Quake III: Arena

The Good
Sure Quake 3 doesn't have the huge variety of UT or TFC multiplayer, but it offers the best Deathmatching that you are ever going to get...no matter what people tell me about UT and TFC, I end up starting up Quake 3 a lot more often then those games...

The atmosphere in Quake 3 is much easier to get wrapped up in...the beautiful graphics and the sound effects are immersive...the lighting effects are awesome...fire a few rounds from the plasma rifle and you'll see what I mean...

The player models!!! all of the skins are extremely high quality...from giant eyeballs to aliens to the good old Doom guy...they've got it all...and they are extremely carefully rendered, down to the smallest detail...

The difficulty setting is highly adjustable...everyone from a FPS newbie to a deathmatch veteran can find a suitable difficulty level...I dare say that the enemy AI in Quake 3 is probably the hardest at the most difficult setting than any other FPS out there

All of the levels are designed for extremely fast-paced action gameplay...unlike some of the maps in other FPS games that are only eyecandy...every map in Quake 3 rocks...

Although it does not have the variety that UT has, the many excellent mods, like Urban Warfare, and WFArena are coming out and they add many more options than Deathmatching

The Bad
If deathmatch is not your thing(in my case, this does not apply)...then you probably don't like the action in Quake 3...basically its: 1. see enemy 2. click 3. BOOM!!! 4. repeat

Also, it doesn't have the nifty mutators for UT, like rocket arena or instagib or fatboy...etc...nor does it have as many playing modes...only Deathmatch, CTF, Teamplay

Some of the weapons really suck...but I guess that is inevitable in every game (Bio Rifle, anyone?)...the machine gun has got to be the worst balanced weapon in FPS history...you can empty your entire clip at someone and they'll just stare back at you, barely hurt...and the Railgun takes an insane amount of time to reload...I guess this is to cut down on the number of campers...but it's still really annoying having to wait so long...

The Bottom Line
If you're looking for an assualt, teambased strategy shooter, leave Quake 3 alone, but if you're the kind of person that finds fragging everyone you see on the screen extremely appealing, Quake 3 is the fragfest for you...

The Good
The concept was clever. I admired Id's boldness in making a multiplayer-only game. Previous games in the Quake series had been criticised for their bland single-player experience, and it was brave of Id to damn the torpedoes and put their sterling silver in one basket. Especially here in the UK, where we lagged behind the Americans by a couple of years; broadband has only recently become the mainstream.

It was doubly bold of Id to ignore the obvious gap in the market for a single-player Quake III, given that Quake II had sold well and that the obvious competition - Unreal - was also going the multiplayer-only route. So, three cheers to Id for being bold. It worked, too. Quake III was a substantial hit that spawned a little galaxy of spin-offs. It appealed to me as much as black pudding, but I admired it nonetheless.

But what about the game itself? Quake III is very attractive. It follows the same visual path as Quake II, in that it is colourful and cartoonish. There was a lot of hype at the time about curved arches and glowing lights etc, and although it is not the technical breakthrough of its predecessors, the visual style hasn't really dated today.

The intro movie was short but fantastic. If only the Doom film had been done in the same style.

The Bad
I can think of few more unpleasant things than teenagers. I certainly don't want to spend time playing computer games with them. With this in mind I am uninterested in Quake III's multiplayer game. I was similarly uninterested in Unreal: Tournament as a multiplayer title, but I enjoyed it immensely because it looked fantastic and the computer opponents were enjoyable. They ranged from stupid cannon fodder to absolute fiends, but they seemed alive. Sometimes I felt that I could even put down my weapon and negotiate with them. The sniper rifle was wonderful. I loved to shoot off their heads.

Quake III reminded me of another multiplayer-only title, X-Wing Vs TIE Fighter. In the latter game the AI was duff, in that it was entirely robotic. The enemy spacecraft were uniformly perfect shots and were only there to fill out the numbers. They did not miss. They could, superhumanly, tell where you were pointing your crosshairs and where you were going. They could track you and lead and nail you like the fire control software in an F-14 jet fighter. Six targets at once, from a range of two hundred miles. I felt as if I was the navigator of a Russian bomber, contemplating the incoming missiles, unable to dodge or bail out. It was not pleasant.

Quake III is not nearly as bad as all that, but the AI is nonetheless too obviously computerised, in the sense that it is a perfect shot that has been degraded with some clever code. It quickly becomes impossible to suspend disbelief and imagine that you are playing against another person. This can be alleviated by lowering the difficulty level, but that smacks of failure.

Some people will argue that I am simply a very poor gamesplayer, and that I am old and have lost my touch. This is the kind of argument a teenager might use, and it is one of the reasons why I have come to detest teenagers. It is a conservative argument. An argument that stems from a desire not to lose face in front of one's peers by admitting weakness. It is the kind of argument that ends up with a drunken child trying to walk along a wall, and falling off and breaking his neck.

Unreal: Tournament is the more complex game; there are far more modes of play and you can customise the environment and the effects that weapons have upon it. I assume that there are mods and patches to allow this in Quake III as well, but by 1999 I had begun to grow past the age of caring and I care less in 2006.

The Bottom Line
Most reviews compared Quake III with Unreal: Tournament, and so did mine. There were partisans on both sides, all of seven years ago. The general consensus amongst teenage gamesplayers who I detest was that Quake III was a manly game for manly men, whereas Unreal: Tournament was a limp-wristed game for men who were not manly.

Nonetheless I prefer the latter game. Quake III is more obviously a multi-player engine with bare support for single-play, whereas Unreal: Tournament had more thought put into the single-player experience. Quake III might well be the bee's knees as a multiplayer game. As a single-player game I quickly became bored with it.

The Good
While it features virtually no story, however the main focus of the game was to make up for Quake 2's slow multiplayer which alienated most Quake players. This is not to say bots in single-player are not challenging... just that this game really shines in online or LAN multiplayer. Its deathmatch experience is the next best thing since Doom and Quake. Extremely fast gameplay, intense action, balanced weapons. expert level design, beautiful models and Carmack's once again unbelievably good graphics engine were the hallmarks of its resounding success. The only game that could slow the Quake frenzy was Counter-Strike.

The Bad
The single player part was probably its weakest part, however I found the bots to be quite entertaining on their own. A worthy substitute when fragging offline. Some opponents in certain stages were probably more lethal than their skill level should allow.

The Bottom Line
Speed, Power and Adrenaline. One of the best multiplayer experiences ever. An incredibly powerful and modable graphics engine that stood the test of time and was used even as recently as 2003.