it allows for familiarization back into Quake III, if you ever played it before. The engine of the game is still the core, but the graphics themselves have been given small improvements while still maintaining the Quake aesthetic.

Post install, the Quake Live hub allows players to start multiplayer games, find friends, and other options. There is a profile page, which logs stats for your time in the game. A noted addition is the ability to view recent adversaries that players can add to friend lists, if one so chooses. Also, Quake Live contains bots in practice modes, where difficulty can be assigned for personal practice.

Quake III was a game that brought people together: in my case, a dorm. While my experience with the multiplayer was plagued with the occasional slowdown and lost connection, Quake Live should prove much more stable by functioning through a browser. Now a whole new generation can fail classes and lose personal hygiene while playing this old, new free game.