Back in the day, I was a massive fan of Quake multiplayer. I never really got to play online since the internet was too flaky for us back then, but I logged a LOT of time playing against the ReaperBots in Quake I and playing Quake III. I haven't played much for years, but then I came across QuakeLive and signed up for BetaTesting. And I'm really not enjoying it much. I'm getting slaughtered on a pretty embarrassing level... even against skill-matched players I have yet to score a single frag in duels, and I can sometimes end a deathmatch game with 2 frags or less. Granted I'm out of practice but that's just stupid. Often, I'll see a player appear and before I can even react I'm dead. Or I'll sneak up behind someone facing the other way and suddenly I'm dead because they turned and fired before I even saw them move. Or I'll be shooting someone loads and thinking I am hitting them and then I end up dead from 1 or 2 hits. Maybe a bunch of this is down to lag but I'm not seeing much over 50-60 ping which isn't too bad is it? Anyway I'm rambling. My question is whether this game is simply too fast-paced for me - it seems really frantic but I don't know if other FPS games are much different? Maybe I just suck in my old age, or maybe something else is worth considering. I'd be keen on something not just released, maybe 1-2 years old so my PC can keep up and a community exists. Recommendations?

I play alot of the Half life 2 mod called Insurgency, it has a decent sized community, and Half life 2 was released a number of years ago, so Insurgency should work fine on most computers. (My own comp isn't too incredible, but plays Insurgency smoothly)

Insurgency has no free-for-all, it's entirely team vs team capturing objective points. It's frequently called a 'realism mod', although the developers say they are more interested in making a 'fun' game then a 'realistic' game.

It's under active development and has gained official Valve recognition by being put up for downloaded off Steam. It's free, but you need Half life 2 (and maybe a Orange Box game, I'm not sure). Even though it's still being developed, the game is very stable, and looks incredible (to me). It has a decent selection of maps, and more are intended to be released in the future.

Just make sure you choose a good server to play on, otherwise you'd just get spawnkilled and TKed, or mic-spammed. (The servers I play on rarely have these problems, they are well admin-ed)

Because it's (sortof) a 'realism' mod, there are no crossairs onscreen, and you must use your gun's ironsight, or else shoot 'from the hip' (without using the gun's sight). Also, you die in 2-3 hits and it's a pretty fast paced game.

Once you learn to stick to cover, and not run out into the open, the game becomes really enjoyable. The first week or so of play, though, you'll die frequently, until you get used to it. It can be confusing at first, but it's definitely worth playing once you figure out how to.

I dont like quakelive much, the gameplay needs some tweaking to match modern expectations. I liked quake 3 back in the day but it hasnt stood the test of time.

I would have been much happier with quake 2 or unreal tournament. Both better than quake 3 imo.

If i want to played dm i play unreal tournament 2004, i think its fun even if you are loosing.

I haven't played it in a while but I always thought Half Life 2 Deathmatch was pretty good fun.

I would personally avoid CS:Source for similar reasons to yours for QuakeLive; CS:Source is full of hardcore players who are basically pro, you will get your ass brought to you on a silver dinner service about ten billion times over and I know someone who's been playing it for much longer, much more often and is immeasurably better than me at it and even he says the same thing. If you're looking to just have fun without getting constantly owned, I strongly discourage you from trying CS:Source and I'm told that CS 1.6 is even more hardcore even though I've never tried it. it's one of those games where you die so often it stops being fun.

I would go for UT2k4. Never owned it but played it at a friend's and thought it was brilliant. Avoid UT III though because it's not so good.

A couple of votes for UT 2004 then, that's more the vein I'm looking for - standard DM, CTF etc.
What about one of the COD games? I've played COD4 on the PS3 and didn't like it too much but I think that's mainly due to the fact I struggle to see clearly with 4-player split-screen, and am not used to playing FPS with anything other than mouse/keyboard.

CoD4 is a good game. It's unfortunately still extremely expensive even though it was released forever ago.

Like most shooters you need to find a good server/community to play with.

If you want a cheap game you could play Project Reality (It's a BF2 mod, and BF2 costs ~10USD atm). It's very slow paced and games can last several hours.

As far as the gameplay is concerned the genre hasn't evolved that much. ID has pretty much inverted what there was to invent. Unreal and HL/Conterstrike have added one last twist (mainly on weapons), since it's been a graphics update in most games.
I still enjoy playing Unreal 1 against bots, i usually don't play multiplayer on the Internet unless it's people I know.

UT2k4 fan here, I usually just play Onslaught, and there are precious few servers for that left, but I suppose that's to be expected for a game of that age. Other gametypes still seem to thrive, and I've always thought that UT did most of those gametypes better than their contemporaries, and that nobody's beaten the game as a whole yet.

UT runs into the same problem that all older games encounter, though: There are some people out there who are so good they make you want to puke. Every so often, you'll play for an hour and every single round some guy will zip around in a Manta, dodging tank shells and AVRiLs and annihilating everyone at mach 2. It's like buying a copy of StarCraft and hitting the ladder on Battle.Net--you're going to be eating dust a lot of the time.

As an update, since QuakeLive went to open beta, there are a lot more people around of a more 'normal' skill level. The lower-skill servers are actually populated now so I'm not forced to play with hard-core gamers. As a result it's MUCH more fun and I'd now recommend it, although you do seem to play the same 4-5 levels all the time.

I would say Tribes 2. It has very good multiplayer gameplay and pretty good graphics even though it's 8 years old

It's even free to download it.

TribesNext.com