"Don't waste your time with this..."

2...not fair? Well I know this game is very popular but I have to give my honest opinion. I am fairly new to PC games but I decided to buy Unreal Tournament with a £10 voucher I had been given for my birthday. Great game get it. With my enthusiasm for PC first person shooters now on a high I had to get Quake III. I played the game for a week and that was pushing it. Unreal has lasted six months already.

So first what are Quake III's plus points? Well the graphics are perfectly nice and the game manages to perform well over the Internet, at good speeds. That is where praise ends I'm afraid.

Quake III's first problem is its speed, it's too fast! The game is clearly made for net play yet its team games really suck. Capture the Flag has little teamwork or teamplay as communication is nigh on impossible while playing in such a fast paced game. The game has very few game modes and if you think that you might get bored of deathmatch I'm afraid that's the only half decent game mode.

Level design is another weakness in the game. Most maps are instantly forgettable. The Capture the Flag levels allow no strategy and have no interesting features. All the textures are similar and the maps simply consist of passageways and open spaces with very little strategic difference between each one. Innovation was not in this game's design parameters.

As for the guns I can see little imagination in them. A shotgun how impressive...no innovation at all. And when you shoot people you get an annoying blip to tell you you've hit, adding no realism and becoming rather irritating.

The single player mode is completely pointless, as it is in any FPS that has no story. Playing more and more Deathmatch games against bots is more dull than David Duchovney trying to act! And that is all the single player game consists of.
As I have said multiplayer can only be played in Deathmatch with any satisfaction. It is just too fast paced and the maps too small to enjoy CTF, which is a shame because if this mode was any good it might have got a 5.

All in all the game is just plain no fun if you are looking for a game that actually requires some teamwork or strategy.
Quake III just left me disappointed. Don't believe all the hype and publicity, Quake III has nothing on Unreal Tournie.
To make matters worse Quake III is more expensive than UT!

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 09/12/01, Updated 09/12/01