The most important thing to remember about Quake 3 Arena is what id was exactly aiming for. Their goal was to create the most refined deathmatch experience they could by working with all the knowledge they had gained from their previous endeavors. They didn't want to redefine the genre, they didn't wan't to turn it on its ear, they just wanted to make a really action packed and polished deathmatch title. id has accomplished that.

The Quake 3 Arena Engine is very clean as well as impressive. Even with all the tricks id had packed into the title, the game boots up fast, performs well on a variety of setups, and outperforms the bulk of today's titles in terms of overall presentation. I ran Quake 3 Arena on my PII350, TNT2, SBLive, with 128 MB of RAM, and had most of the settings on high, and it still ran really well.

The controls are still the same that most FPS fanatics have come to know and love. This standardized mouse/keyboard control scheme will probably be around for a long while thanks to the level of accuracy the two control devices provide. I used the Intellimouse Explorer, and while the Intellieye technology provides greater accuracy, any Quake fans looking for increased precision, would be better off grabbing the smaller Intellieye Intellimouse.

Quake 3 Arena doesn't toy too much with adjustable physics of any arena, rather concentrating on one constant set of rules for every arena. Although Quake 3 Arena lacks all the smaller modifications UT has, what it allowed id to do is work hard on one single goal. This goal as stated earlier was to make a well refined deathmatch experience. Evidence of their success can be found in the map designs. As they were compared in my previous Unreal Tournament review, the Quake 3 maps are designed to keep the action pumping. Hallways are a little more narrow, the overall space area of each map is also considerably smaller. This not only serves the game's purpose well, but it reduces the amount of campers that can successfully use their camp-craft in the game. The maps are designed so you can't stand still for too long, the player must improvise and rely on skill to stay alive.

Another element of the title that was fit to the gameplay style was the weapon selection. Although the bulk of these weapons have been around since Quake, they never seemed as if they belonged as much as they do in Quake 3 Arena. The weapons are based more on succession of power than use in different situations. Since the playstyle of Quake 3 Arena is so fast and furious, the player cannot afford to be forced to choose and decide which weapons to use and with what modes. In short a lot of Quake 3 Arena becomes a rush for the strongest weapon. This sound a bit simplistic at first but again, this kind of weapon accumulation is another part of what makes Quake 3 Arena so fast and fun to play.

The best thing about Quake 3 Arena's character line up has to be the overall personality in each model. Each base model has its own look as well as grunts and groans, and unique speed. As a game is played the bots have auto taunts and I have even heard a few people comment on seeing the bots have short conversations with each other. The bots in Quake 3 Arena perform different than those found in Unreal Tournament. The focus on these bots was more directed towards deathmatch than teamplay since the focus of the title is exactly that. One on one the bots seem a little more intelligent than the deathmatch performance given by the UT bots. In team mode the bots actually do pretty well, but the feeling of teamplay isn't emulated as well since you keep up more with the bots than they keep up with you.

Quake 3 Arena may lack the initial number of maps Unreal Tournament has, but it makes up for this with the large base of amature map developers out there on the internet. Unreal Tournament has a following and it too has had a few maps released, but this community is not nearly as large as Quake 3 Arena's. id is also really good about releasing map tools to people who want to try their hand at the craft of map making.

Multiplay experience is also a little less rough. Simplicity is probably one of Quake 3 Arena's best allies. It's in this simplicity that Quake 3 Arena is so easy to setup for multiplay. The GUI used is very straight forward and traditional. Most of the work of finding a game can be done by the game itself, once you're in, the goal is simple, either eliminate all other players, or capture a flag and return it to base. The performance on my 56k was easily acceptable. For those with 28.8 connections, id released some notes regarding boosting the performance of games on a 28.8 connection.

Where UT's soundtrack didn't find its niche, Quake 3 Arena's just fits so well. The style of music is a tad cliché for this kind of title, but I think there is a point where a developer needs to stick with what works. The music is sort of a fast tempo hard rock that from what I understand was done by more than one group of artists. id seems to have decided to keep the music more as ambiance. It serves its purpose to keep the player into the pace of the title. Keeping a soundtrack just for this type of reason may be a little old-school, since most titles are now trying to use their music in coordination with the player's environment to enhance gameplay. This is no way means id dropped the ball, there is nothing wrong with old styles of presentation, sometimes I think a lot of developers spend so much time rushing ahead they tend to forget this.