Quake III: Arena

aka: Q3, Q3A, Quake 3, Quake Arena, Quake III: Arena (Elite Edition)
Moby ID: 649
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

The third game in the Quake series is a departure from the previous games, focusing exclusively on multiplayer arena fighting with no story-driven singleplayer part - directly competing with Epic Games that did the same with the contemporary Unreal Tournament.

The offline part takes the player through a number of one-on-one and team-based challenges against AI-controlled opponents, slowly ranking upwards in difficulty, as the character of the player's choosing. Compared to the previous titles, the colours and general design of the game are much brighter and it shakes off the dominant shades of brown and grey the previous titles in the series were known for. The player's arsenal consists of new and familiar, but redesigned weapons, including a gauntlet (melee attacks) and a machine gun as the spawn weapons, a shotgun, plasma gun, lightning gun, rocket launcher, railgun, and BFG. Each weapon has specific advantages, ranging from the amount of damage to reloading times and the ability to hit-scan opponents.

The different arenas are also filled with health bubbles, complete sets of armour and armour shards, the well-known Quad Damage power-up, ammunition, and specials such as Mega Health, Haste, Invisibility, a powerful Battlesuit, and more. As with the other Quake games, it is known for its freedom in movement. Advanced players use techniques such as rocket jumping, strafing, and circle jumping to quickly get around areas. The game offers more speed than Quake II, but it is not as fast as the original Quake. Not everything was kept - the double-jumping from the previous titles was removed for instance, but replaced with new tricks.

The single-player part only serves as a diversion for the online multiplayer options, with modes such as duel, team deathmatch (TDM), capture the flag (CTF), and more. As with Quake II, the vanilla version of the game was eventually heavily tweaked by the players' community with all-new tournament features (including voting, referees, banning, netcode updates), as it was used in professional Pro Gaming tournaments for almost ten years.

The only difference between Quake III: Arena and the limited Elite Edition is the tin box packaging.

Spellings

  • 雷神之锤III:竞技场 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Linux version)

54 People (53 developers, 1 thanks) · View all

Programming
Art
Game Designer
Level Design
CEO
Director of Business Development
Biz Assist and id Mom
Special Thanks to
Bot AI
Menu Interface
  • Raster Productions
CTF
Linux Conversion
Map Editor
GL Setup
Additional Programming
Additional Level Design
Quake III Arena music
  • Sonic Mayhem www.sonicmayhem.com
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 88% (based on 70 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 260 ratings with 12 reviews)

Still Neat

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.

Windows · by Kartanym (12418) · 2004

Fried blood

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.

Windows · by Ashley Pomeroy (225) · 2006

The most balanced online FPS game to date.

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.

Windows · by Medicine Man (328) · 2009

[ View all 12 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The PC version of Quake III Arena appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Copy protection

As Half-Life, the game shipped with a very controversial multiplayer CD key check. (The key was printed on the case of the CD-ROM)

This system reduced piracy, but also introduced several other interesting issues. Several people who had bought the game were unable to play it online because their cd-key had already been "stolen" by people who used key generator programs to find valid multiplayer keys. There are also numerous reports of Quake III: Arena boxes being opened at the store by dishonest people wanting to get a valid CD key.

Credits

After finishing the game, watch the credits roll. After the Credits show "THE END", the character with the hoverskates will skate around the screen like she's just learning.

Cut content

Quake III: Arena had several graphical features cut (assumed for performance reasons, and the arcane OpenGL ICD driver implementations at the time). Quake II-style particles and realistic flares (that occlude behind models and alpha textures) were present in earlier revisions, but did not make it to the final release of the game.

There was also a flamethrower weapon planned, as well as a 3-tier player class system (light, medium, heavy) which were also cut from the design. References to this can still be seen in older Q3Test releases, and the files of the designer player models in a patches' pak2.pk3 (the 1998 dated .skin files).

