Quake III Arena (thing)

Quake III Arena is another in a long line of graphically ambitious first-person shooters from the originators of the genre, Id Software. Q3A is almost entirely based around networked multiplayer gaming, with the single-player component being little more than a training mode against computer-controlled bots. This was seen as a daring move at the time, when online gaming was still seen as something of a novelty by many gamers. Q3A is often criticised as being an 'engine looking for a game', although within the narrow gameplay boundaries it sets itself (straight deathmatch), it is easily the best implementation yet seen.

Quake III Arena takes Quake 2's deathmatch mode as its starting point. The controls, game rules and weapons have been tuned with the intention of making them as 'pure' as possible. There are nine weapons, each of which represents a typical FPS weapon type (mélee, machine gun, shotgun, rocket launcher, etc.). There are no 'sniper scopes', players are allowed to zoom in their view at the press of a button, regardless of what weapon they are using. This is especially handy for the railgun (almost identical to its Quake 2 counterpart), the weapon of choice among skilled players (although all of the weapons serve a useful purpose). Health and ammo collectibles are now represented by large glowing icons. The usual Quake powerups such as Quad Damage and Invisibility are still there, joined by some new ones such as Flight and Regeneration. There are three game styles: deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag. The game is basically a collection of fairly small levels (arenas), and a pack of nicely animated character models with highly detailed skins. The levels are heavily stylised, with a mixture of biomechanical, sci-fi, medieval/gothic and infernal architecture. Some arenas are little more than arrangements of metal platforms and bounce pads suspended in a black void.

Quake 3 Arena was extremely graphically impressive at the time, and the (OpenGL-based) engine is still occasionally used by new titles four years later (as I write this, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Star Trek: Elite Force II have recently launched). Scripted shader effects allowed surfaces to be animated and multitextured in interesting ways, such as environment-mapped glass and fluttering banners. The engine could also render 'true' curved surfaces allowing for all kinds of archways and domes, as well as volumetric fog and (very computationally expensive) portal surfaces, which could be used to make mirrors and teleport gates. The lighting model, texture resolution and polygon count could all be ramped up substantially compared to the previous generation of shooters. The engine's main strengths however were its scalability, raw speed, and extremely robust network code. The engine further cemented John Carmack's position as the most important single PC games programmer, leading to him having an even greater involvement and influence in the 3D graphics hardware sector.

As should be expected, the game is highly extensible, with the modding community using it over the years as a base for hundreds of projects including Quake 3 Fortress, Urban Terror, Freeze Tag, Reaction Quake 3, and countless others. In spite of its technical merits, the game never spawned any modifications as popular as the phenomenal Counter-Strike, based on Half-Life. There was actually one official add-on pack released, Quake III: Team Arena (seen by some as an attempt to 'catch up' with the more diverse gameplay modes of Epic's Unreal Tournament), but this was met with a lukewarm critical response and poor sales.

Quake 3 Arena has basically become part of the furniture in the PC gaming scene. It is extremely easy to get running on virtually any modern machine, and can be dipped into for a quick blast or configured to cater for many different gaming tastes. It is still played competitively in tournaments, and is used as a 'real world' performance benchmark by many publications. It remains perhaps the best game of its kind, although in later years it has become apparent that the FPS genre as a whole is capable of more varied game styles (stealth, teamwork, adventure...) than just plain old deathmatch.