Quake III Arena

"Nice graphics are crushed under the weight of awful gameplay."

''Is admitting to be more of the same any way to elevate above it?''

Quake III is an interesting topic of discussion for me. I have a lot to say about it, so perhaps you can find something in another review at about a third of the length. If you're patient, or asleep, or perhaps both, then keep reading for the love of god.

It all goes back to ID software, which is perhaps the largest powerhouse in the world of first-person-shooters. These guys created Wolfenstein, for god's sake. After that, they followed it up with Doom and then Quake. All were progressive leaps that took the FPS genre to new areas. Now, Quake III seems to have stalled in the trademark progression of ID games. In fact, there was so much internal conflict about the direction the company was going that several members split, like the much-scrutinized John Romero.

The reason Romero left was to start his own company, Ion Storm, dedicated to create games that had stellar premises and design, and those that weren't resting on the laurels of past achievements. Ion Storm's goal was hit and miss. They produced the incredibly innovative FPS/RPG hybrid of Deus Ex, as well as the monumentally low Daikatana; a mixed bag. So, where did ID brain John Carmack go with Quake III? Carmack decided to take the hyper-technical approach of improving the series, stating in the course that game design often takes a back seat to the technics of making a game, as design choices often are dictated based on the challenges that come up during the game.

With the direction Q3A took, you wonder if Romero was right. The present ID software has created a game which adds nothing new to the genre it pioneered and presents an experience based solely on the deathmatch secondary to almost every FPS on the market. Quake III Arena thinks it's delivering exactly what the players want, but the discriminating gamer may feel let down.

With the DC version, you take this already unoriginal hunk of letdown and further tarnish it. The result is hardly something to be proud of.

-------------------
STORY
-------------------

''Fight and die! Do it again! AMAZING!''

In the future, there exists a race of Aliens called the Vadrigal, who make extraordinary fighters compete in bloodsport events in order for the personal entertainment of these aliens. The Vadrigal do not allow fallen competitors to die, as they are resurrected to fight anew based on the powers of the aliens. These fighters have been taken from all walks of life; from other alien life forms, to prisoners that refuse to die, they all compete against each other. The number one fighter is a monk named Xaero who wishes only for a worthy opponent to take his life.

Well, I suppose it explains why fighters come back to life after being blown into a red mist of internal organs. Aside from that, we're suspending all believability. The fighters, excluding what you read in the instruction booklet, have no interaction with each other outside of the interaction that a rocket from one character might have on another. The interesting side stories that could have sparked a cinema, ending, or the almost rudimentary ''I am your mid-boss'' dialog never occur. Again, when there's anything to make me think that there may be some higher level of the story isn't taken advantage of, it feels like wasted potential.

In a game of this caliber, I expected something a little less mindlessly simple. Quake II, despite the mediocre level of intellect behind the story it presented, actually went so far as to tell a tale of a marine fighting the aliens, and where he was and what he was doing. Quake III spits a glob of ''that's it?'' at you and expects you to chew on it through the entire game. I'm not buying it. It feels sloppy, leaves much to be desired, and gives no reason outside of a cosmetic one for picking one character over another.

It's really a shame, because with the great character designs it would have been neat to see how each character gets into the arena, and what they would do if they got out (which isn't even an option in the story). No dice, huh?

Story: 2 / 10
Dumb premise chock full of wasted potential.

-------------------
GRAPHICS
-------------------

''After this point, things get progressively more negative.''

Enjoy this section while it lasts, because Quake III: Arena is a graphical success if little else. Everything in this game looks spectacular, and you can tell that it was ultimately optimized for the DC. Prepare for me rambling on and on.

Quake III's framerate is amazing. The game moves at a constant 60FPS, and suffers no loss in graphics. It's bizarre to me to think that the DC, what with a much smaller processor, etc. Can do better than my 700Mhz pentium III. Granted, game systems have that ability, but Quake III can deliver the power on a maximum budget of 300 dollars what it would take a thousand-dollar system to accomplish. It's neat, to say the least.

The graphics not only are very high-polygon, featuring the ability to render curved surfaces and extremely detailed characters, but are also very well lighted. Colored lighting is abundant in the game, but never feels like it's abused. There are lots of graphical highlights and small touches that make each arena seem lifelike and massive. In short, the arenas seem to take on a life of their own as opposed to the passive styles of arenas found in past Quakes and Dooms that feel like they're there only to provide a battleground, however lifeless it may be. Q3A's architecture is pretty inspiring as well, with giant castles, pillars, dungeons, and catwalks. Personally, I found them to be the best of any competitors, be it Unreal Tournament or Half-Life.

Another thing that really deserves credit are the absolutely awesome player models, as each is skinned, rendered, and animated better than ever seen in games before that point. A large lumbering mechanical monstrosity (Tank Jr.) runs with an unstable wobble, whereas the human characters run like an athlete. The models are strikingly different, with everything from hulking cyborgs, slim supermodels, unabashed freaks of nature, and the guy from Doom. This prize-pack assortment of characters ensures that you'll find at least one, if not several, characters suited to your liking. I know I did. There are so many characters that are so cool looking that you're sorry other games haven't even compared. Q3:A's main competitor, Unreal Tournament, is composed mostly of generic military men and women, with the few non-humanoids being entirely uninteresting. Another win for Q3 is the fact that all the characters are large and high-poly, which again dominates UT.

