Quake Live – Free Online Shooting Game in Your Browser

The size of software and games these days can be quite a bother.

The size of software and games these days can be quite a bother. Although internet connections are getting faster as well, downloading a few gigabytes is never met with too much joy.

More and more do we see an evolution of some kind, and do we meet a world where installing stuff becomes a thing of the past.

Installing software is passé ; out-of-browser software is the new black, as a figure of speech.

An even deeper black are out-of-browser games. Not the crappy, eye-hurting kind of games, but games a gamer can be proud of. Games like Quake Live.

Quake Live is id Software’s newborn child. It’s an energetical and fast-paced Massive Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter. The project is funded by means of in-game advertising, and released as a free download.

The game works through a Quake browser plugin , so it still needs you to download something , but a 3.78 MB download can hardly be called a bother.

The Game

Quake Live is based on the Quake III engine, and feels incredibly smooth. When you boot the game up in full screen, you’ll forget you’re playing out of a browser.

The game hosts 30 arenas of varying sizes, and over 250,000 players.

Like in all Quake games, the weapons are something to be proud of; ranging from good old shotguns to plasma and lightning guns, overkills can be expected.

The graphics are of a slightly lesser quality, especially if you’re used to Crysis, or Far Cry 2 style graphics. Those of you with graphics card monsters will not be able to put them to use. In Quake Live we’ll go back to the graphics we know from a few years ago and gameplay that’s simply timeless.

Currently the game is limited to Firefox and Internet Explorer on Windows, but developers are seriously focusing on bringing the game to Mac and Linux platforms as well.

Game Types

Free for All (FFA) – also known as plain old deathmatch . You score points by killing or fragging other players. There are no teams, every individual for itself. Duel (1v1) – the name says most of it. It’s a ten minute face-off between two players. Other players spectate the game, and can challenge the last duel winner. Team Deathmatch (TDM) – like FFA, only in teams. Two teams face each other, and points can be earned by killing or fragging members of the other team. What’s special about this gametype is that you can earn negative points for teamkills. Clan Arena (CA) – two teams face each other in a last man standing match. There are no instant respawns, and the team that manages to eliminate the other gets awarded the points for that round. Capture the Flag (CTF) – two teams in the classic capture the flag mode. Each team tries to steal the other teams flag from its base, while protecting its own flag in the process. To get the other team’s flag to your base – with your flag present – awards you one point.
Portability

Perhaps the most unique part about this game – as a result of it being a browser game – is the portability.

Instant Play is pushed to its limits when you can go fragging at any computer with an internet connection. You can instantly play on your Quake Live account when you’re at a friend’s place – or at Joe’s Interwebz Pub for that matter.

All that needs downloading is an incredibly tiny browser plugin that works in both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

The Queue

One of the biggest irritations of Quake Live – and a slight cutback on the instant play – is the game’s queue.

Due to massive response – heavier than the developers expected – the Quake Live Team was obliged to introduce the queue. This queue puts you in line , to keep the server from overloading; mainly to assure that those playing don’t end up on an infinite laggy server.

The Quake Live Team is currently working on this problem. They’ve already slimmed the line down from tens of thousands of players to a few thousand of them.

While in the queue, always keep in mind that Quake Live is a completely free game, and the developers aren’t charging you a dime to address the overload problem.

Start playing Quake Live now!

Are you ready to start playing Quake Live? Registerright away and hook into the action.

Not so long ago MakeUseOf also did an article on free online shooters, you might want to check it out as well.

Tell us what you think of Quake Live in the comments!

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