Quake Live Beta opens

Written by Ben on July 23rd, 2008 and posted in Game News
Tags : 3D, FPS, web games

The Quake Live beta has opened. Unfortunately you have to sign up and then wait before you can play it, however they have dropped a trailer to tease us into submission.

The game is basically a free, browser based, version of Quake 3 - so pretty impressive stuff. I don’t know if that means the game will run in the browser or if it means it will be like Battlefield Heroes with a small downloaded client that get’s launched from the browser. The tech geek game developer inside me wants to see this working in Adobe Shockwave but I find that a pretty unlikely thing to happen.

The game also features online rankings and challenges and tournaments etc, all broadcast from the browser. It’s totally free so I assume it will make money from advertising running on the website, and maybe some ingame ads.

My biggest concern is that Quake 3, was not easy for those of us who only wanted a quick frag every now and then. You had to put a lot of time and effort into the game to be able to get anywhere as there were far too many people who could soundly kick your (my) arse. I am hoping there will be some sort of ranking system that will reduce the problem, making it more beginner friendly.

Something I didn’t notice the first couple of times I watched the video is the total lack of blood and gibs. Personally this doesn’t bother me but I am sure there are some purists who will want it returned. It makes me wonder if they really are going for a more global (casual) audience.

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