Aside from the truly awesome freaks featured in Q3A, the weapons work well graphically. gunshots produce transparent conical ricochet effects, the rockets fly leaving a trail of smoke, and the railgun shoots its trademark laser lined with concentric circles. The plasma shots have just enough colored lighting to give a ''hot plasma'' effect, and they leave circular burn marks where they hit. Good touches, if not amazing attentions to detail.

And finally, what Quake is famous for: human chunks. If you shoot someone enough, they burst into a fine red mist coupled with flying, bleeding pieces of meat. Should someone do something as boring as simply falling over and dying you can continue to pump rounds into the downed corpse until it blows up like an over-microwaved burrito. Despite the pieces, my favorite aspect of the ''gib'' is the mist that lingers over the now-rearranged body for a few seconds.

Quite honestly, Q3 has some of the most imaginative characters this side of Maken X, and every other graphical aspect is presented flawlessly. Quake III is quite possibly the best looking game on the DC, with things exploding, flying, and running everywhere without any drop in quality. It's incredibly tough not to like them. I'd recommend playing the game on a tarp so that when you wet your pants, it doesn't soak through on to your chair.

Graphics: 10 / 10
Great characters, effects, and backgrounds. Awesome, dudes!

-------------------
SOUND AND MUSIC
-------------------

''Gib to the music!''

Both the sound and the music from the DC are great.

The weapon sounds are good for the game, and fit the guns incredibly well. However, for the game that Quake III was, I would have liked the guns to sound a little bit more menacing, like the sound-effect alone would suggest the gun you were holding was capable in ripping someone in two. The machine gun, railgun, BFG, rockets, and explosions could have used a playful shove in the ''me gonna kill j00'' department.

The player sounds were surprising to me, considering that all of the characters has a voice and sound effects for running. Again, if you're a giant metal-fused bionoid, you're going to be hearing scraping metal and hydraulics when you run and jump. Humans hear pained grunts and footsteps. Personally, I like the callous machines better. Aside from the grunts and runs, each character has a taunt. While nothing special in itself, it adds a little touch to the game, especially the grainy rasping laughs of the cyborg characters. The guy from Doom lets out a manly roar, which is nice.

The music is very good as well, although sedated metal might not be to your taste. The game makes extensive use of heavy guitar, which works well overall. There are a couple tunes that I really gravitated towards, and all sound professionally done. Incidentally, I think that there's a real band listed in the manual responsible for the music, but the name escapes me right now.

By the way, the sound effect for the gibs rocks. Here it is: ''Splortch.'' let's be honest with ourselves, imagine Splorth and the visual of meat exploding at the same time, and it'll be hard to think that the two were ever apart. Rounding off at dead bodies becomes even more entertaining with this sound buddying up with the chunks and mist.

There's only one flaw within the sound that really screams at me, and it seems entirely needless and contradictory to the game. It's a ''peep'' whenever you hit an enemy with a weapon. It detracts so much from the feel, that ultimately you start to hate it. You shoot someone, and you hear ''peep.'' Consider the fact that they could have done a small graphical touch, like a ''hit'' message that appears near your vital signs, and the sound becomes even more obtrusive. The fact is, if someone explodes into a fine mist right in front of me, I'm going to assume that they did that because I shot them. I don't need some atari-wannabe sound effect to tell me when 5 shotgun pellets have lodged themselves in my foe's cranium.

All in all, I enjoyed the sounds and the music very much.

Sound and Music: 8 / 10
Great, aside from that damn peep.

-------------------
GAMEPLAY
-------------------

''This would be great back in 1994.''

The basics of Quake III are like any other FPS, or First Person Shooter. You see only your gun barrel, you move and strafe from people that shoot at you, and return gunfire while dodging. You are able to look all around your environment and switch between weapons that you acquire. What the DC port of Q3A does to all of this is amazing: it mangles all the fun out of it like a rabid dog.

let's start with the control. I ordered a DC mouse and keyboard for this game shortly after playing it for 15 minutes, as Q3 proved to me once again that consoles do not handle FPS controls well at all. The analog stick was so finicky for aiming that I quickly gave it up, and the twin triggers do not lend themselves well at all to this particular Genre. Like all other FPS games played with a mouse, one must be doing the following at one time:

.Running
.Shooting
.Strafing
.Jumping
.Looking around

If you lack the necessary ''W-S-A-D'' + Mouse configuration, prepare to die. Of course, the way around this is to set the difficulty to very easy, so that you can walk up to someone and blow them away. Set it any higher, and you'll find your opponents jumping and shooting rockets at the same time at you, otherwise impossible on the DC controller. Again, let me stress that I FOUND THIS GAME UNPLAYABLE with the standard controller. Try hitting someone with a railgun shot with the DC controller, and you'll quickly either buy the peripherals like I did or sell the game.

