Quake Live: Loading

It’s about time! I finally got a Quake Live beta invite. I got it earlier today so, I setup my account and installed the browser plug-in. Since, I was knee deep in work I left myself logged into the site and let the it cache around 280 megs of data. The data files are stored in C:Documents and Settings<profile name>Application Dataid Softwarequakelive.

Anyway, I had a chance to play through the ‘tutorial’ level during lunch. It started out very easy until, I had around 15 kills then the bot AI decided that to put up a fight. After that point, it was a hard fought game with the bot Crash closing the gap to 17-11. I also played a couple of short practice round on a few different maps. Practice rounds are easily setup with bots which will allow new comers to learn the map. Short games are nice too, ten minutes or ten frags – I could get used to that. I don’t think we’ll see too many short games during the beta but, we’ll see.

Replaying the tutorial level I found Crash remembered our previous battle and brought the fight right at the start of the match. After that all was left was to ruin my perfect standings in the game and join a live free for all match. It started off pretty going with my establishing a nice path around the map pretty quickly. At least that’s what I thought until some one who had obviously been playing Quake 3 since it was originally released. Going from zero to 15 in just a few minutes. Of course, part of his killing spree was hanging out sniping people with the rail gun – until I realized he was up there and ended that.

I’ve only seen one piece of advertising in the game so far and it’s an ad for a boxing match. I’m not sure it speaks to the demographic of the typical Quake player but, I’m no ad wizard so who knows.