Quakecon 2016: The Quake Champions gameplay trailer is gloriously gruesome

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Quake 3 is hands-down, the very best arena-style deathmatch shooter in the market. Yes, even today.The likes of Halo, Call of Duty and Battlefield have established their own niche, and Unreal Tournament is a distant second, but Quake was there first and even now, almost 15 years later, Quake 3 still has no competition. In fact, id Software’s own developers couldn’t improve on it with Quake IV.The upcoming Quake Champions looks set to change all of that, however. We only saw a cinematic trailer at E3 this year, but at QuakeCon 2016, we got our first look at the game to be.The video is only 76 seconds long but oh my, what glorious 76 seconds they are! The gameplay seems as fast-paced, brutal and as gruesome as Quake should be. The graphics are also stunning, which is to be expected, given that it’s probably based on Doom’s id Tech 6 engine.Most of the gameplay elements that veterans will love and know seem to be present, including jump pads, rocket jumping and even strafe jumping. I am a little worried about the lack of weapon pick-ups in the video; timing weapon respawns was an integral part of Quake’s meta-game, after all.2016’s Doom also dumped weapon pick-ups in favour of class-based combat, and it wasn’t as much fun as I hoped. To each his own however, and to be fair, the trailer only shows off pre-alpha footage.Give me DM17 and a rocket-launcher though, and I don’t think I’ll care about the rest of the game.