Quake Brutalist Jam III

I have just returned from a journey to a bizzare computer world. Quake Brutalist Jam III is its name. It's a free mod running on an engine of the original Quake from 1996. You'd think a 30 year old FPS game would be a decaying carcass, rotted by outdated and unintuitive design, clunkyness and overall jank. But in this case it's quite the opposite. When idSoftware made their next-gen fully 3D shooter, they got it so right that many games years into the future still relied on Quake's design philosophies and even bits of its code (like hey, did you know that Half-Life Alyx still uses the same pattern for flickering lights as Quake?). All that makes gameplay great and smooth, challenging even some of the modern releases.

QBJ3 - as the name suggests - is a jam, where bunch of people gather to make different maps together and then submit them to be included in the mod. People who organize the whole thing provide mappers with a theme (brutalism in this example, ofcourse) and a bunch of building blocks - kit for the QBJ3 includes a completely new arsenal of weapons, new look for the enemies (as well as some new monsters aswell) and a catalogue of beautiful, crispy concrete textures.

This is not a review though. I see it more like a travel blog. I made a bunch of screenshots of different maps, see, and I can't just keep them to myself. They need to be shared somewhere!

Main hub

This is the lobby! The place with many doors, from where you go to all the other maps. It was made by QBJ3 organizers and you can see just how well they understand brutalist architecture. This place is just beautiful, it is so good!

On the images you can see the credits area, where the organizers are all listed by those great looking graffito tags; then there's this sort of auditorium with an enterance to the tutorial map and then there's the main hall with three separate galleries. The "QBJ Resurfaced" takes you to refreshed versions of fan-favourite maps from previous edition of Brutalist Jam, the "New Faces" features maps from people completely new to Quake mapping and the "Main Gallery" is self-explanatory. Not shown on the screenshots - there's also the reception, where you can select the difficulty and an employee breakroom, where you can sometimes noclip out of the floor and get sent to a secret arena.

This is one of the maps - I think is was called high rise or something like that. I like those tiny round holes housing the lamps. And their warm, orange glow - it's always nice to see brutalism with a little splash of color among all the grays.

One of the "New faces" maps. It had you climb this big, decaying structure in the middle of nowhere, kinda like Utrakill 7-4. There were lots of OSHA violations there, you could fall to your death pretty easily. The picture shows one of the final rooms, I liked those arches.

Now this map. Oh, this map. It was made by a user called "Rabbit" and it was ONE HOUR LONG. Which somehow isn't even the biggest map in the mod. Absolute pleasure to play through. It had these pretty drawings splattered across the walls. Every secret was marked by one. One of those secrets even had you jump few times in front of a picture of a rabbit to "amuse the hare". If I ever feel like playing more Quake mods I'll be sure to check out Rabbit's other creations.

Another of "New faces" maps. Don't remember much about it, sorry.

One of returning maps. It was all riddled with red and yellow accents - again, it's good to have a bit of color.

This map was called something like: "Guess where I ran out of time? Everywhere!" - unforutnately, since this was a jam, mappers had limited time to submit their works and some didn't come out as great as they could be if the author had more time. This map shows this - some areas were unfinished and monster encounters were pretty lacking. However it still remains one of the best looking maps in the mod as you can undoubtedly see.

Pretty, but this is another one where I don't have much to add.

Another returning map. This one had you fight inside three of those towers. The lighting and sheer sense of scale is amazing, like something out of a movie - on a 30 year old engine!

You can probably see a pattern - I really like triangles.

This was a returning map, that was also made by Rabbit! It was hour long aswell! Technically this was like three different maps floating next to each other. At least one of them resembled a real-life building - namely the Naha Prefactural Museum in Okinawa (which I didn't capture on screenshots sadly).

A great example of how lush vegetation and concrete go hand-in-hand. This, along with light-emmiting panels reminded me of overgrown verion of Aperture Labs in Portal 2. Whole map was just a nice place to be in.

One of the longer maps. The concrete walls of this one hid a horrible fleshy secret. Heaps of gore seeping through the cracks.

This one was named "Sector 7". It's somehow beyond me how this was one of the "New faces" maps, I mean look at it! It's a work of a proffesional! Authenthicaly designed industrial surroundings and housing blocks that speak deeply to my slavic heart. And the megastructure that I at first thought was part of the world geometry - but at closer inspection turned out to be a skybox - really well camouflaged!

This one was called "Creeping around the reactor" I think. And as its name says, it was a recreation of a nuclear reactor - one place where brutalism works not only aesthetically but also practically. The administration building shown on the picture also seems inspired by a real-life place - Geisel Library in La Jolla, California.

"One Need not be a House" is a hell of a title for a map. I am so ashamed of myself by not making any more screenshots of this place, I'm not one of those video game photographers, I couldn't find more good shots. But belive me, it is a place to see, it is a place to be. Beautiful and serene, whole level takes place on an island and has an open structure, inviting you to explore.

And that's all the pictures

I may have written in the beginning that I have returned from this journey, but the truth is that at the time of writing this I still have about 13 maps left to beat. If any of them catch my eye I'll update the page with more screenshots. Until then, see ya!

Damn, that was long. I should make "back to top" button like real websites do, but I'm too lazy. Sorry again.