So, assuming you spent the prerequisite 50 bucks on the other peripherals, let's discuss the other problems that eats away at this game like a pillow full of termites.

First of all, the game relies on a premise that dates back to Doom, which I was able to play when the SNES was taking off as a system. The newest weapon dates back to Quake 2. We have, TOTAL, a machine gun, shotgun, plasma gun, rocket launcher, grenade launcher, railgun, lightning gun, and a BFG. Holy crap, it's like someone snuck into my house and assaulted my family with originality. Let's be honest here: First Person Shooters depend on guns as much as beat-'em-ups depend on weapons and food conveniently stashed in the street. Why ID didn't throw in some stuff we've never seen before is completely beyond me. This stuff has been used so much, they've become cliches and completely avoided by other FPS games. All in all, Quake III introduced one new weapon, the gauntlet, which is a weak close-attack weapon. Shoot me.

Moreover, there's no reason to pick one character over another. What could have been an interesting game which had characters that specialize in certain weapons, have different rates of fires, speeds, and mobility becomes another ''all are equal'' character FPS. I think absolutely spectacular would have been if each character had a unique weapon, but if ID couldn't think of anything new for the entire game I'm doubtful how they could make 30-something FPS weapons. It's sickening to me, really.

The gameplay is as stagnant as the premise as well, as it's essentially only the deathmatch feature. No first-person story or game, the only single-player mode is the multiplayer with bots, done as an arena-style with a ''boss.'' Sure. Let me tell you folks, one character can really be much harder than maintaining a number-one ranking among bots that can aim flawlessly and know where the other characters are. That last sentence was a dump-truck of sarcasm. Dealing with one character is absolutely easy (compared to 4 people), with the exception of the Railgun-whoring last boss, who can nail you regardless of what you're doing.

Because you need to kill a certain amount in order to win, much of the game feels like you running around trying to find a fistfight to jump into... where the CPU is already playing with itself and racking up the kills. By the way, this is me getting pissed at the computer on the easy setting, using the mouse and keyboard. Unlike the UT single player campaign, which allowed you to try your hand at several different deathmatch settings and gameplay modes, Q3 has only deathmatch. If you want something else, you need to play a round of Capture the Flag or team deathmatch with the bots, of which you can only have 2 people per team. Sad.

The DC mouse leaves much to be desired, as does the sensitivity adjustments in game. Aiming feels like a chore, and for as fast as this game moves, that's unacceptable. Even if you do buy all the stuff to make this game playable, it still doesn't feel like enough. Ugh, Ugh, UGH!

Really, it's hard for me to imagine that this series of games has actually STEPPED BACKWARDS in the gameplay department, as there's less to distinguish it from Quake 2, let alone half-life or UT, both brimming with new innovations and features. Play half-life on the computer, and the number of free modifications is staggering. UT towers over Q3 with insane amounts of gameplay modes, not even mentioning the stockpile of unique weapons each with an alternate fire mode.

Q3 feels like a dated game that's lost its edge. Sure, it's fun to gib people, and the fighting is fast... when the control seems to click. Unfortunately, the sheer lack of innovation and the ''been there, done that'' invading every aspect of the gameplay serves to pound on what could have been a great game. Q3 does not work with the DC controller, the mouse leaves much to be desired, the game fights with itself more than you, there's no character difference, and the weapons are so tired it's nauseating.

The gameplay serves to illustrate to me that consoles can not handle FPS games. I'm revolted that the gameplay turned out as bad as it did, and for all the power behind the graphics there was so little substance. This gameplay is absolute garbage, and everything that a FPS should attempt to avoid: cliches, old gameplay, lack of choice. John Carmack's ''game design... Who needs it?'' line of thinking should serve as a lesson to upcoming and current game makers, namely that IT DIDN'T WORK.

Blech.

Gameplay: 1.5 / 10
Ranges from unplayable to disappointing.

-------------------
OVERALL
-------------------

''Well, the graphics are nice!''

Quake 3 fails in every aspect besides the graphics and sound. The story flat-out sucks, the game gives no incentive for replay, and the gameplay is horrible. I've seen more originality between both the Army Men and Tomb Raider games than this exhibited, and frankly after seeing where Q3 went, I can understand why Romero flew the coop.

Assuming that you can play this game, it has good moments. The PC version can be fun and frenetic, despite the lack of originality. However, the DC can't achieve in the areas that makes the PC version fun, which is a shame. Essentially, we have all the problems from the PC still intact in the DC version, which didn't add anything outside of horrible controls and bad gameplay.

Avoid this game like the plague, because as soon as those graphics wear off, you're completely out of luck. Although a technical innovation and paradigm, Q3 is nothing outside of that.

Overall: 2.5 / 10
Outside of the graphics and sound, it's a wasteland of gaming.

------------------------------------------------
*Can you tell I was disappointed?

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 01/17/02, Updated 02/18/02