Quake III Arena

"Consoles now get a chance to play THE PC game!"

Quake III Arena. It's THE game for any self respecting PC geek. This peculiar species lead very unhealthy lifestyles with the large consumption of take-away from the local fried chicken store. They'll sweat it out against a couple of unknown Scandinavian dudes using ''Ultimate Gaming Rigs'' to satisfy their pleasure for ''FRAGs''. Unfortunately, spending huge amounts of time tinkinering with PCs is a bit too hardcore for most of us. What we need is a version of the game we can plonk in a console and get straight to the fragging.

Take the elements of GoldenEye's multiplaying aspects, Doom's atmosphere, add some high res graphics and some mates - who hopefully will be carrying a large quantity of lager and pizza money - and what you have here is a lads night in! Here you have a large amount of characters to choose from, each having three unique appearances. Firearms range from the standard shotgun to high velocity rail guns. Maps from the PC version are here plus exclusively designed levels for the DC user - something that PC owners would have to wait for!

There are three methods of controls - your standard joypad, the mouse and keyboard - each taking up one port. Up to 4 people can participate on one Dreamcast and for those who don't have any friends, you can always play against the AI or go online and give the guy living 50,000 miles from you a good thrashing!

Graphics and sound are the same as the PC versions, although unlike the original, resolutions and graphical novelties cannot be changed - but that is probably a good thing anyway as it means nothing gets in the way of the action. Raster Productions have made a spiffing good job of optimising the graphics and sound, as a result, a constant flow on par to PC performance.

Let's get one thing straight. Games made for PCs can work on consoles. This is just one example for sceptics to chew on. Raster has made an excellent job in converting this classic on to the Dreamcast, complete with online gaming. I didn't think much of the graphics when it appeared on the PC. I still don't think much of them now. Then again, you'll be worrying about getting killed than getting guided tours. One last word though; I'd strongly recommend that you get yourself a mouse if you're getting this game. You'll need all the practice before going head-to-head against the Quake-playing PC geeks across the world!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/12/00, Updated 06/14/01