Quake 3 Arena Offers Some Of The Funniest FPS Combat There Is For Some Strange Reason. Nuff Said.
Way back in the mid 1990’s little known games developer ID software, lead by John Carmack and John Romero were about to unleash, what would become on of the most famous games ever to come out. Doom. The two had previously worked on many other games, including commander keen (if my memory serves me correctly). Doom instantly recived much attention, from the media due to it’s violent and “realistic” (well for the time) content. But it received the most attention from gamers world-wide. For it was an excellent game, revolutionising the First person Shooter, which had been made mainstream by Wolfenstien 3D. After the great DOOM, came it’s sequel, DOOM 2: Hell on Earth. Doom 2 was loved just as much as the first. A few years later came the first mainstream 3D polyagonal First Person Shooter, Quake. It was well received, but not quite as popular as Doom or Doom 2. Quake, like Doom and Doom 2 was basically, shoot everything in your path, get keys, open doors and progress. Quake 2 came along soon after, and again, the same idea was in place. Nintendo/Rareware released Goldeneye, which was to revolutionise First Person Shooters once again, adding objectives and stealth. Goldeneye was, and still is one of the best game created, to date. Did ID software pick up on the fact that goldeneye was the way to go in first person shooters, and try to imitate it’s godlyness?
Not at all. They decided to go their own way.
For starters, Quake 3: Arena was designed as a fully mulitplayer game. So would Quake 3: Arena become the next step evolutionally speaking in first person shooters? Or perhaps just be a great game? Or turn out to be average? Or perhaps be awful? Time to find out…..
Gameplay : IT MOVED! QUICK! SHOOT IT! *kavhooooooooooo*(rocket launcher) *PPPFFFFRTTTT*(gibs). Yes people, that is pretty much the idea of Quake 3: Arena. If it moves, kill it, and kill it good.
First up, let me tell you about the gibs……one of the most important elements of Quake 3: Arena… :P
When you shoot someone with a powerful weapon, their body, rather than just falling into a lifeless heap, will explode in a glorious spray of read chunks, some bone and a lot of blood.
The gibs are extremely satisfying, and makes killing people that whole lot more fun.
The gibs are soooo satisfying in fact, that just about every body I see that wasn’t already turned into a pile of gibs at death, I take the liberty of getting out a powerful weapon, and shooting, just because of how much I looooooove the gibs.
Now that I’ve got that out of the way………
Quake 3: Arena, although designed primarily as an online multiplayer game, does have an offline single player mode.
There is a bit under 30 levels to play in. With the first being a training level, and the last pretty much a boss level. You can play with up to 6 or 7 other CPU controller players in single player (if I remember correctly). There are 5 difficulty levels, ranging from one as easy as a walk in the park, to the almost impossible, no, make that actually impossible :). The single player component of Quake 3: Arena will keep you going for a few weeks if you are lucky, but is really only practice for where the real Quake 3: Arena takes place………online.
Nothing beats playing online against, or with, a handful of other Quake freaks. It’s just so damn fun. You can taunt each other, plot out team tactics, secretly gang up on someone and so much more.
You have the Gauntlet, which most people use only in cases of desperation, because it is the “lowest” weapon down the order, though, only two hits from the gauntlet will render anyone dead, which is why I often use it. It’s only drawback is that it can only be used at extremely close range.
You’ve also got the Shotgun, Plasma Rifle, Machine gun (which is crap), Rocket Launcher, Rail Gun, Grenade Launcher, Lightning Gun and the BFG.
The weapons are varied quite well, and are all useful at different times (besides the machine gun that is, which for some reason had been seriously underpowered).
There are also items in game, one will give you 4 x damage, one will teleport you to another location, one will make you invisible, one will make you invincible and many other items, with different uses can also be found.
The online play in Quake 3: Arena, as I said is where it’s at. The only problem, in my opinion is the fact that if you aren’t on a super fast connection, you will lag, and lag bad. This will give you a distinct disadvantage against players on a faster connectoin, because when you fire, it will take a good few second for your weapon’s fire to reach it’s target, making you usually have to think ahead, and shoot in the hope that your fire will hit wherever the person you are shooting at will end up.
Sure, Quake 3: Arena is excellent fun to play even on a slow connection, like 56k, but it is highly recommended that you have a much faster connection to play over.
