Quake Champions is now officially released so time for a real review even though really it's been released for a long time or it's still early access depending on how you look at it.

It's Quake modernized along with all the good and bad that comes with that.
It sounds good, it looks very good despite being 5 years old and most important it plays very good too. The movement is very fast and fluid, all the animations are very high quality, the weapons sound great. If one wants to argue this isn't like Quake before they're partially right because it's much superior, it's Quake Live if it was a modern AAA game. Champions are in a good place too since quite a few updates ago, not overkill enough that you're at a major disadvantage if you forget to activate an ability at the right time but not totally meaningless either where you can completely ignore it and still play your best. That's what this game does extremely well, the core gameplay is just perfect and the reason why even I for some reason managed to put this much time into it that I'd otherwise never do.

However it being a modern live service game means it comes with all the drawbacks of being forced to play in id/Bethesda's extremely limited walled garden. No customs servers and browser, no player made maps, no custom skins, constant lag and disconnects even when you're playing with bots due to always online DRM, forced updates, overpriced microtransactions, Bethesda.net account which charges $10 to change your name alongside the usual terrible modern privacy policy and terms of service and a completely broken anti-cheat with no opt out that will constantly crash the game.
I really wish I was in the alternate timeline where Unreal Tournament 4 was actually at least as finished as this game because being able to host your own matches with whatever mods you want is a huge part of arena shooters that's been completely stripped away in this game and as much as I prefer playing against real players and It's been close to 5 years since I've switched from Unreal because of that it still just feels so repetitive playing on the same 13 or so maps every single day I can't help but think how much better this (and many others) game could be had it not been crippled by this terrible business model.
Also it's not exactly well optimized, do not fall for the deceptive system requirements, to have a decent experience you will absolutely need a good mid-high end system from the past 4 years or so. I'd probably suggest a decent i5/i7/R5/R7, GTX 1070 class card and 32GB RAM if you like running anything else in the background and an SSD for not spending half your life on loading screens. A not completely garbage ethernet connection is absolutely mandatory as well even if you play with just bots if you don't wanna be teleported across the map and like if your shots actually register, make sure to select a server with good ping from the globe icon in the main menu too for the best experience. If you can't find players in your region I consider going up to a 100ms an acceptable compromise.

That being said I would still consider this among the very few fair live service games out there so I can actually recommend this one for those looking for an actually fun modern multiplayer game without being completely ripped off as it's far past it's chance to do that so by playing you're just pushing the inevitable fate of always online games out a bit further. My Unreal skills didn't really translate too well so I started from the bottom and despite being destroyed in every match for the first at least few hundred it's still far more fun than the majority of matches I win on other games. Unlocking the champions and cosmetics is pretty easy if you play at least somewhat often, absolutely nothing is paywalled, I own nearly everything aside a few event skins from before i started playing without ever spending combined with the fact the game is on life support getting some balance patches made by the single developer and the base gameplay being amazing is why I don't feel bad recommending this one unlike with most modern games.

If you're into afps nothing I said here was news, infact you're probably already playing but if not this game is quite a good place to jump in, thanks for reading this review, happy fragging.

Edit: Steam Awards 2023 Edition Update

Quake Champions is now officially released so time for a real review even though really it's been released for a long time or it's still early access depending on how you look at it. It's Quake modernized along with all the good and bad that comes with that. It sounds good, it looks very good despite being 5 years old and most important it plays very good too. The movement is very fast and fluid, all the animations are very high quality, the weapons sound great. If one wants to argue this isn't like Quake before they're partially right because it's much superior, it's Quake Live if it was a modern AAA game. Champions are in a good place too since quite a few updates ago, not overkill enough that you're at a major disadvantage if you forget to activate an ability at the right time but not totally meaningless either where you can completely ignore it and still play your best. That's what this game does extremely well, the core gameplay is just perfect and the reason why even I for some reason managed to put this much time into it that I'd otherwise never do. However it being a modern live service game means it comes with all the drawbacks of being forced to play in id/Bethesda's extremely limited walled garden. No customs servers and browser, no player made maps, no custom skins, constant lag and disconnects even when you're playing with bots due to always online DRM, forced updates, overpriced microtransactions, Bethesda.net account which charges $10 to change your name alongside the usual terrible modern privacy policy and terms of service and a completely broken anti-cheat with no opt out that will constantly crash the game. I really wish I was in the alternate timeline where Unreal Tournament 4 was actually at least as finished as this game because being able to host your own matches with whatever mods you want is a huge part of arena shooters that's been completely stripped away in this game and as much as I prefer playing against real players and It's been close to 5 years since I've switched from Unreal because of that it still just feels so repetitive playing on the same 13 or so maps every single day I can't help but think how much better this (and many others) game could be had it not been crippled by this terrible business model. Also it's not exactly well optimized, do not fall for the deceptive system requirements, to have a decent experience you will absolutely need a good mid-high end system from the past 4 years or so. I'd probably suggest a decent i5/i7/R5/R7, GTX 1070 class card and 32GB RAM if you like running anything else in the background and an SSD for not spending half your life on loading screens. A not completely garbage ethernet connection is absolutely mandatory as well even if you play with just bots if you don't wanna be teleported across the map and like if your shots actually register, make sure to select a server with good ping from the globe icon in the main menu too for the best experience. If you can't find players in your region I consider going up to a 100ms an acceptable compromise. That being said I would still consider this among the very few fair live service games out there so I can actually recommend this one for those looking for an actually fun modern multiplayer game without being completely ripped off as it's far past it's chance to do that so by playing you're just pushing the inevitable fate of always online games out a bit further. My Unreal skills didn't really translate too well so I started from the bottom and despite being destroyed in every match for the first at least few hundred it's still far more fun than the majority of matches I win on other games. Unlocking the champions and cosmetics is pretty easy if you play at least somewhat often, absolutely nothing is paywalled, I own nearly everything aside a few event skins from before i started playing without ever spending combined with the fact the game is on life support getting some balance patches made by the single developer and the base gameplay being amazing is why I don't feel bad recommending this one unlike with most modern games. If you're into afps nothing I said here was news, infact you're probably already playing but if not this game is quite a good place to jump in, thanks for reading this review, happy fragging. Edit: Steam Awards 2023 Edition Update