Quake III Revolution

"It's Quake..."

I loved FPS since when I played Doom for the first time. I don't know why I love this genre, maybe it's the type of involvement or maybe just because Doom scared me a lot. I had to buy Quake 3 because it's the kind of FPS I love, there is a lot of challenge.

Graphic 10/10
Quake 3 looks perfect like the PC version. Constant 60 fps, just some slowdowns when the screen is full, but they aren't unbearable.
The skins of the characters look very good, and they are full of details.
The environment are full detailed too, and are colorful and smooth as never. The menu are good, but the character selection is too small and I hate not to see my favorite character :)

Music/Sound 8.5/10
Some music are very well made, others are not. I don't care too much at the music on a FPS, I just like some sfx. The sfx are the good old Quake sfx, the gun fires, the steps, the rockets etc. The voice is the same as for PC, nothing other to say. My EU version has 3 different languages for the voice, but I like the english. The french and the italian are nearly ridiculous :)

Gameplay 9/10
The main difficulty of this game is certainly the controls. In fact if you are used to the PC version you can't use keyboard/mouse as controllers. Personally I'm used to the PC version but I didn't find difficulties on the controls. The Dual Shock 2 actually works good with some practice. Other people will find it very hard to use. You can customize them if you want, you have some different types of controls but they are not fully customizable like in Timesplitters. Just have some practice if you can :)

Game/Options/modes of play 9.5/10
This version of Quake has a good one player mode. It's a campaign, you just have to start as a slave and beat some missions like deathmatch against some bots, capture the flag etc. and raise your level. It's not innovative or original, but it's good and since you have 5 different character to choose from (Sarge, Doom, Daemia, Klesk, Anarki) with different abilities it's kinda funny. Go, beat the Vadrigar the king of the arenas and try to return alive :)
Then you have the classics multiplayer options. Play with other 3 people + 2 bots (if you want to) with a 4 splitted screen. Well, it's funny like all the multiplayer games :)...and also the fps remains very good.
If you don't have any friends you can obviously play alone with some other modes: Deathmatch, team deathmatch, deathmatch with one weapon, team deathmatch with one weapon, capture the flag, capture the flag (one flag), possession, team possession. I think they are enough to have some fun alone, and the bots at a good difficulty level could be challenging.
The major flaw is...obviously...no online play, but you could imagine that, isn't it?
Why this Quake 3 should be revolutionary? Uhm...I don't know but it actually add some to the normal Quake. Maps from Quake Team Arena and 3 new weapons (nail gun, chain gun and the mine launcher).

Replayability 7/10
You can actually have some long fun with the one player mode, but it's not so varied from character to character and once you beat it, I find it hard you would replay it. The one player modes like deathmatch are really entertaining for me, and the multiplayer option could make this game a little long. The lack of the obvious online play could be a real bad point.
Also the lack of variety could be bad if you don't find any fun in these modes of play.

Buy or Rent
Rent it if you aren't in the FPS. Buy it if you love Quake and if you can live without friends to play with.

Quake 3 looks very good and has minor flaws in the technical part. The lack of variety and the lack of online play are the worst points. If you can live without online and without friends to play with (like me :)) it's a very good game to have. To the others a good rent could delete your doubt.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/17/01, Updated 08/17/01