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'Quake Champions' Beta First Impressions: Red Blend

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Quake Champions wants to blend the old retro arena shooter with the popular hero shooter genre and it succeeds to some degree.

On the one hand, you certainly feel like you're playing an old arena shooter. Champions is chaotic and fast and gory. You start with just one weapon at the beginning of each match, but you can run around and gather a whole arsenal of death, unleashing it on your enemies before invariably getting fragged into a thousand pieces. This is all good, clean fun, and for anyone who spent time in the arena shooters of yesteryear, it's also a nice double-shot of nostalgia.

On the other hand, the implementation of heroes (or champions) feels rather timid compared to something like Overwatch. One passive ability and one active ability are all that truly separates one character from the next. Differing stats like life, armor and speed barely make a difference. The active abilities can be pretty cool, but after playing Overwatch it really does feel like there should be more here to differentiate each character.

Ultimately, this is a game that caters more to the old-school crowd rather than woo a new audience, and that's fine. It is what it is. I'm just not sure it's enough to keep my attention or enough to become a big hit with gamers and in eSports. I could be wrong.

Meanwhile, the game is riddled with micro-transactions. You only start the game with one champion, and you can only use in-game currency to rent other heroes on a day-by-day basis. 5,000 renown gets you 24 hours with a champion and then they're gone. If you want to permanently own anyone other than Ranger, you have to pony up actual cash. Add to this three tiers of loot boxes and a stingy reward system and you've got yourself a less-than-stellar revenue model with too much grinding.

[Update: It's come to my attention that you can purchase all the heroes as a one-time deal, which is great. I didn't realize this while playing the beta, but it certainly makes the revenue model more palatable.]

Menus are also something of a mess, though to be fair that's partly due to this being a beta. Some stuff just isn't up and running yet. But I did find just navigating the shop confusing, and I couldn't even tell at first that all the champions except for one were locked, or exactly how to unlock them. I figured it out pretty quickly, of course, but a lot of information could be better telegraphed. That applies to the game modes also, and especially Sacrifice, which is kind of a confusing mess of a mode that jams capture-the-flag and control point style play into one game, and then does a pretty terrible job of conveying relevant information to players.

Overall, it's a fun beta that you should definitely play, but I'm having a hard time mustering much in the way of excitement. I don't like that I have to buy heroes. I don't think adding in champions does much to change the old formula, either, though I do really like Slash's "Plasma Trail" power. Nor am I thrilled about having to use the Bethesda Launcher to run the game. I have enough third party launchers to juggle at this point. Steam would be much easier and consumer friendly.

Have you played the beta yet? What do you think? You can hear some of my commentary and watch some gameplay below:

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