Quake III: Arena

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
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
Many things have changed since I first reviewed Quake III, but most of my comments still stand. While the improvements in video card development are on show in Half-Life 2, Quake III actually holds up fairly well for a five year old title. It's still colourful and entertaining in its presentation, and while there aren't vehicles (Unreal Tournament 2004) or really expansive maps (Counter-Strike, etc.), everything still comes together nicely for a mindless romp.

I'm still impressed to this day with how much ID were able to get out of the title in terms of character design. Many of the titles that came out at the same time, including Unreal Tournament, relied on simple colour or clothing changes to differ the team players, for the most part. Quake III tried something different and it worked, with some really crazy characters (the eyeball for one).

The Bad
Quake III started a new age of gaming, taking players out of the usual single player environment and placing a greater emphasis on multiplayer and team play. It's influence on future titles, therefore, was a very big one. Multiplayer is a big selling point for many titles, and up until Quake II and Arena, it was rarely looked at outside of sports or racing games, except for the few that did try.

But of course, just having multiplayer and nothing else doesn't always work. Quake III does have a single player campaign, but essentially it's the multiplayer levels stretched out to one on ones with bots. It helps to give newer players a chance at working on their skills, but it doesn't cut it compared to those hoping for another true action title.

Like I said before, Quake III does hold up well compared to newer releases, long after its first release. So there aren't many new downsides I can update with, which is a good thing.

The Bottom Line
Q3 is the perfect type of game to play at a LAN. Quick to setup and get going, and a hell of a lot of fun. Without a decent single player mode to back it up, however, there isn't that much to take out of it in the end.

Looking back and playing it again, it hasn't lost any of its charm or entertainment factor. Pick up the mods or Team Arena expansion, and you've got a title that can bring endless amounts of fun, and now at a much cheaper price. So don't shy away from Quake III if you do happen to find it at a bargain bin, and you are yet to try it. You may be surprised at how much fun it really is. I still enjoy it to this day.

The Good
In 1999, id Software did something that, depending on who you ask, was genius or stupidity: release an FPS game that almost completely eschewed single player gameplay and focused on multiplayer. Released side-by-side with Epic's Unreal Tournament, it became a cult FPS and is regarded by many as id's magnum opus. Which is surprising when you consider that Quake 3 is less of a game than any of its predecessors.

Quake 3 condenses the FPS genre into the simplest form possible. Realism, story, and design have all been given the shaft and what is left is nothing more than the raw basics of the genre. You pick up weapons, pick up ammo, and try to kill your enemies more times than they kill you. Doom is rocket science next to this. Predictably the game was the subject of a lot of backbiting and criticism, and many claimed it typified the style over substance trend gaming had gotten into. But I'm willing to forgive Quake 3 simply because it was the most fun deathmatch game of its time when released, and even today more than holds its own.

The core of the game, deathmatch mode, is a blast. The transparent pick-up-and-play design to it that makes it very easy to get into, and whether you're a novice or a pro there's something for everyone. Everything in the game is just right. Your characters move at just the right speed, the weapons are all perfectly balanced (for the first time in history, we get a default weapon that is not a total piece of crap), the powerups complement the gameplay perfectly, and in another first for id Software the maps that come with the game actually do not suck. I'm sure all veteran deathmatchers have horror stories about the terrible Quake maps, but Q3A's maps are almost flawless, speaking of endless playtesting and tweaking on the parts of the level designers. No longer does the first person to find the rocket launcher win, and no longer can you rack +20 frags by camping. "The Longest Yard" in particular must be one of the most fun and well-rounded FPS deathmatch maps ever.

The game becomes drastically different depending on how many players there are. If it's just you and a friend the game is a tense affair filled with stalking and stealth. If you've got sixteen players the game becomes a crazy mosh pit where you're frantically shooting non-stop at everything. Just about everything is user-configurable allowing for weird situations where every bullet kills or where players can only move at a snail's pace.

While Quake III Arena's focus may be its multiplayer deathmatch component, it does have a single-player mode. When playing alone, you can go up against artificial intelligence-controlled bots. The bots do their best to act like human players, and while I won't say they have the greatest AI ever they still put up a good fight. Each bot has different characteristics that govern the way it fights. The portly biker chick Lucy tends to duck a lot. Xaero, a Zen master and the final boss of the single-player mode, is also master of the railgun. There's also a tournament mode where you duel with increasingly tougher bots.

id Software's calling card has always been their boundary-pushing graphical engines, from the EGA graphics on Commander Keen to the realistic 3D environments of Quake I and II. With Quake III Arena they upped the ante yet again, delivering every cutting-edge effect in the book from volumetric lighting to curved surfaces, allowing the map designers freedom to create environments that go from hard edged industrial to squishy organic, all with geometric detail that is impressive even by today's standards.

