A raytraced Quake 2 might be a fun retro showcase of shiny new hardware, but Quake 1.5 is what you really want to be playing right now. Assembled by modder “bloodshot12” (although its full credits are extensive), it’s a cocktail of mods for Id’s original Quake that aims to retain its aesthetic, but upgrade everything else. That means new, detailed weapon models, monsters (some from the excellent Arcane Dimensions), levels and more. Today’s release is technically a beta, but well worth playing, and dead easy to set up too. Find it on Mod DB, or check out a trailer below if the fancy new boss above isn’t exciting enough.

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We’re just shy of Halloween here and the stars are aligning, allowing unholy powers to warp Doom into strange, near-unrecognisable forms through the powerfully dark act of modding>. Out tonight is Total Chaos, a survival horror mod so grand in its ambition that it leaves almost nothing recognisable as ‘Doom’, with detailed 3D environments and modern horror style. More traditional but still impressive is an early demo of The Crimson Deed, a vampire-themed dungeon crawl. Check out trailers for both below, plus some Quake-related surprises from 3D Realms. (more…)

Update Night is a fortnightly column in which Rich McCormick revisits games to find out whether they’ve been changed for better or worse.>

If, for some reason, you needed reminding of Quake Champions 90s heritage, then you need look no further than Anarki. One of Quake Champions 12 playable characters, Anarki (1) rides a hovering skateboard, (2) has a pink-dyed mohawk, (3) sports a pair of space JNCOs tucked into his metal legs, and (4) talks like the galaxy s spaciest stoner dude.

He s the video game version of The Simpsons Poochie: an attitude-by-numbers toon cooked up by an undead focus group whose members all died when Papa Roach released their first album. But he s not even the most 90s thing about Quake Champions. That would be the game itself, a resolutely old-school arena shooter that in full flow feels as fast and fluid as Quake 3 did in 1999. (more…)

The game has hit some bumps along the way, but arena shooter revival Quake Champions has made steady, sure steps towards its goal to revitalise the genre over the past few months. Today’s update brings the game just that little bit closer to the ideal, introducing bots for practice play (and to fill empty slots if someone bails from your team), and a gratuitously detailed gore system worthy of Doom 4. Rockets, chainsaws, machineguns and more will have visibly different effects on your now-mechanically-separated opponent’s body. Squishy.

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Wait, didn t we already answer this question? Never mind, the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, is not content with our list of the top 50 first-person shooters. Well, they’re mostly fine with it (lists are stupid) but they still want to hash out this ageless question the old-fashioned way. By interrogating each other over the internet. (more…)

The best shooters endure. While the state of the art moves on in other genres and leaves old designs in the dust, it’s as fun to fire a well-made shotgun from an early 90s FPS as from one released today. For that reason, this list runs the gamut from genre classics to those released in the last year. There’s bound to be something for you inside.

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Quake Champions is a delightful return to the origins of the arena shooter, and although the title is in Early Access at this point, there’s still a ton of DLC and other add-on content you can buy. That’s fun, right? I always find paid content in an unreleased game odd. Anyhow, there’s a lot to be actually excited about here, as the game is getting huge updates. That includes the community’s biggest request: Bots. Hell yes bots. With scalable skill levels, you can now learn to play that game on your own, or hone your expert skills, or just get some kills without having to both with the whole, you know, Other People thing.

Also: gore is coming. Not just blood and guts: really specifically engineered blood and guts. This is a game about science, after all. (Don’t… don’t double check that. Just let it sit.)

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It should almost go without saying now that Doom 2 is all things to all people, in the most literal sense. Thanks to 25 years of evolution in modding tools, it’s Donkey Kong, Resident Evil and even Heroes of Might & Magic now, among other things.

The latest game to be swallowed by the all-consuming vortex of creativity that is the GZDoom-powered mod scene is Quake Champions. The arena FPS reboot may still be in public testing, but it’s already been systematically disassembled, stripped for parts, and launched today as Quake Champions: Doom Edition (or QC:DE for short), a mod for possibly the most enduring game in PC history.

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We’ve previously covered Quake mega-mod Arcane Dimensions, which has become a cornerstone of modern Quake mapping thanks to its slew of new gameplay features, enemy types and weapons going a long way to refresh the formula of Id’s cyber-gothic classic without diluting its breakneck pacing and drum-tight combat loops.

Xmas Jam: 1024^3 is the latest group project to come from the quietly industrious func_msgboard mapping community. Built using Arcane Dimensions’ bag of tricks, it offers 11 new levels from 11 different creators, all adhering to a single restriction: the level must fit (roughly) within a tiny space, 1024 Quake map units cubed, approximately three seconds travel time across.

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Sitting at the intersection of several of my interests is Ghosts I-IV for Quake, a new mod which turns id Software’s gibtastic first-person shooter into a quiet walking simulator and couples it with a calmer soundtrack. While Quake’s original 1996 soundtrack is an industrial dirge by the popular beat combo Trent Reznor & The Nine Inchnails, this mod replaces it with tunes from their chilled-out 2008 album Ghosts I-IV – which is legally fine to include, thanks to its Creative Commons licensing. The mod is organised by JP LeBreton, a designer and level designer who worked on the first two BioShock games and has developed quite an interest in peacefully exploring seminal FPSs. (more…)