Engine

Some of the features of the id Tech 3 engine:

  • Bump mapping instead of mip mapping: Mip mapping rescaled a texture for several different sizes. Bump mapping actually applies per pixel light calculation for each texture. The trade off is processor speed vs realistic lighting.
  • Curved surfaces: Quake III will interpolate the position of a point by doing real time calculation, based on the curvature of a surface.

German index

On January 12, 2000, Quake III: Arena was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS (confirmed on March 31, 2000). For more information about what this means and to see a list of games sharing the same fate, take a look here: BPjS/BPjM indexed games.

Limited Edition

There was a Limited Edition run of a "tin" game box instead of cardboard. The only difference is the box itself, nothing else extra is included.

Multiplayer

  • A downloadable add-on map pack is available on many Quake III: Arena sites on the internet, which contains all the maps from the Dreamcast release of the game. This add-on pack allows players of the Windows/Linux version to play on servers with Dreamcast players. This makes Quake III: Arena one of the first games to support transparent Internet play between a game console and the PC!
  • In an interview on Gamasutra, designer Tim Willits called Quake III his biggest failure: "The game offered perfect multiplayer for hardcore players. In fact, they're still playing it. But the more casual gamers, and other people who actually have money, found playing next to impossible." This hints at a commercial motivation, and not the quality of the game itself.

References

  • Quake III: Arena presents some of the heroes from previous Id games as playable skins, including the Space Marine from DOOM, the marine from Quake, and a few of the different marines from Quake II. All of these models and skins have both male and female counterparts, and different color variations.
  • The game contains a reference to a popular online comic called User Friendly (www.userfriendly.org). When playing on q3dm19, pick up the fly power-up from the top of the level and fly all the way down until you’re below the final platform. Look up at the central floor and you’ll see an image of the Dust Puppy, as featured in the comic.
  • While this game was in development, it was referred to as Trinity. This was an obvious reference that it was using the third and possibly final Quake engine.
  • Some maps in Quake III: Arena include a wall decoration, that is actually The Icon of Sin, the final boss of id Software's Doom II: Hell on Earth.
  • On the map q3dm15, the severed head of John Carmack can be found lying in a pool of blood.

References to the game

The game appears in the fifth episode of the first season of the US HBO TV series Six Feet Under. The character Claire is shown playing it, doing rail shots with the quad damage activated.

Sales

50,000 copies of the game were sold within the first 3 days of its release.

Source code release

On August 19th, 2005, the full (GPL'd) source code to the game was released.

Tech demo

id Software released a technology demo of the game, called Q3Test, in early 1999. In the following five days, 2 million internet games were started worldwide. That works out to around 4 games every second.

Awards

  • GameSpy
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 03/2000 - Best Graphics in 1999
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/2000 – Best Graphics in 1999

Information also contributed by Chris Martin, Cochonou, Jason Musgrave, JubalHarshaw, Lord FlatHead, leileilol, lethal guitar, Medicine Man, Paul Budd, Sciere, Scott Monster, Tibes80 and Xoleras

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Related Sites +

  • Bill Brown - Music Composer (cinematics)
    Listen to streaming and downloadable MP3 music tracks from this title at the composer's official site.
  • PlanetQuake
    PlanetQuake was one of the first sites featuring news and file about Quake 1, and it is now probably the biggest Quake series related site. If you can't find what you want there, you probably won't find it elsewhere.
  • Quake III Forever
    Play Quake III in your browser (Shockwave needed), courtesy of Necromanthus.
  • Quake III: Arena
    Official page on id Software's website
  • Telefragged
    A very huge site dedicated to the first person shooter games, particularly focused on the Quake series.
  • The Final Hours of Quake III Arena
    GameSpot writes about the end of Q3A development in their "Behind the Games" series.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 649
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Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by DarkTalon.

Macintosh added by Corn Popper. Windows Apps added by Kam1Kaz3NL77. Dreamcast added by Adam Baratz.

Additional contributors: Cochonou, Istari, Eric Barbara, Adam Baratz, Unicorn Lynx, AdminBB, Sciere, Alaka, leilei, Patrick Bregger, Titan10, FatherJack.

Game added January 2, 2000. Last modified March 14, 2024.