Quake 3: Arena Review

For Dreamcast

By Contributing Writer Jimmy Payne

Rating: Crappy
   Quake 3: Arena is a blast when you first start playing, but after you get
past the initial rush of shooting a rocket down someone's throat, you'll 
find that the underlying game design is about as simple and boring as it 
gets.  At its best, Quake 3 never approaches the fun or intensity of Quake 1
or 2.
   Quake 3's biggest flaw is its lack of variety.  All you have to do is 
fire at everything, run as fast as you can, and avoid getting shot.  This 
emphasis on mindless action is good for a ten-minute session of frustration-
venting, but it's not enough to keep you glued to your coach for weeks or 
months.  Very little of the strategy and technique from Quake 2 has carried 
over to its sequel.
   The single-player mode is nothing more than a glorified training mode in 
which you compete in deathmatches against computer-controlled bots.  These 
challenges are very similar to the ones in Perfect Dark, but nowhere near as
imaginative because once again, your only objective is to stay alive while 
you search and destroy.
   Playing Quake 3 using the Dreamcast's 56K modem results in about as much
lag as playing the PC version on a 56K modem.  This is an impressive 
technical achievement, but it means absolutely nothing without a good game 
to back it up.  It's also a shame that there are no out-of-game chat rooms 
like there are in NFL 2K1.  This omission causes many players to constantly 
chat during games instead of playing.  And of course, if you happen to shoot
a player who's chatting, you'll be cursed at for doing so.
   In order to achieve the technical performance that the game offers, the 
developers had to drastically decrease the number of players allowed per 
game (the new limit is four players).  In a way, this is the equivalent of 
removing someone's mask at a Halloween party and finding a butt-ugly person 
underneath.  The small amount of players slows down the pace of the game 
considerably and eliminates any sense of chaos.  Without constant action to 
keep you busy, it's much easier to see Quake 3 for the shallow game that it 
is.
   The power and grace of the rail-gun has been neutered thanks to the 
increased pauses associated with it.  The rail-gun has always had a split-
second pause between the moment when you press the fire button and the 
moment when the gun actually fires, but this pause has been taken too far in
Quake 3.  The rocket launcher is also much less powerful than it used to be,
which does more to hurt the balance of the game than it does to help it.
   The level design has also taken a turn for the worse since the days of 
Quake 2.  Quake 3's levels are much smaller and don't contain as many secret
areas containing powerful weapons.  The level lay-outs and weapon placements
are much more straight-forward, with the most powerful weapons in the game 
often placed on easily-accessible ledges.
   This game's explosion effects are some of the worst I have ever seen in 
any game, and there are also lots of little animation-related bugs.  For 
example, in the animation for firing the grenade launcher, the grenade 
appears to be invisible for a moment before it finally pops up several feet 
away from you.
   If there's anything that can ruin the mood and atmosphere of a first-
person shooter, it's horrible music.  This game's music is always generic 
and sometimes grossly inappropriate for a first-person shooter.  Some of the
belong in a cutesy action/platform game rather than a "hardcore" FPS.
   When John Carmack and the rest of the team at Id Software originally 
designed Quake 3, they were too pre-occupied with their graphics engine and
its over-hyped curved surfaces to worry about gameplay.  Sega has done 
nothing to add depth to the Dreamcast version of the game, and the result is
a game that's just as shallow on the Dreamcast as it is on the PC.

Send your thoughts on this review to jimmy@mastergamer.com

    
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