Quake has always been an odd series, from the first game that wasn’t even meant to be in the FPS genre, to its sequel that simply had the Quake name tacked onto it and contained an entirely different setting. Quake 3 Arena once again turns the franchise on its head with the removal of a single player campaign and instead focusing solely on the multiplayer aspect. The story involves the strongest warriors of the universe being suddenly transported and made to battle one another to see who will prevail. Our lineup consists of some of ID Tech’s most well-known characters including the Doom marine and Ranger, as well as a slew of new characters. A few examples are a literal eyeball with a pair of legs, some dude riding a hover-board, and a blue skeleton clacking around the place. Quite a selection to choose from and all are available from the get-go.
While it does lack a campaign it does have some form of solo play via having seven tiers of matches against the AI. Each match will take place in a completely new map, making it impossible to learn them, but you will get a grip on the weapons and flow of the game. There are 26 maps in total with an equal amount of matches. You are free to pick from five difficulty modes at the start of one, ranging from ‘I Can Win’ to Nightmare. The most optimal is the fourth difficulty called Hardcore since it removes all of the AI’s handicaps, though selecting this is not required, the only thing gained is the extra challenge as you can move on by winning on any setting regardless.
Playing on higher difficulties also has the added effect that each of the character’s quirks are more evident. You see, the AI will have their own preferred way of playing depending on who they are using. Some will prefer certain weapons, others really love to bunny hop around, or simply react faster. It’s a pretty interesting way to add some life into it and they go the extra mile by adding in a fake chat-log that has the bots either raging or congratulating you to simulate a multiplayer match. Only much more polite of course, don’t expect the bots to go off on a racist tirade as one would expect from any online competitive game. Also worth mentioning is that the title can be played in a widescreen ratio and with a modern resolution using a few config tweaks. In doing so however, you will be breaking the cut-scenes that will now appear as a black screen while its audio plays. Its cut-scenes are far from worthwhile as they only serve to introduce the new characters of a tier, no big deal.
All of the single player matches are a free for all, so shoot anything in sight and don’t stop until you find yourself out of ammo or outmatched. You spawn in with a basic machine gun, and while it is serviceable it’s ill-advised to be used as anything but a last resort. Your best bet is to run directly to a weapon spawn point and make good use of the variety of weapons at your disposal. There is a gun that shoots lightning ala Quake 1, the ever powerful Railgun introduced in Quake 2, as well as a multitude of others. Each handles very differently, with many of the more powerful weapons such as the Rocket Launcher having projectiles far slower than a player’s running speed, requiring practice to nail a target with instead of settling for splash damage. The railgun, on the other hand, is a hit-scan death dealer, though you will need one heck of an aim and contains a rate of fire so slow you’ll likely get fragged yourself if you miss your opening shot. Overall there are 8 weapons, each opening up their own possibilities and are as deadly as the person behind it allows.
You will always have a melee weapon known as the Gauntlet which is quite the monster in close range. A single scrape of this thing will cut down fifty of your hundred health points but for most, it will be a situational weapon. This being due to how fast-paced the game is. making it hard to catch up to an enemy aware of your schemes and is also the equivalent of bringing a knife into a gun fight. After picking up a new gun, the only way to reliably gather more ammo is to scour the map for its specific type or taking some from any opponents cold, dead hands if he has what you need. Camping a weapon spawn point is discouraged by it only giving you a single round each time you pick it up after your first. It can still be a good idea to deny your enemies this weapon if you can hold the spot, but that falls more into the realms of strategy rather than cheesing the game.
The maps you will play in follow no rhythm or reason. They can go from a hellish environment to futuristic in a heartbeat and some maps feature nothing but the emptiness of space as you use launch pads to leap over large chasms. The sheer verticality of many of them is still impressive to behold to this day. As are their actual design to keep the matches smooth and a ton of fun, instead of just being eye candy. Aside from weapons and ammo, there are also typically a few power-ups scattered around. These range from a personal teleporter to let you instantly retreat from a fight not going your way, to regenerating health, and the ever-terrifying Quad Damage that does just what its name implies. In the case of the latter, it lasts 30 seconds and is dropped when killed allowing you to benefit from whatever charge it has left. Due to that, it makes you just as much of a target as being the ultimate predator should you pick it up.
Easy to pick up, hard to master and harder to put down defines Quake 3 perfectly. Once you reach and conquer the seventh & final tier of the game all you receive is a cutscene. You can set up a skirmish match or replay old stages on higher difficulties if you want some more single player action. Choosing Skirmish allows you to pick any map and also lets you pick both the Team Deathmatch & Capture the Flag modes, which were completely absent from the campaign. And you really should get as much practice as you can if you ever plan on playing multiplayer. Yes, there are still people playing, though as you may imagine from those that have stuck by it since the 90’s, they are in a tier of there own. It has far fewer players than Quake Live as well, and as such is ultimately not the version I’d recommend despite Live having some annoying changes such as the lack of gibs and other more annoying oddities. That leaves Quake 3 in quite an awkward position as it is first and foremost a multiplayer game, not to mention Live is cheaper for essentially the same game. Whichever you choose, I highly recommend checking out Quake 3 in one form or another.
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