Introduction

Have you ever wondered why all first person shooters are so unrealistic?
Have you ever wanted to play a game where you could shoot somebody, and they'd die?
Have you ever wanted to be the star in an action movie?
Have you ever wanted to play Quake 2 with real weapons and real life rules where you're never more than a shot away from death?

Now you can.

Basics

There are two types of game you can play in Action Quake, Deathmatch or Teamplay.
As the name implies Deathmatch is similar to standard Quake 2 Deathmatch in that the idea is to kill as many of your opponents as possible without getting killed yourself, but that's where the similarities end.

In Quake 2 if you're shot you'll probably be not too badly hurt, and you'll be able to run away and pick up some more health, In Action, if you're shot you'll take a lot of damage (it may kill you outright depending on which part of the body it hits) and you'll probably start to bleed. While you're bleeding your health runs down untill either you die or you bandage yourself, bandaging takes time and while you're doing it you can't do anything else (other than move).

Teamplay is slightly different because you need to work together, both teams start with whatever weapons and items they want, then they fight until one team has been eliminated - the surviving team wins the round and play starts again. Usually you'll play a certain number of rounds on one map before moving onto a new one.

Unlike standard Quake 2 you have very limited ammo, you'll need to reload which is a few seconds in which you can die, once you run out completely you'll be forced to use your knife, throw your knife away and all you can do is kick! Moral of the story: don't waste ammo.

In Quake 2 if you fell a long way you'd normally take a little damage but you'd almost always survive. In AQ2, if you fall too far you'll take leg damage slowing you and making your movement erratic untill you bandage, fall even further and you die.

Weapons

In almost every other game your starting weapon is not even worth using, in Action you start with a .45 caliber pistol that, in the right hands, is as deadly as a knife in the heart.

The weapons in Action are all based on real life armaments and each has it's own advantages and disadvantages.

At any one time you may carry a maximum of: 2 pistols, 1 special weapon, 2 grenades, lots of knives and enough ammo to keep you going for a while (these settings can be altered by the server administrator).

Items

In addition to the weapons you may pick up one item at a time (in teamplay you choose the item you want), each item offers different bonuses to the user:

Scoring

If you kill an enemy you get one frag, if you kill yourself (say by jumping off a roof) you lose one frag, if you shoot an enemy off a roof you get one frag but they don't lose one. There are also additional bonuses for killing a certain number of enemies without dying yourself.

Teamplay

In teamplay the object is to be the last team alive. You must work together with your teammates to kill the enemy, to help you do this there is a team only message function and the option to send radio messages (pre-recorded waves) to your team.
You don't have to worry about finding a weapon in teamplay because you get to choose which special weapon and which item you wish to start with (although you might still run out of ammo), in addition you will have your pistol and knife.
If the server has friendly fire (FF) enabled you will hurt your teammates if you hit them with a stray shot, this means you must be much more careful when firing. If you kill a teammate you lose a frag.

Once a team is eliminated the round point goes to the surviving team and a new round starts, the winners are the team who have won the most rounds by the end of the map, if both teams have won the same amount of rounds the winners are the team with the highest total frag count.