Quake III Arena

"What!?? No secondary fire ???"

The Quake franchise has always been boring. Harsh? Maybe. Its popularity boomed strictly upon the fact that it lacked real competition (a few Doom remakes, but that was basically it). Four years ago, the growing FPS genre was thirsting for new ideas, and so were the fans. People were getting sick of walking about smashing windows with wrenches, only to be rewarded a another bland area that houses three more mutated frog aliens (a la Half-Life, if you can't tell). So then Quake III: Arena was released; a game that sported a pretty new graphics engine, a lot less door unlocking, and a whole lot more rocket unloading. The world was stunned into a state of convulsions.

It worked then; without competition, Quake III: Arena was just that kind of game everyone just had in their library. But the spark would soon grow faint. I'm not reviewing it as it was in the market four years ago; I'm reviewing it now. Has it held the ground it once had planted firmly below its feet years ago?

Nah.

Q3:A has aged poorly, and it doesn't take hours of play for you to realize that. The frantic deathmatch action has been topped numerous times since, with Unreal Tournament and Serious Sam type games that not only give a great more feel, but manages to put you more into the action; something Q3:A failed do.

But what made it as popular as it was? Ditching the uninvolving monotonous single player missions that plagued the first two Quakes, iD-- from the beginning stages of Q3:A-- focused mainly on the aspect of game play that made those games popular: Deathmatch. Essentially, Deathmatch would pit you in an arena filled with weapons, ammo, health and plenty of adversaries for you to test your aiming and trigger reflexes on.

Why? Evidently (and I use that term loosely), the story goes as follows: in the future, intelligent bloodthirsty races of aliens rule the universe. The man in charge of this militia of savages is about to die. So in the end, the game consists of a bunch of different species jumping around with guns, killing each other. Why? Well, the winner will be selected to give the king an ''honorable death.''

Here's where the first problem starts to peak its head about. I shouldn't have to point out that the originality of this premise is practically non-existent, so I'll just assume you already have drawn to that conclusion. But what I'm really talking about is the lack of character interaction. Both in and out of the story. The game gives you tons of races to choose from, but none of them really have a purpose. With a story that doesn't unravel at all throughout the single player game, they might as well of scrapped all these character models and implanted an in-depth character creation mode-- which would have been a wiser idea.

Character interaction would've opened up huge game play opportunities as well. You could've done something as simple as to just add a more multiplayer experience utilizing LAN (Local Area Network) that would consisted of a few of your friends and yourself going from arena to arena conquering the game. Or iD could have gone the extra mile, and developed a engine which consists of you teaching and controlling a team of men; setting them up in strategic routes and utilizing each teammates' skills to eventually take out the foe.

Instead, we get just have plain old deathmatching-- something that we've seen used to the point of nausea-- and that can get old. Fast. Run around and kill things. Move onto the next level where you'll have to kill each thing twenty more times. People, I'm getting sick of it. If you have revolve a game around this, you might as well do it right.

Enough of that, we need to get down to what make Q3:A flawed in all areas-- online or single player. Q3:A is severely lacking in innovation. These fast-paced FPS should keep me on my toes. They should make me want to complete each single player campaign. But when I am forced to coax the AI opponent from its light-as-day track of wandering around from each item to the next, not even shooting you, by shooting it in the foot with a machine gun... then something's not right.

The AI is the single player campaigns is dysfunctional. Simply said. At times, it can pose as a formidable foe, but in other situations it can be downright ridiculous. In SOME situations, it will just completely walk past me-- as if I were just a wall-- in search of gathering all items and weapons in the arena. Regardless the difficulty settings.

So you've got a bunch of dumbass AI opponents that you must put up with. The least iD can do is give you decent weapons selection. Crisis number two. What we have here is some more lack of innovation. The basics: machine gun, shotgun, rocket launcher, grenade launcher, laser gun, railgun, and BFG-- they all here. And they are all as boring as ever.

Everything about them; their model, sound, feel-- just puts you to sleep. And they all lack of secondary attack, which was horribly disappointing after Unreal Tournament spoiled me of that feature.

Speaking of which, the online play, though cracked up to be one of the most revolutionary systems out there, is also severely flawed. The popularity of this game, though beyond me, does not deny the fact that there are lots of servers for you to test around in. Thus, lies the first problematic area within this department. The menus are so badly set up, that even glancing through the first few pages of servers will test your patience. There's no way of organizing servers into categories, you just have one long list of thousands of servers. You ask ''But you can just go download Gamespy3D to manage your servers for all your games! DUH!'' Well, You could, and I'm not saying that's a bad idea. But I shouldn't have to go out and waste my time swimming through garbage sites to download some 3rd party program that is probably riddled with spyware, ads, and bugs-- just to make my online gaming experience playable. I need it in the package there and then.

As far as maps go, Q3:A has its own set of online maps, most consists of a bunch of platforms with trampolines on them, and complete darkness surrounding the arena (no walls, either) It's very boring to say the least, and unimpressive all around.

When I booted up Q3:A, for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised with an aesthetically pleasing introduction video, coupled with a metal/techno song that had a nice ambience to it, blaring from my speakers. I was disappointed (yet again) to find out that everything outside of that sequence was just not very pleasing. The arenas are in high-res mode, and keep some of the game's atmosphere, but the textures come in a bland and forgettable package. The architecture consists of narrow passageways and wide-open spaces that are bound to bore anybody-- allowing little to none strategy among the matches. The drone of the music that goes along with the feel is not what I heard in the opening introduction at all. Instead of getting me pumped, the music I was impressed with in the intro seemed to take on a state of metamorphosis... to crapism. It's soft, boring, and half the time inaudible due to the constant explosions on-screen

So in the end, Quake III: Arena in a game that has lost its flare. I hate to be the one to draw lines, but Unreal Tournament just beats the crud out of Q3:A both in style, game play, and cosmetics. Regardless of fanbase, Quake III: Arena may just be something you might want to skip for something more impressing. -Shin (11/7/2002)

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 11/07/02, Updated 05/21/03