This weekend, the Quake Champions beta has lifted its NDA, allowing the game to be streamed for the first time, and everyone can see how it plays and share their thoughts ahead of the game’s eventual 2017 release.
After playing the game for a while, and planning to do some sort of “good, bad and in-between” post about it, I find that I’m having trouble formulating terribly complex thoughts about the game past one simple one: Well, it’s Quake.
This is a compliment, I suppose. Turning Quake into an alleged “hero shooter” has in reality done very little to make the game stray from its core formula. It plays incredibly similar to past Quakes, drawing almost no influence I can measure from Overwatch, which some purists were worried about. For a more recent comparison, the speed, the health/armor/weapon/power-up collecting is reminiscent of what the DOOM reboot tried to do with its multiplayer (also by Bethesda), only here Quake Champions has refined it without the additional task of creating a single player experience (where DOOM shined).
Fundamentally, this is either a shooter concept you like or you don’t. And while there’s a lot of buzz around hero shooters like Overwatch and Paragon and the like, truly, this isn’t that. This is still an arena shooter which is an entirely different type of animal. The only thing it’s really borrowed from the other genre is the concept of differentiated heroes, but even that has minimal effect on gameplay.
It’s unclear why exactly Quake bothered with the whole hero concept, other than as a way to possibly make more money from unlocks and skins. Given that any character can wield any weapon, and there are only minor differences in passives and one core ability that often doesn’t have that much of an impact on gameplay, the hero idea seems misplaced here.
I actually sort of like the idea that Quake Champions is “optional” free-to-play, meaning you can either choose to play for free and grind for champions, or you can pay a single asking price to unlock everything. That essentially makes it the same model as Overwatch if you just pay, though I would argue that its demonic/edgy characters are far less likable than that game’s, meaning you may be less motivated to buy skins that almost always just make them even more demonic and edgy.
Is Quake Champions fun? Sure, I guess so, but this is sort of a weird era for a game like this to exist. We have to keep in mind that back when Quake ruled the world it was the multiplayer shooter alongside the likes of Unreal Tournament. But now the landscape has shifted so dramatically, the genre is barely recognizable. Not to say that Quake is now bad and has no place here, but it certainly feels like it’s going to occupy a much smaller niche than before. Quake doesn’t just have a few competitors now, it has Overwatch, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Battlefront, Halo, Gears of War, Titanfall, CSGO, Rainbow Six Siege, Battlegrounds, the list goes on and on. Can it stand out in a scene that crowded? And while mostly doing a very similar version of what it’s done for ages? I’m not sure.
Quake has a steep learning curve that I’m not sure many modern shooter players will be able to adapt to, as it’s a constant battle to manage health, armor, weapons and map positioning, all the while doing so while traveling at blinding speed. Employing a bunch of different movement mechanics from every era of Quake makes it even more complicated. I can imagine Quake making for some rousing good esports matches, but I can also see “average” players turning toward a more traditional shooter, having either not grown up with this kind of experience, or having put it down for so long, it’s tough to return to.
I don’t know, I’ll keep playing, but for now, this seems like a game that draws pretty clear lines in the sand from the start, and you’ll know right away whether it is or isn’t for you. Give the beta a shot to find out for yourself.
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