.com
----
This is the highly anticipated next installment in the
Quake series of adventure games. Quake 3: Arena continues the
action of the earlier two games but adds more intense action,
surreal graphics, and a phenomenal multiplayer mode. Three player
classes (light, medium, and heavy) with their own strength,
speed, and armor levels, together with new characters and weapons
(plus old favorites, such as the BFG), make this a thrilling
first-person shooter game. The game also features body armor and
kits to help keep you alive.
Quake 3 makes for an exhilarating single-player game, but to
truly discover what makes this game great, try out the
mulitplayer mode for up to 32 players in one-on-one matches or
group conquests.
From the Manufacturer
---------------------
Hard-wired action is yours for the taking in
single-player and multiplayer battles. Your nents are now
personalized for your brutalizing pleasure. These warriors may
not be living and breathing, but they'll make sure you aren't
either. Feed on raw action, build your fragging muscles, then
rack up live death-match kills on the Internet or local area
network.
P.when('A').execute(function(A) {
A.on('a:expander:toggle_description:toggle:collapse',
function(data) {
window.scroll(0,
data.expander.$expander[0].offsetTop-100);
});
});
Review
------
When most people think of first-person shooters, id
Software immediately springs to mind. The small Texas-based
company has been involved in almost all of the first-person
shooters that are considered classics. Quake spawned a rabid fan
base on the Internet that still watches id's every move. So when
id revealed that the next game in the series, Quake III Arena,
would be specifically designed as a multiplayer game, fans
weren't quite sure what to think. But id's purpose became
increasingly clear when it released a succession of Quake III
Arena technology demos for public scrutiny. The resulting game is
not only worthy of its lineage, but it may very well be the best
Quake yet.
While Quake III Arena's focus may be its multiplayer deathmatch
component, it does have a single-player mode. When playing alone,
you can go up against artificial intelligence-controlled bots.
The bots do their best to act like human players, and on the
higher difficulty settings, they put up an excellent fight. Each
bot has different characteristics that govern the way it fights.
The portly biker chick Lucy tends to duck a lot. Xaero, a Zen
master and the final boss of the single-player mode, is also
master of the rail. The single-player mode is a lot like the
kind in an arcade-fighting game, such as Mortal Kombat. You'll
move through several different competitive tiers, each with
different arenas and bots. At the end of each tier is a
one-on-one showdown; these fights take place in smaller,
tournament-style arenas. The bots are downright chatty - when you
get a group of them together, they'll hold small conversations
with each other, which are displayed in text onscreen. In team
games, you can order bots around, or even let a bot take control
of your team and tell you what to do.
The single-player mode is fun up to a point, but the multiplayer
mode is where the real action is. Quake III Arena moves very
quickly, and it has a real pick-up-and-play design to it. The
game feels slightly simplified as compared to other recent
shooters, but for the most part its simplicity is a good thing.
The game has been stripped down to its first-person shooter
essence, and any extraneous weapons or power-ups that might have
gotten in the way of great deathmatch gameplay have been omitted.
However, a few things stick out as having been overly simplified.
For instance, as in most shooters, there is an auto-switch
weapons option that lets you automatically switch to the new
weapon when you pick it up. It's a convenient feature because it
lets you rearm yourself with a stronger weapon almost immediately
instead of having to press a key or spin the mouse wheel to
select it. But when you're in the middle of a close-quarters
fight, you really don't want to accidentally switch to
the rocket launcher or rail if you happen to walk over one. In
that case, you can disable the auto-switch feature. Similarly, if
you're running away from someone who's firing BFG blasts at you,
the time it takes to manually select your new rocket launcher
could be the difference between life and death. A weapon-priority
scale that lets you decide specifically which weapons you'd like
to switch to automatically, as in Unreal Tournament or
QuakeWorld, would have easily solved the problem.
The level design and texture design throughout Quake III Arena
are quite good, even if the levels feel a little generic. None of
the levels ever feel like real-world places; they are one
futuristic castle setting after another, occasionally broken up
by a level composed of a bunch of floating platforms in the
middle of a black void. That said, the textures, especially the
animated ones, are really amazing, and the game engine allows for
curved surfaces, which deliver a more plausible feel to the
architecture.
The levels have obviously been designed with gameplay in mind -
most of them are great fun to play in. However, the game seems to
focus on levels that are great for only six to ten players. With
more than ten players, most of the s seem really crowded.
Aside from standard deathmatch, you can also play team
deathmatch, a one-on-one tournament mode that acts like a
scaled-down version of the popular rocket-arena mod that appeared
in Quake and Quake II, and capture the . Unfortunately,
capture the seems almost like an afterthought. There are
only four CTF levels included in the game, and all of them seem
suited to smaller teams.
Like the great-looking textures, the game's 3D models and special
effects are very impressive. The character models and skins look
terrific, and the animation really brings a lot of personality to
the different characters. The various models are highly varied,
and range from giant hopping-eye creatures to skeletons. Models
based on the characters from Doom, Quake, and Quake II are also
available. Curved surfaces help improve the quality of the level
design, but other effects like fog and great colored lighting add
even more atmosphere to some of the game's levels. The weapon
models also look good for the most part, and they're easily
identifiable in your enemies' hands.
Unfortunately, the sound in Quake III Arena is inconsistent. All
of the weapon fire is outstanding. The sound of rockets whizzing
by your head as you dodge from side to side is especially
impressive. The different character voices (each model has its
own set of sounds) are pretty good, though you may become annoyed
with Orbb the eyeball's screeching noises - all the more reason
to kill him quickly. But the real problem with the audio is the
announcer, who says things like "five minutes remaining" or
"impressive" when applicable. Id obviously tried to duplicate the
sound and style of the announcer's menacing voice from the Mortal
Kombat games. But instead of hiring an appropriate voice actor,
id simply took a typical voice (specifically that of level
designer Christian Antkow) and pitched it down a few octaves to
make it sound sinister. Instead, it just comes off as amateurish.
Given the frequency with which the announcer speaks during the
game, you'd think that the voice would have received a bit more
attention.
Regardless of how it sounds, after playing Quake III Arena, it's
easy to see that moving toward a multiplayer-centered game was an
excellent idea. With cable modems and DSL connections slowly
gaining mainstream acceptance, the bandwidth is there for a lot
of people to finally enjoy a good deathmatch game at a high
speed. Fortunately, provided you find a good server, the game
also manages to be playable over a 56K modem connection.
All things considered, it isn't a stretch to call Quake III Arena
an outstanding game. But whether it's superior to its rival
Unreal Tournament is less certain. If you're interested in
sophisticated team-play modes like those featured in Unreal
Tournament, then Quake III Arena comes up short. However, Quake
III Arena provides the ultimate deathmatch experience. If
deathmatch is the particular style of play you're interested in,
then Arena is your game. -- Jeff Gerstmann
--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot
See more ( javascript:void(0) )