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There are few games which I would consider absolutely excellent and for one game I don’t even need to think long about why; Quake 3 Arena could maybe be considered as one of the most well rounded Multiplayer Ego Shooters ever made. What it offers in content and community support is next to none in the genre and the gameplay feels simple yet refined when compared to its predecessors.
Keep It Simple Stupid #
Sometimes you just need to keep it simple… stupid. Quake doesn’t need to be anything more than a point and click game. Point your mouse cursor on an enemy and click away. Sometimes you need to hold down your mouse button and drag the reticle in line with your opponent’s motion and even other times you may have to point somewhere where you suspect your target will be. You don’t really need to think about spray patterns, item synergies, wallrunning or alternate fire modes, the only thing you have to concentrate on is killing anything that moves!
Quake 3 is part of the Arena Shooter genre, hell it even makes that fact clear with its name. What makes a shooter an arena shooter I think can be boiled down to a few points:
- The players are thrown into a map and either partake in a free for all or in team based combat modes
- The maps are littered with items including weapons, health pickups and power ups if the game features them
- And most importantly, the only discriminators between players are knowledge and ability other than that every man, woman or oversized eyeball is playing on an even playing field - no equity allowed!
Not for everyone #
This makes an arena shooter a bit tough to learn for many or even a somewhat undesirable genre for others, which is completely understandable. Even if your motor skills and reaction times are up to par, or even exceptional, you will be outclassed by the player that knows all the item pickup locations and their respawn times, the person who knows when to best use a weapon at the appropriate time and you may not stand a chance against the player that has better resource management skills, knowing just when to disengage and stock up on supplies.
Games of this type have built up a reputation for just how difficult they are to master, featuring a multitude of relatively simple game mechanics which compound into a surprisingly complex experience. However, what might be seen as a bit paradoxical to some of you, I believe Quake 3 is a great example for a fun casual experience. Playing the game is dead simple, you just join a server and play as many rounds as you like. There is no matchmaking, you just select a server and play and when you feel like quitting… you can. No penalties, no ranks, no complications.
This is where competitive games really started, in random dedicated servers such as the ones that still are up for Quake 3 with no gatekeeping system such as rank based matchmaking in place. Beginners who just bought the game, intermediate players and veterans who have been playing the game for longer than you have been alive are all thrown into one pot, which to me means that a certain will to improve is baked into the experience without any arbitrary systems stacked atop it.
…But it may just be for you! #
If you do decide to get into Quake and may have Quake 3 laying around at home or on Steam, I would highly suggest you to install it and try it out. Finding servers to play on is as easy as one to three, just boot up the game, click on multiplayer and hundreds of options will be made available to you. You might not want to play on the vanilla engine however, the game may be from 1999 but the age of the CRT monitors and dial up modems is long gone. I would suggest you download a Quake 3 source port, the one I recommend being ioquake3. Copy the PK3 files into the base folder and bam; You can play Quake 3 in a modern resolution.
Out of the box the game comes packed with maps and player models, and many more custom maps and gamemodes exist that were community made. The game features beautiful visuals and great sounds, which not only sound good but inform you where an opponent is coming from. The 3D positional audio is quite good in Quake 3 and you can often expect an attack or start an ambush by trusting the sound alone.
If you are shy and would rather play the game by yourself, then no problem! Quake has a single player mode which comes with surprisingly good bot opponents, which can really beat your ass, especially if you just start playing the game.
I believe that you will quickly find out that the game feels far from archaic. It is fast, movement is responsive, weapons are satisfying to use and the maps themselves are quick to learn: For being 25 years old, Quake 3 feels surprisingly modern and brings something to the table that may just scratch an itch that you didn’t know you had. Playable! Even by yourself Conclusion? Quake 3 definitely isn’t dead, but there aren’t hordes of players online around the clock either. Most servers you can join have some kind of bot system in place, the ones I connected to always provided two bots when no one else was around. Once a player joins, the bot leaves the match and spectates. With tremendously good bots, beautiful maps and hosting options ranging between local and dedicated servers that are discoverable online, this game will be a hit during your LAN party guaranteed!
And if you love exploring the history of FPS games, I think Quake 3 is a must try! It really is one of the cleanest and best executed Arena shooters ever made and it spawned a multitude of modifications and standalone experiences which don’t even require you to buy the base game. Quake 3 proved to be much more than just a shooting game. Some total conversions turn it into a rally racer, others into musical experiences and… well many just stick to shooting things too. So if you want to revisit Quake in a different coat of paint, there are a handful of options to explore together with friends, my favourite being World of Padman, a game that is rather close to the original and in which you can easily create offline bot matches or online games with your friends!
Quake 3 really is an artifact of a time in which id software wasn’t shackled by Bethesda Game Studios. The game, like any other id Software title at the time, was open sourced, allowing anyone to create source ports, enhancements and modifications which is part of the reason why all of id’s old games just refuse to die.
Sadly, many developers could learn a lot from this title and its predecessors. With ever more games requiring central server structures and not opening up to their communities, replayability is hampered and an establishment of a core player base is made difficult. id, the agreed upon foster parent of the ego shooter genre, set an example for the industry which id itself sadly turned it’s back on. With newer id titles not getting the same open sourcing treatment as their elders, their days are numbered. Less mods, fewer maps and a minority of tinkerers ensures that the game just won’t leave the same impact. Even Doom 3, a more controversial title in the series, was blessed with a multitude of modifications and total conversions, which sadly is not the case for newer titles in the series. Quake 3 is a great game coming from a time in which the genre was truly great as a whole. And really, it isn’t a surprise that it holds up to this day!
What also is cool about Quake 3, is that it has a successor, but that is a game to cover for another time!