So, what's the deal? In a nutshell, ranked Quake 3 servers. In more depth, the game is essentially Quake 3 plus the Team Arena expansion pack, with a few tweaks here and there, running as a browser-embedded application. The site also keeps track of your stats, has an integrated matchmaking system, friends list, achievement medals, and all you'd come to expect from ranked online games. Still... browser-embedded application! As long as the computer is up to specs (and being Quake 3 so old it should) you can play it anywhere, even across operating systems (even on full-screen mode). It's like Facebook, but with Quake!
The Good:
- -Quake fragfest at its best: So deathmatching and its variants might not be your cup of tea, but it is undeniable that Quake 3 was a very polished and balanced iteration of the genre. Additionally, although graphics have gone a long way, the colorful design of the game environments has aged well, and it still looks gorgeous. Not so much the blocky models, but you barely see those in between all the mayhem.
-Balancing & Upgrading: The game has, of course, a dev team rebalancing things and addressing problems as they come around. Additionally, all maps have been updated with minor gameplay tweaks, and a few maps have been added.
-Billboards: A major addition to the maps are massive yet unobtrusive bilboards. These are meant for the in-game advertising. Now, normally this would be seen as a bad point, but since the game is offered at the reasonable price of FREE, in-game advertising as a source of revenue is welcome. I particularly like a creative billboard in a space map, placed in such a way that you fly through it when using a certain jump-pad.
- -Exclusively Online: You can create bot matches to practise your skills, but you need the web interface to do so, so there's no purely offline component. That also means there's no LAN capability.
-No private servers: You can join games in progress, but you can't create your own games, something that doesn't sit well with clans.
- -No user-made content: That is, no new player models, no new maps, no mods. Arguably, this is a good point in the sense that gameplay will be balanced by actual professionals, instead of someone thinking that making the rocket launcher be nuclear is a good idea. But the again, it prevents the introduction of new gameplay elements, and might lead to stagnation.
-No Blood: There is no blood or gibbing. Although the maps retain their creepy imagery, some of the dangling bodies have been removed too. When gibbed, your character explodes in a glowing display of fireworks rather than the gory mess of before. My guess is that they are censoring things a bit to avoid age classification causing trouble. Not sure if there's a language filter.
-Concessions to latency: I've noticed that some of the maps are lacking moving platforms or obstacles present in their Q3A incarnation. My guess is that these were troublesome with medium to high latencies, and thus have been removed to ease things a bit. There are still a couple moving platforms in an space level, though. And I guess some other tweaks have been made in that regard.
-Online Community: This should be a good point, but we all know that wherever there's a forum, there are trolls. And gamer trolls are a particularly whiny breed. I mean, I had to dig through massive amounts of balancing woes before I found an actual useful post about a basic gameplay mechanic. Oh well.
), a challenge mode meant to teach the finer points of rocket and strafe jumping, a nice matchmaking system, merit badges (I just got my Sucker Punch badge by killing a Quad Damage user with the Gauntlet 
), stats, a friend system, and awesome portability (I'm very impressed by the whole embedded app affair, I see a lot of potential in the game/website combo). I'd recommend Quake fans to give it a try.Also, the whole thing is still in beta, so I expect details might eventually change. So try it now before they change their mind and make it pay-to-play or something
