🚀 go-pugleaf

On 6 Dec 2005 06:56:36 -0800, "Craig M" <ncinftec_stud7@hotmail.co.uk>
:

>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 railgun. 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 shotgun fight, you really
>don't want to accidentally switch to the rocket launcher or railgun 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 maps 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 flag. Unfortunately, capture the flag 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.


Let's do the time warp agaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin....