Quake 3 Arena for Dreamcast

Wolfenstein 3D. Doom. Quake. Sound familiar? They should, as they are some of the best first person shooters ever. Their developers, id Software, should sound equally familiar, since they basically created the genre of first person shooters (which will now be referred to as FPS), and have successfully ported over their games from PC to console. Now, we have the third installment of Quake.

Quake II rocked! What can I expect this time?
I never thought I would be saying this, but Quake III Areana sucks! I liked the first one, and the second one definitely improved on this, but this one is just an insult! The trademark of FPS is gunning down a throng of demons and mutilated creatures, and saving the world from Hell itself, while suffering many wounds, but being able to survive and kick more @$$. While the feature of battling other players online and in your own home is welcomed, you can only battle four opponents in total! That means if you have 3 players, you can only have one more CPU. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but the inferior Perfect Dark easily pulled this off without too much strain. In fact, it actually had more, and the options were endless. Here, you barely have any different modes to compete in, the most innovative is probably Capture the Flag, which many games already had. Very innovative. It pains me to say this, but this is exactly the type of horribly violent, brainless, and mediocre game that politics like Senator Liberman and the ESRB are talking about.

Um... then what's the story? More revenge for bunnies?
There is no story. There are no mission objectives. Just shoot anything that moves (which is 3 people shooting like there's no tomorrow). There aren't too many arenas (which, ironically, the game is named), and they're all small too. But in each level, there's so many twists and turns, and objects to help and hinder. Lava will burn you to a crisp. Bottomless pits aren't so bottomless but are equally as painful. Portals will teleport you to more areas. And let's not forget this weird, orange, circle-thing that propels you into the air the moment you step onto it.

Shooting up stuff is always fun, story or no story.
Actually, the choice of weapons and items are poor, an insult for a game with the name Quake. How can you expect to frag people when the weapons suck? Besides the basic choices of your typical machine guns and rocket launchers, at least we have this cool rail gun that, when used accurately, can rip almost anyone to pieces. And you know that crappy close-range weapon FPS always have? Well, this one is actually one of the best weapons in the game! And you get an award for it too, with the stiff announcer saying, "HUMILIATION", which is sadly one of the coolest parts of the game. The Quad Damage (blow your enemy across the screen, assuming their corpse didn't blow up) would have that honor if it wasn't so unfair and cheap.

But I can shoot up online players, right?
The whole point of the game is to shoot up four other players, so obviously, this game doesn't offer much if you play alone. Even if you do play via four play, there's only two teams of two. The game is even less fun when it's three on one, and Quake III sure does a good job of being the school bully. But let's get to the online players. There's three types: the newbie/legit (the one who often finds himself getting fragged), the bullies (who likes to kill anyone recklessly and have the skills since they were playing since the PC version, and also will get other players on you if he doesn't feel like killing you for the umpteenth time), and the stupid ones (who join the opposite team of their friend's just so they can talk because they're too dumb not to go to a chat room and will kill ANYONE that interrupts their conversation and wants to play a real game). I can proudly say that I'm the newbie/legit, though I didn't like the rights that came with it. If you do want to play online though, there are many servers to play on and barely any lag.

On the bright side, the controls are solid, surprisingly, and suit the Dreamcast controller well. If you want the true PC experience, you should buy the PC version. Seriously though, you'll have to buy the Dreamcast mouse and keyboard, as it'll take you forever to manually input "H-E-L-P-!-!-!" as you're being mutilated.

Graphics
Quake III Arena is just a beauty to watch, especially in 3rd person. The Dreamcast's potential is put into really good use here and it shows. The graphics are smooth and crisp, runs almost like a movie. The blazing guns, the dim lights, and the realistic character models are excellent. You can sample all these by watching the cool intro.

Sound
It's simply amazing. Close your eyes... hear that? It sounds just like a real battlefield. The sound is realistic and fits the actions well, and the soundtrack is incredible! It's definitely not what I expected from video games, and the mechanical announcer fits well too.

Overall
Quake III Arena is a marvel to watch at in action. Just don't play it, you'll probably get more frustration than you're trying to release. This is a good example of PC porting over to consoles well, but that doesn't mean jack since the game sucked to begin with.





This is a submission to the "I'm Angry as Hell and I'm Not Gonna Take it Anymore" write-off, hosted by Erny5796. Check out the other participants.

List of Participants:
Erny5796
Dbbum
Yarrick
Lorinsilver
StarSoldier1
Pika312
Jeremy1456
B_campbell
Rock_on