And like all of the Quake games, it was built from the ground up to be user-modifiable. This spawned a lively modding scene that remains active to this day, tweaking the game's extremely flexible engine to produce everything from unofficial patches to completely new games. id Software actively supported this by releasing the source code and all their early design docs. That's one thing you can say about them, you never feel like a criminal when you're messing around with their games.

And I love the industrial metal soundtrack Sonic Mayhem did for the game. Seriously, I've got it on CD.

The Bad
Quake 3 is unapologetically a one-trick pony. It's about deathmatch, deathmatch, and deathmatch. Outstanding deathmatch perhaps, but once you're sick of deathmatch there's nothing else here.

This is not a criticism that can be applied universally across the genre. Unreal Tournament had a wide variety of multiplayer modes, including capture the flag, domination, and many others. There are people who spend as long learning to play Counter Strike as a grandmaster does learning chess. Even games like Duke Nukem 3D and Blood have combined great multiplayer modes with compelling single-player components.

Or look at it this way. Relatively few people play vanilla Quake 3 any more. It's all about mods like Rocket Arena and Urban Terror. In terms of replay value Quake 3 doesn't go the distance.

And on a less significant note Quake 3's in-built game browser doesn't really work properly and often will refuse connections. GameSpy Arcade is your best bet when looking for games on the internet. It's sad when GameSpy is the lesser of two evils.

The Bottom Line
I could roast Quake 3 all day long for being unoriginal, derivative, etc and to be honest there's fairness in those criticisms. But in the end, you've got to review the game on its own terms. Quake 3 was made so new players could jump right in. It was made so long-time Quake fans wouldn't be too unfamiliar. It was made for people with short attention spans. Maybe it's a repugnant design philosophy but complaining about Quake 3 because it's retarded is like complaining about ice cream because it melts. With Quake 3 you've got an arcade game in a 3D-accelerated engine, and we've all got to accept that and move on.

For what it's worth, you'll have trouble finding a higher-quality multiplayer FPS anywhere. In movie jargon, Quake 3 "works".

The Good
Back in the day, people loved Quake and Quake 2 for their beautiful graphics, awesome gameplay, but mostly, for their multiplayer. Then, in 1999, id Software released Quake 3, which was a combination of all good stuff from Quake 1 and 2's multiplayer.

As always, in the tradition of Quake games (and any other games developed by id Software), Quake 3, as a new game, introduced a new revolutionary engine, which was more beautiful, more realistic than the previous engine and was later used in newer games, many of which later became a legend, such as Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Call of Duty, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and others. The textures and physics really were impressive back in the day. If some people think that Quake 3 wasn't as good as Counter Strike or Unreal Tournament, will, they may even be right at some point, but one thing is for sure - they can never tell us that it didn't have better graphics than those games.

Decent audio effects and soundtracks were also present. The last ones, being written by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly, were maybe not as good as those from Quake 2, but were still enjoyable to hear in the background while you were fragging like a machine.

Quake 3 had a good variety of powerups - the good old Quad Damage, which never lets down (though now being only triple damage in reality), the Radiation suit similar to the ones from previous games, the invisibility, which resembles the Partial Invisibility from Doom, and some good new entrances, like the Regeneration, Flight and Haste. All being fun to use, they really add it to the gameplay. The weapons arsenal is like a mix of Doom and previous Quake games. Besides weak starting weapons like the Machinegun and the Gauntlet we got the good old shotty, the rocket launcher, which still allows us to perform a rocket jump, the grenade launcher, the favourite of the snipers, the railgun, the all-mighty lighting gun from Quake 1, the new BFG10K and a plasma gun very similar to the one from Doom. A little added thing to the railgun is that you can now choose the colour of the railguns fire effect. Not much of a new addition, but still gives a variety to the game. Q3 has a big variety of maps, which range from old castle like architectures from Quake 1 to some bouncy space themed maps like in Quake 2. There is an endless roster of playable characters, some of which are heroes of previous id games, like the Doomguy, the Q1 Marine, Q2 Marine, and female counterparts of some of them, as well as some new skins based on those guys.

Quake 3 also introduced some new stuff to the multiplayer world of FPS games. It's good to know that your a decent player, but it's even cooler if you get some rewards/bonuses for some awesome tricks you did. For example, you kill 2 enemies in less than 2 seconds, and for that you get an Excellent reward above your head, to let the other players know about that, and the announcer also comments "Excellent!" to you. There are many rewards like these in the game. Things like these were later used in other online FPS games, or in multiplayer of FPS games, like Halo, for example.

