Quake Champions

Quake Champions is id Software's attempt to bring back to the arena shooter the genre the company itself helped define back in the nineties. Instead of a single universal fighter, players choose from a roster of characters – champions – each with their own special ability: teleportation, temporary invisibility, summoning a combat robot, or brief invulnerability, and the roster includes old faces from previous entries in the series like Ranger or Visor. The foundation, though, remains purely Quake: lightning-fast movement around the arena thanks to jump pads and rocket jumps, collecting weapons, armor, and health packs scattered across the map, and duels decided by reflexes and map knowledge more than anything else.

The game launched in 2017 as a free-to-play title exclusively for PC and stayed on that platform for its entire run – a console version was never made, though id Software briefly considered one. This relates to the target audience: Quake Champions aims at competitive shooter players used to high frame rates, precise mouse-and-keyboard control, and the scene around tournaments and paid league seasons, not the broad console audience used to a slower pace. With this, id Software deliberately built on its own tradition of QuakeWorld and Quake III Arena, just with more modern graphics on the id Tech engine and a hero system with distinct abilities, the kind that had meanwhile taken hold in other online shooters and battle royale games. The game also ran a paid model alongside the free-to-play one for a long time, before developers moved entirely to the latter and made all champions available through gradual unlocking.

Why play it: For players who grew up on Quake III Arena or Unreal Tournament and miss old-school speed and pure precision in modern shooters instead of cover systems and slow tactical peeking around corners. Champions offers exactly that adrenaline, for free, and exclusively on PC, which its creators and the player community alike consider the genre's true home.