Quake Live BETA

Well I must be on someone’s nice list because today I got an invite to play some Quake Live, aka Quake Zero for those who have been following this thing since it was first mentioned. What I discovered was Quake 3 Arena, online, in a browser window. I have to say much to my surprise the game actually ran smoothly.

The graphics don’t seem to blow you away, but then again it looks and feels like Quake 3 Arena, which has been out for a while. I’m also under the opinion that id Software just wants a ton of people playing, so they’re not going to have the requirements out of this world.

The controls are the WASD keys for movement, Space to jump, left click to fire, mouse to turn the camera. You can remap if you so desire, but these controls, to me don’t really need tweaking. Except for maybe the sensitivity. I kept having guys shooting at my back and I kept finding myself literally lifting up the mouse and rolling it to try to turn fast enough to at least see who was shooting at me.

So the game is basically a first person shooter where you will be facing off live opponents. You’ll have a chance to run through the tutorial where you’ll be rated on your performance. This rating will be used against all the available games out there. You can also be a spectator for some of the super matches, which, after watching a couple, shows me how far from awesome I truly am.