Quake III Arena Review

Quake III: Arena will probably be remembered as the most hyped game of 1999, but is it deserving of all the hype? Read on and let me tell you what I think.<br><br>For the last three weeks or so, practically every minute of my spare time has been spent fragging and probably more often than that gettin fragged. It’s hard to write this review without comparing Quake III with Unreal Tournament but to be fair I’ll save any comparisons for the feature myself and John Meyer, who reviewed Unreal Tournament , will be working on shortly. Keep your eyes open for that in the next few days. Just so I don’t alienate any devout ID and Quake fans there will be no further mention of UT, even though I think it’s better, there I said it now I can move on.<br><br>If you’ve played any previous Quake title you know what to expect. To me Quake is all about atmosphere and Quake III Arena has it in spades. The Hellish dark rolling clouds, red demonic architecture and strange, hideous beasts are all present. The graphics are truly beautiful and seamless. The new engine, which allows for curved surfaces, really is remarkable and gives the Quake world a very nice facelift. It did take me a couple of hours to get it running perfectly with my VooDoo 3 3000, but once I did all my frustration and cursing ceased and I was well rewarded for my tweaking. The in-game graphics menu will allow you to adjust many aspects of the amount of detail you want displayed. This is an important option as you can crank it all up when playing off-line then crank it down when you go on-line if you are experiencing any type of lag. For me, the graphics were the best part of this game, it is beautiful and one of the best looking games of the year. With nothing really to complain about here I’ll move on.<br><br>Quake is also about gameplay. There are those who take their deathmatching very seriously and to them it’s actually a sport. It seems to me like Carmack and crew focused on two very important aspects of the game and nailed ‘em. As I already said the graphics engine is gorgeous but also perhaps even more importantly so, the AI is incredibly tough and challenging. With on-line deathmatching becoming more and more mainstream, John Carmack and other development crews listened to the gaming community and created a way to really hone your skills before jumping into your local fragfest. The difficulty levels ramp up nicely, however if you don’t improve with the difficulty levels it becomes immediately apparent. There are 5 levels to choose from: I Can Win!, Bring It On, Hurt Me Plenty, Hardcore and Nightmare. The single player game is simply made up of all the levels of deatmatching broken up into tiers with 4 levels on each tier. Once you have beaten all 4 arenas you move up to the next tier. I started on I Can Win! and worked my way through the single player tournament on every skill level. By the time I got to Hurt Me Plenty I was beginning to see some competition, although I still made it through all the arenas in the first match. The Hardcore setting finally was giving me a hard time, I lost numerous matches and they were lasting quite a bit longer. The AI was no longer so predictable, although there are still certain tendencies you will find that you can exploit. This level to me was where I saw I needed much improvement. The Nightmare level is extremely difficult, the AI is very sharp. All I can say is stay on top of the quad damage and hoard the red armor to stay alive. As far as getting the requisite number of frags in before your opponents, I haven’t figured that one out yet. Aside from the tournament mode of play there are also the other forms of multiplay that you can practice off-line, although they are not structured at all, just there for the benefit of learning the maps and playing in different game settings with some damn good AI. The other modes include your typical variances of deathmatch and capture the flag. I was disappointed that it did not have any unique game types as did that other game. <br><br>The number of skins you may choose from is impressive. There are over 70 different creatures and their variations to choose from. The in-game bots are of typical Quake design as well. There are 32 opponents of varying skill and ability to go up against. The most annoying of which has to be Slash, who on her force-blades (kind of like jet propelled roller blades), can be a pretty tough moving object to nail. The weapons involved should also be familiar. Nothing really unique at all, again I was slightly disappointed in this. Here’s the rundown: Gauntlet, machine gun, shotgun, plasma gun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, lightning gun, rail gun and last but definitely not least, the BFG-10K. If you can get your hands on a BFG you are assured to rack up some frags.<br> <br>Many people may disagree with this but keep in mind I appreciate strategy laden games so my perspective will be different. It seemed to me that Quake III deathmatches end up as mindless shootouts. I say that in a good way though. The game is very fast and at times it seemed that the ability to aim well would not increase your chances of winning. Just grab the most powerful weapon you can find and blast the hell out of the first opponent you see. Using a sniper rifle in this game would probably be a deathwish. This may be due to the very tight arenas we are presented with here. There isn’t much room to get any kind of distance between yourself and your opponent. I like the more spacious environments of other games of this type better, but Quake is a corridor shooter baby so that is probably to be expected. I was expecting a little more thought to go into the arenas, however, as there just doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of different environments. The use of acceleration and bounce pads on some arenas add a different touch though. I really hate platform games, so when I came across the level in Quake III which is all about platforms and bounce pads, at first it was a very frustrating experience. Once I got used to it and learned how not to fall into the abyss every time I jumped, it became my favorite level actually. It seemed to me that a bit more strategy was involved in beating this arena than in the others. With all that said, I just feel as if more variety in the level design would have greatly improved the experience. <br><br>The interface for Quake III is adequate but nothing evolutionary. I’ll make a comparison here just for the reviews sake. UT has a phenomenal interface, which really should be used as an example of how to do it right for future games. Quake’s isn’t bad and doesn’t hinder gameplay in any way, it just isn’t anything new. Connecting to the internet for multiplayer player gaming is simplistic and fast as it should be for a multiplayer designed game. There is no need to connect with a website then search out all the servers. Click on multiplayer and the game does it all for you. Just make sure you have your internet access running in the background, obviously.<br><br>The sound in Quake III is, again, typical. It has great atmospheric effect and uses the latest sound cards to create some nice 3 dimensional effects. It’s above average but nothing groundbreaking.<br><br>Should I really even comment on lastability in this review? When you boil it all down this is a multiplayer game only. The single player version is sufficient to help you get better but the best competition you’ll find in Quake III is on the internet. I love every fragging second of this game while I’m playing it, don’t get me wrong. This will stay on my hard drive till Quake 4 comes out. There is much competition in the on-line first person shooter genre and Quake will always be a unique experience. It may not be the best game of this type out there right now, but if you’re a fan of Quake you probably won’t do any better. There’s just no substitute for the real thing. Die hard Quakers will love this game as will the casual on-line gamer. My only advice to you is, if you have the other one already but you have some money burnin’ a hole in your pocket, you can’t go wrong with this game. If you’re a die hard Quake fanatic, go buy it it’s very very good. If you want the best overall experience for this type of game with more variations of gameplay, I’d advice you to go with...here it is...UT, but that doesn’t mean this is not an excellent game, because it is, it just seems a bit less thought out. To me it seems they focused their energies on perfecting the graphical and AI side of Quake deathmatching and this they have done.<br><br>So to answer my question, is it worthy of all the hype? I’d have to say not quite. This is not the epitomy of a game based on on-line deathmatching. I think they hit the mark with the AI, as I have mentioned already, but the game isn’t as fleshed out as it could be. It almost seems like they dropped some gameplay options to get it out the door. Playing the on-line portion is deathmatching, Quake style, at its best but the single player leaves alot to be desired. Seeing these gorgeous graphics just made me want a whole new single player Quake game. If you don’t understand what I mean play UT for a while and you’ll understand. I’m sorry I said I wasn’t going to mention it here, in fact, I mentioned it several times. I guess I lied, it just seems that Quake III had all this hype with Unreal Tournament really getting none of that and is the better example of the future for this new type of game.<br><br>Check back here soon, the actual comparison will be out by myself and John Meyer. Then I won’t feel so guilty and I’ll tell you exactely what the differences are.<br><br>Test System:<br>PIII 450mhz<br>128MB RAM<br>VooDoo 3 3000 AGP graphics acceleration.