The multiplayer is functional, but it has a few problems. The big guy on the right died first he should never have been standing still like that. The gameplay on display here is rock-solid, with every successful shot feeling important, and the pace of the match never slowing. There’s a frantic, weighty satisfaction that accompanies a kill, largely due to the game’s fun and intuitive weaponry, with each gun serving a distinct gameplay purpose the rocket launcher is powerful but requires careful prediction with each shot, the lightning gun is a beam that needs to be unerringly held on a single flailing target, and the rest of the weapons are similarly distinct. The strategy that comes out of this approach is all about controlling the map by being the first to get the weapons and items that appear in predetermined spots, and while this may seem daunting, in a game as fast-paced as quake, learning is smooth and simple you can respawn almost immediately after being blown apart by the lizard hopping past you at 80 miles per hour. Quake Champions is what is often called an “arena FPS,” an older style of shooter that tosses around eight characters into a looping map full of weapons and various powerups, with the only real objective being to kill the enemy players more effectively and efficiently than they can kill you. While you’re not going to find the kind of dedication to character identities as you would find in something like Overwatch or Team Fortress 2 here, there’s an admirable kind of silliness to it all the lizard’s lines are all about eating her opponents, the ever-displaced Ranger bemoans his inability to find his way home, and the cyberpunk skateboarder sighs with ecstasy as he gets his fiftieth jolt of space-meth in the middle of combat. The gist of it all is that these are all individuals from various points in space and time who have found themselves stuck in a kind of Lovecraftian dimension, with nothing better to do than murder each other. The game’s only real connection to previous titles can be found as lore and backstory to each character, though most of the playable characters are simply enemies from previous games made into distinct personalities. Quake has never been a series particularly concerned with story, but as a multiplyer-only release, Quake Champions is especially light.

Player numbers suffered during the game’s beta, and unfortunately, even after a spike in the summer of 2018, they are not as high as they should be a game with such a high skill ceiling needs a healthy community to keep new players engaged, or they will find themselves being vaporized before they have a chance to interact. These abilities have been met with some controversy within the community, with some feeling that Quake’s formula had been perfected over many years of refinement, and others feeling that the abilities add a fresh new layer of gameplay to the Quake setup. The new addition to this formula in Quake Champions is the abilities unique to the game’s 15 characters, which are cooldown-based single use abilities, most of which offer a mix of utility and damage, such as a shield that can be changed into a powerful laser weapon, or a temporary increase in speed that restricts you to melee. Players will be bunny-hopping at high speed across knotted maps full of jump pads and teleporters, simultaneously trying to grab the best weapons while being aggressive enough to grab a few kills along the way. Quake Champions is a character-based multiplayer shooter from id Software, the company often credited with inventing (or at least establishing) the genre with games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and the original Quake. Like most reptiles, she is a scaled ectotherm, but unlike most reptiles, she vomits acid. This review comes from someone who is familiar with the Quake gameplay style, but had never completely jumped into it until now, which hopefully gives me a fair perspective on such a venerable series. I was very excited to hear, then, that Quake would be getting a modern facelift with Quake Champions, as it could serve as a fresh new entry point for players like myself.

I never played the Quake series when it was new my PC was never beefy enough to handle any of its iterations until after 2010, and by then, the FPS genre had accumulated so many changes that I assumed Quake would feel too antiquated, its players too experienced I figured that were I to step into the still-functional Quake Live or Quake 3 Arena servers, my giblets would be so evenly strewn across the maps’ walls that I wouldn’t even have a chance to learn the game.

Ever the domain of the FPS purist, Quake is the high-speed standard that old-school gamers have held every subsequent FPS release to.

Chances are, if you’ve played a first person shooter on the PC, you’ve heard at least one person mention Quake.

Quake guy quake champions