You can now play Quake 3 Arena on your Oculus Quest 2

What you need to know

• Quake 3 Arena comes to the Quest via a new mod that gives it full motion controls and dedicated multiplayer servers.
• The mod includes the Quake 3 demo, so players can try it out if they don't already own Quake 3 Arena.
• Players will need to sideload the mod onto their Quest 2 and also need to own Quake 3 Arena, which can be purchased online.

There may be plenty of multiplayer shooters on the market, but few games channel the energy of the classic Quake 3 Arena. That's especially true in VR, where comfort levels for players often come at the expense of speed or other more traditional gameplay mechanics. That all gets thrown out the window with Quake 3 Quest, which features all of the blisteringly fast gameplay and cutthroat mechanics you probably remember from the original release over 20 years ago.

Quake 3 Quest is a "mod" that you can sideload to your Oculus Quest or Meta Quest 2. Right now, the developers recommend only running it on a Quest 2 until further optimizations are made for the original Quest's less powerful hardware but, if you're feeling experimental, head to the SideQuest listing to download Quake 3 Quest for free and get started. The download includes the official id Software demo for Quake 3, so you can play around and get comfortable with the mechanics before jumping head-on into a proper multiplayer game.

Quake 3 Quest is a mod that's similar to the recently released Questcraft, which brought Minecraft Java Edition to the Quest 2. Like Questcraft and other Dr Beef mods — which includes classics like Half-Life, Doom 3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and other Quake titles — Quake 3 Quest is an app that runs on your Quest and looks similar to other best Quest 2 games when you launch it. The difference is that you'll need to own Quake 3 on Steam or another platform since you'll need to copy those game files over to your Quest. Since this is an app that runs the official game files, a legal copy of the game is a necessity.

Quake 3 Quest features fully tracked VR weapons and a special VR weapon selection method. The game supports full cross-platform play with PC and Android, supports many popular Quest 3 Arena mods — including custom characters like Darth Vader or Homer Simpson — and even has dedicated VR servers if you'd rather just play with other Quest gamers.

There's a companion app that makes mods and map pack installation relatively simple, and even a special Quest Home environment for when you're not playing the game. The companion app is automatically installed with Quake 3 Quest when you install it through the Sidequest app. You'll find it and Quake 3 Quest under "unknown sources" in the library menu on the Quest.

As with any mod, you'll need to do a bit of legwork to get things going but, once you've got it installed, you'll be enjoying the fruits of your labor in no time. That also opens the door for trying other Dr Beef mods for classic PC shooters which can all run natively on Quest. Quake 3 Quest is free, but players are encouraged to donate to the Dr Beef team to keep development efforts going.