As most of us have probably noticed, Third Person Quake has been mod of the week down at planetquake. I decided to give it a go out of sheer boredom, and was pleasantly surprised.

Personally I thought it was a pretty stupid idea when I first saw it. Woopy do, I can see a little bit behind the quake marine. Today I found myself bored (all half-lifed out at the moment. Think I finally got to the end guy, a massive floating embryo thing, and I keep dying, as you would expect) so I thought I'd download it, seeing it was only 150k, and give it a go.

And I'm quite glad I did. Although it sounds rather pointless, it works very well - the game has an entirely new feel now. It even breathes fresh air into the stale single player game, giving you a whole new perspective (excuse the pun) on the game.

It's a lot easier to see where you are in the game world, and I found that jumping and moving along other hazards much easier - although the enemies are now much more of a problem. The cross hair doesn't quite seem to be accurate in some places. I've also found my play style significantly different - instead of peeking around corners I madly charge the enemy and fire point blank range with the super shotgun. Sometimes this works well..... and sometimes it doesn't.

It takes about a minute to get used to - I had a small problem with "over strafing" for a while. The viewpoint is also no five minute job. It's sort of like tomb raider, except your not always looking at the quake marines butt. (Doesn't look nearly as good either.) Like tomb raider, the camera angle does swing and change, depending on your current environment (ie it doesn't go through the walls).

It's not perfect - there are clipping errors from time to time, with the orange limbo, however these only exist for a less than a second and are few and far between. My only real criticsm would be that in small tight areas (ie airvents, sewer tunnels) your body tends to block your view and you can't see what your shooting (or what is shooting you.) My advice? Get the hell out of the small tight areas :)

It also supports DM and CTF. I haven't actually tried these. To use third person perspective in a regular game, back up your original gamex86.dll and replace it with the third person quake dll. If you want to try it for CTF, you will have to download the CTF version from Spine Design website.

Of course, what would a review be without pics. I would put them in the usual fashion except you can't click on them to see the large version that way, so I've attached them at the bottom here with my usual repetoire (I did spell that right didn't I?) of witty comments.

Got the Quad Chaingun Blues

That'll learn those bastards for being the bad guys :)

Up Close and Personal

I can't remember the super shotgun being so much fun!

Eat this Punk!

Nothing like the good old super shotgun for multiple red pixels.

Fire in the Head

Here I am mowing down them baddins. Whoa, incoming grenade at 12 o'clock!

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