Graphics : I’d recommend having a decent PC to play this on. While it looks good on older PC’s, it’s nothing compared to playing at 60 frames per second, with 32 bit textures, at 1280 x 1024. Quake 3: Arena features some very sexy graphics, and if you have a PC that can handle them you will be very impressed. The textures are highly detailed, the character modles look nice, the levels are fairly big, and look very good and the special effects are purdy too. But the best graphical effect, by far would have to be the gibs……yes, the gibs. While, having a low polygon count, the gibs still look great, they feature detailed textures, and are richly coloured.
As long as you have a decent PC (I’d recommend about a 750Mhz Athlon, with 128mb ram and a Geforce or better Graphics card to be able to run the game perfectly) then you have one damn sexy looking game.
Sound : First up, get to the options menu and set the sound to high quality. Now that you’ve done that I can get on with this part of the review.
The sound effects do the job, but are noting special, well except for the gibs……they sound pretty damn good :P The guns sound nice and varied, from the deep blast of the shotgun, to the……. Well it’s hard to describe but the sound of the plasma gun sounds just right, the lightning gun sounds like a constant strike of lightning too. The other sound effects, while there aren’t a great deal are decent.
The music in Quake 3: Arena isn’t very noticable. It’s mostly a mix of rock and techno. Some of the time you there is any music at all, but mostly it will just sink into the background, and do nothing more than exist…… You certainly won’t be writing home along the lines of “WOW, the music in Quake 3 is awesome”.
The quality of the sound effects and music is pretty good (on high quality mode), and it’s crisp and clear.
This is where it’s all at. Quake 3: Arena, as the name hints was designed purely as a multiplayer game.
The offline component as I said before is merely practice for online play.
I’ll try to keep this short and simple…..
Quake 3’s multiplayer is great. It’s fast, furious and fraggin fun. There isn’t much that beats playing online against a good 7 other people in a game that has been deigned purely to do just that.
I’ve gotta hand it to ID software, they certainly knew what they were doing when they made Quake 3: Arena….
If you’re like me, you’ll be addicted to the online component of Quake 3: Arena literally for months. When I first got the game I spent weekend after weekend up till about 5:00 or 6:00am playing because I was hooked. I really couldn’t get enough of it. I’d say I was playing for a good 3 months before I started to tire…..
Even now, I still give Quake 3: Arena a play now and then, and still love every minute of it.
Some people will get sick of the game quicker than others, but this is one of the great online games, and I’m sure in another 5 years you will still be able to log onto a Quake 3 server and find quite a few addicts, still playing.
There are 5 difficulty levels in single player. The easiest difficulty, is like it should be, rather easy. The difficulty levels gradually increase in difficulty, until the last difficulty level, which is practically impossible. If you can manage to actually complete more than about 5 levels on the highest difficulty level then you are a freak! :P……..*counts* Damn, I said difficulty a LOT in that paragraph………… oh well……
The faster your internet connection, the easier multiplayer will be. On a 56k modem, it can take up to 3-5 seconds for say a rocket you shot to actually launch for its target. So you have to think ahead. That can be a real pain in the ass. But if you’ve got a lightning fast connection (T1 is fair enough :P) then shooting will be almost instant.
It also depends on the people you are playing against, and their skill level, as well as internet connection. You don’t want to be the only 56k player in a group of 8 do you?
Here, I tell you about the mods (no not the ones who delete messages :P). You can download mods off the internet. These range from new skins for characters, totally new characters, new textures for levels, completely new levels using existing textures, completely new levels using new textures, new weapons, new sound packages and more. An example of a package is one where all of the characters look like they are out of a western movie, all the levels look like they are from a western to (bar/saloon levels), the weapons are also from this time frame, and area and all of the music is “westerny” too.
Mods add another dimension to Quake 3: Arena, and a whole lot more replayability too.
* Great graphics
* GIBS!!!
* The rocket launcher
* The BFG 10 000
* Gibs
* Lots of levels
* loads of cool mods to download
* Gibs
* Did I mention Gibs?
* Oh, and the Gibs too
* Multiplayer can be kinda laggy if you don’t have a super fast internet connection
Buy! You’ll be hooked for ages playing Quake 3: Arena, it’s a great game that shouldn’t be passed up by anyone with a half decent PC.
Then again, you’d be stupid to buy it if you didn’t have an internet connection.
Quake 3: Arena is a truly great game. I don’t need to say more. It should be owned by everyone.
If you don’t own it already, get out an buy it now!