The Bad
There are more than single things to not like about this game, however. At first, its very strange that you can't play TDM on every DM map, which is very disappointing, cause i'd love to play a Team Game on a cool map like The Longest Yard, for example. This however, was fixed in some modded servers, so it's not such a big problem.

My second complaint about this game is, that it's not such a long-living game like UT and CS. You get tired of this game faster than of those games, and it is less popular, judging by the number of servers and players. There is just something which doesn't make this game as good as it is supposed to be. Throughout the history of Quake, the games in the series always welcomed a good multiplayer mode, but since Quake 3, other companies started to develop better online games, which are a much more beast than Quake 3. And, when Quake 4 came out, will, it was more than just a disappointment, it was an embarrassment, when compared to other games of that day.

Also, another small complaint from me - the sound of the weapons. Just horrible, so weak, and the way they fire is even worse. The weapons from previous Quake games were a lot more powerful than those in Q3.

The Bottom Line
Despite all of its flaws, Quake 3 is still a legendary game, which is still sometimes fun to play next to some of the best online games of the present day. There is just one thing which completely differs it from all other games - the way its balanced in its gameplay and how friendly it is to all those who play 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.

The Good
This game has one of the best 3D engines to date. I disagree with people saying that it's the best as I find Unreal more appealing (haven't played Tournament yet), but the eye-candy is definitely amazing. The 3D engine is great in complexity and generally beautiful. The AI is one of the best I've encountered yet, unlike the veritable stupidity of the bots in Unreal. The bots in Quake III behave reasonably well and human-like (although are simply too difficult in high levels) and the only single player experience available in this game is quite satisfying. The level design is amazing, my personal favorite being The Longest Yard, and the levels are fairly large and allow a great deal of gameplay. The sound effects are excellent (the music isn't all that good though) and the A3D implementation is awesome.

Also noteworthy are the support for hardware transform and lighting (a la GeForce 256) and support for Symetrical Multiprocessing (SMP), which gives an incredible speed bost on dual-processor sysmtems.

The Bad
AI is way too difficult in the higher levels (read: hardcore, or even worse, nightmare) and simply does not miss with the railgun, which is rather annoying. The 3D engine is very slow on relatively modest hardware: last year's near-best computer (my P2-350 with Riva TNT and 128mb memory) is this year's sludge, and I can get more than 30 frames per second in 640x480, 32 bit colour (23ish if I turn A3D on). The music simply sucks (too heavy on the bass and too lenient on the quality).

I'm also personally against the concept of a multiplayer oriented game (including Unreal Tournament), especially because although working on the fastest reasonably acheivable internet connection in Israel (single-channel ISDN), I still get a 450-500ms ping rate, which makes gaming practically impossible, and I don't have LAN-parties on a regular basis.

The Bottom Line
A great game which emphasizes multiplayer gaming. If you're a single-player fan like me, stay away from it.

The Good
The game is simply great! It contains lots of MODs, weapons, and websites to go to. There are hundreds of programs and servers which support it. The game has a HUGE amount of customizable options and a highly interactive built-on console. You can also create your own maps, skins, models, and MODs due to the highly customizable files.

The Bad
There are really no flaws with this game other than some minor glitches, which were probably fixed in the later versions of the game.

The Bottom Line
This game should be interesting to all types of players because of the huge variety of MODs.

The Good
Well, to begin, Q3A is not as good as Unreal Tournament. The only thing Q3A has over UT are way better models (one for every mood you're in at the time) and the running around/shooting feels a little better than UT. Weapons are the same as Q2 also, and there is not very much lag. But if you're in the mood the relieve any stress besides getting pi$$ed of by your teammates in UT, lock 'n load and pick up your copy of Quake 3 Arena!

The Bad
Plain deatmatching gets pretty boring after awhile; you know you should take a break when you start fragging yourself on purpose in this game. Also, sometimes it feels like a really big expansion pack for Quake 2, and some people like myelf will get a hadache from playing it two hours straight, because of the bright graphics and fast gameplay. Also, the maps could be better. But the worst part is that you get a couple Capture the Flag levels and that's it; two modes of play. Fortunately there is an expansion pack coming out for team play.

The Bottom Line
Shoot people in a first person perspective over the net.

The Good
Graphics: The stages were colorful and depthful, and were each created with special care. Some areas have tons of powerups but are not safe, while others are sneaky and hidden but will get you wastin ammo like crazy.

Sound: Sound is great, sound fx are great, did I mention sound is great?

Models: Each model is good and bad. Some are fast but aren't very good at heavy weaponry, while other are slow but built strong.

The Bad
Nothing

The Bottom Line
One small step for man. One small leap for mankind. 5 out of 5