In 1999 I was in 8th grade. They were good times, well, far better than 9th grade was. Anyway, there was a game that I used to play quite often - Unreal Tournament. Now, the aforementioned game had a bastard step brother named Quake III: Arena. He was a mean son of a bitch and his family had a long tradition of making people explode and then dancing around in the gore like confetti from Rip Taylor's god-like hands. Needless to say, when Unreal Tournament came out I was hooked! The graphics were amazing, the game play was addictive and even the music was awesome!
  
    Well, when Quake III came out I played it and was taken. Taken into a world far different than what the Liandri Corporation had me endure. This universe was bleaker, darker, and unusually rusty. For whatever reason Quake III seemed gorier than it's prettier older brother. Sure, Unreal Tournament does have Insta-gib (Note: For the uninitiated, Insta-gib is a mutator/mode that gives the player a gun that fires a beam where one hit blows the opponent into bloody chunks.) but Quake III has the rail gun. Regardless of which game scored better points in the "exploding-bloody-mess" department, I found Quake III's frenetic gameplay enthralling.
   
    Recently I had been aching to play Quake III but my disc has decided that life in a cardboard box - away from the prying eyes of desperate 20-something's escapism - is a far better place than my D: drive. So you can imagine my excitement of accidently stumbling across an article about Quake Live! What is Quake Live you ask? Well simply put, John Carmack enormous and irregularly sized brain has come up with a way to play Quake III IN A BROWSER WINDOW, FOR FREE! Yes, you simply go to http://www.quakelive.com , wait in for 3 hours and then download the plug-in for your browser. I am not lying about the wait, when I went to the website I was in queue at or around 28,000th place in line. It was crazy but let me tell you, far worth the wait.

    Once you are finally at the front of the line and install the plug-in you simply open a new browser window and set up your game preferences. Once you are finished configuring all of that you will be given the chance to do the in-game tutorial with Crash from the original Quake III while the rest of the game finishes downloading. I could really go on but seeing as how I am not a video game journalist, l won't bore you with my version. There is a nice video on the site that pretty much shows you everything from installing to the achievements. That's right, achievements, like Xbox Live, World of Warcraft, or even Mega Man 9 achievments.

    If you are a fan of the Quake series or used to frag the hell out of people back in the day in the original you owe it to yourself to play this game. There is nothing stopping you. Finally we are living in a world where you can frag with one hand and fap with the other. Thank you John Carmack.



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