Quake III Arena is a Deathmatch based first person shooter from the gaming giants idSoftware. It has a beautiful graphics engine, that has been the basis for many other retail games such as Star Trek: Elite Force, and American McGee's Alice. It was the first graphics engine to enable curves to be created, rather than lots of polygon flat shapes placed close together.
There are three types of gameplay, all of which are more fun played online. These are:
All of these involve running around and blowing people up, rather than slow strategy
FPSs like
Counter-Strike.
There are altogether 9 weapons and here is a list of them with pros and cons.
Gauntlet
This is the weapon that you always have when you run out of ammo for your other weapons. The obvious disadvantage is that you have to run up to a player to inflict any damage, and if they have a weapon it is unlikley that you will make the frag. It is good however for sneaking up on people, as it does about 50 damage.
Machine Gun
This is the weapon that you start off with when you spawn after being fragged. The damage it does is minimal, and you dont have very much ammo, but if you know someone is almost dead it is good for finishing them off because it is accurate and instantly reaches the player.
Shotgun
This weapon is leathal close range. It shoots out about 6 or 7 bullets at a time, so inflicts 6x the damage if you are close. It is really only good for close range, because the further away you are from your target, the more the bullets spread out.
Grenade Launcher
This small weapon shoots out grenades at quite a pace. The grenades have a large splash damage radius. (This means that they damage players even if they do not make contact). If somebody is unlucky enough to hit a grenade before it explodes (after 4 or 5 seconds) it deals a great amount of damage. It is good for small corridoors when you know somebody is following you, but they do not travel far, so can not be used at distances. It is a bad idea to fire a grenade forwards as you are running, as you will probably kill yourself in the process.
Rocket Launcher
This is by far the most popular gun. Firing rockets in a dead straight line, a rocket can completly kill someone with 100 health in a direct hit. The splash damage is also quite large, so you have a good chance of hitting somebody in a duel. If used too far away, it is unlikley you will hit the target, because the rocket moves fairly slowly, but at medium range it is fantastic. It is advised not to use at close range too much, as you could kill yourself from the splash damage.
Lightning Gun
This gun fires a constant lightning beam in a straight line towards the enemy. It is great for finishing off, and is also good for confusing the enemy. Nothing is harder than trying to kill somebody with a face full of lightning. The downside is that, although rapid firing, it doesnt do excess amounts of damage, and does not reach an unlimited distance.
Railgun
This has to be the most lethal gun in the game, bar the BFG. It does almost lethal shots. 2 hits is guarenteed to equal death, unless you have armour, and one will bring to down to about 15 health, leaving you an easy target for a machine gunner. The "slug" immediately reaches the target, so people with a good aim, and a good ping, deal death in buckets with this weapon. The only downside is the slow recharge time.
Plasma Gun
This plasma charged weapon fires at an alarming rate, and the ammo does a large amount of damage. It is great for close and medium range, and good for spamming to hide your position from railgun snipers. Don't get too close to a wall while firing though, or you will find yourself dead within seconds. Long range it is pretty poor however because the bullets move quite slowly.
B F G
This is the mother of all weapons. With damage greater than or equal to the rocket launcher, and a firing rate only slightly slower that the plasma gun, it is very hard to beat someone wielding this. There are a couple of drawbacks, one being the very very large splash damage radius. If you dont kill yourself, you might blow youself off a cliff. The other drawback is the rarity of the weapon and ammo, and the ammo runs out very quickly.
Oh yeh, and when someone else has one of these things...
This game boasts many well designed maps. Each map has clearly been well thought out, but a few favourites have emerged. These are:
Q3DM6
Q3DM7
Q3DM8
Q3DM17
Q3TOURNEY2
The player models are also very well crafted in Q3A. With each model having 3 or more skins (one default, a red one, a blue one, and sometimes one or more alternatives) it is unusual to have the same one in a server.
With the new release of Q3, this has become even more true, with the ability to choose a model, and a different head model, eg.
A cyborgs body with a huge eyeball for a head
or
A skeleton with an aliens head
All this makes for an excellent playability time. Also, one game of Q3 is never the same, especially played online. Sometimes when you join a server, it is a walkthrough, and others you will lose terribly.
Other than the four game modes mentioned above, you can download other modifications for free. One of the most popular small ones is Instagib. This game mode only lets you use the railgun, but one shot kills... always. This is most popular for lpbs.
Another, bigger and profession mod is Threewave. It is a capture the flag mod, with many different twists to normal CTF.
www.quake3arena.com