10 Reasons Why Quake Is The Hardest FPS Of All Time

In Quake, nothing is given for free. At the beginning of the round, you are armed with a machine gun that is little more than a peashooter and must gather the items that you need around the map. This of course ties into map knowledge and depending on your spawn, you must be able to quickly find the strongest items on your side of the arena.

We have already spoken about the Holy Trinity and its necessity to have a fair chance at fighting your opponent in all situations. No less important are power items, which spawn periodically in specific locations and are highly contested. These include yellow armor, red armor, mega health, quad damage, and the pentagram of protection.

The main objective of Quake, besides fragging your opponent of course, is to control these items. This is done by collecting and timing them, which will allow you to pick them up again as soon as they respawn. For example, red armor (gives you 100 armor) and mega health (gives you 100 HP) have 30 second respawn timers and if you manage to control both of them, your huge stack will enable you to make bold moves and bully your opponent.

Especially in Duel mode, item control is everything and you will see pro players employ different tricks to throw off their opponent such as forcing their respawn upon death by gibbing their corpse and delaying the pick-up so as to prevent them from timing it properly. One pro player who is particularly known for his impeccable item control is Cooller whom long-time rival Rapha described rather aptly as a 'boa constrictor'.