I spent thousands of hours on Quake 3 Arena, both on Windows & Mac. I enjoyed the game so much, in fact, that I purchased it on both Windows and Mac - at full price. I loved the game, including the silky-smooth shooting play, as well as the bleak, yet zen aesthetic design. I was an avid modder working on Q3A mapmaking as well. When Quake 4 arrived, I enjoyed that title as well, even if it wasn't a perfect reproduction of its online predecessor. I was very eager to play Quake Champions. The game has been a disappointment.

The game will become free to play, rendering early purchaser investment wholly moot, but due to an unaturally quiet and long early release testing phase, the game has already withered on the vine. As of today, January 4th, 2018, only 452 players were online when I played for the last time. Finding a match was relatively quick but the matchmaking was poor, regularly stacking twice the number of levels on one team, as on the other. The game is smooth, well optimized and it runs well on weaker systems but aesthetically, the game lacks the same feel that Q3A originally had. Additionally, the weapons are hardly balanced for the maps and the classes skew competitiveness as well.

The aesthetic gifts you gain from lootboxes are simply insufficient to maintain any form of motivation to play the game and it shows.

In short, this isn't Q3A in 2018. It feels like a shadow. A feeble copy. Perhaps the time for Q3A is gone entirely. I'm quite upset that I can't refund 30 USD for this game. iD did a great job with Doom but dropped the ball spectacularly with this.

Not worth the time. You'll find better games elsewhere.

6/10.

I spent thousands of hours on Quake 3 Arena, both on Windows & Mac. I enjoyed the game so much, in fact, that I purchased it on both Windows and Mac - at full price. I loved the game, including the silky-smooth shooting play, as well as the bleak, yet zen aesthetic design. I was an avid modder working on Q3A mapmaking as well. When Quake 4 arrived, I enjoyed that title as well, even if it wasn't a perfect reproduction of its online predecessor. I was very eager to play Quake Champions. The game has been a disappointment. The game will become free to play, rendering early purchaser investment wholly moot, but due to an unaturally quiet and long early release testing phase, the game has already withered on the vine. As of today, January 4th, 2018, only 452 players were online when I played for the last time. Finding a match was relatively quick but the matchmaking was poor, regularly stacking twice the number of levels on one team, as on the other. The game is smooth, well optimized and it runs well on weaker systems but aesthetically, the game lacks the same feel that Q3A originally had. Additionally, the weapons are hardly balanced for the maps and the classes skew competitiveness as well. The aesthetic gifts you gain from lootboxes are simply insufficient to maintain any form of motivation to play the game and it shows. In short, this isn't Q3A in 2018. It feels like a shadow. A feeble copy. Perhaps the time for Q3A is gone entirely. I'm quite upset that I can't refund 30 USD for this game. iD did a great job with Doom but dropped the ball spectacularly with this. Not worth the time. You'll find better games elsewhere. 6/10.