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Predication is necessary as it is essential to provide my biases
walking into this review. I love Quake. Not Quake 2, Not Unreal,
not Doom, but Quake. I love the speed, I love the level design, I
love the totally unbalanced weapon selection, I love the gibbes, I love
rocket jumping over a shower of gibbes. What this means is that any
later incarnation of this game will be brutally scrutinized, as Quake 2
was. Quake was made by a bunch of people that had already tasted massive financial success with Doom and slacked in production. The design
of the game drastically changed in mid-development and by all rights it
should have been shit. The reason it wasn't is that the game designers
means of development was to play deathmatch, constantly. I
assume from rumors that they "playtested" the game instead of
working for months and months. Look what happened: Dm2, Dm4, E1M2.
It's hard to compare the experience of running "The Bad Place"
with 4-6 other people to any other game. Nothing comes close. So there I
am, standing in the middle of Dm4 writing this review.
There are a lot of shitty things in Quake 3a:
Most of the levels are either built with
only beginners in mind or are "trick" levels with a lot of jumps and silly lifts. Prediction. Some
of the models are disappointing, and the bot's "ai" feels like an slightly humanized omicron
bot; no suprises there.
The weapon selection is also questionable. The Grenade launcher is
disappointing for
Quake players used to the creamy goodness of the OG GL. The plasma gun is the worst "no
skill" weapon I've ever seen. It's weapon effect slows everything down as well as crowding
the screen so you can't see what the hell is going on while firing it.
Some of the design
choices are extremely questionable. Fat people running around? Vertically challenged levels?
An Eyeball with legs? The bot chat feature is absolutely lame. The taunts,
already meaningless coming from a machine, are so inane as to turn the stomach. The final
boss is the best example of this. For example: Major says "just get my
tombstone right" or something to that effect. Now since she's
been killed, this is ok, but instantly she respawns to be killed
again. It's just not internally consistant! If they are
fragged but not killed as evident by their respawn, why then talk about
themselves being dead?
The processor and video card requirements are astronomical.
The box should read: "System Requirements: Computer not yet built to run this
game, please wait until March of 2000."
I completed (and I mean completed; ie never to play again)
the single player in three hours. It felt like a chore. The bots, with their
complete reliance on superior aim gave little satisfaction in tactical
play. You can ALWAYS get the armor or RL when you need it.
The bots ALWAYS run around, never camping anywhere. There really isn't anything "new" about Q3a except
the engine and art. The game-play is the same, the weapons are the same and the style of game is the same.
With all these problems it seems impossible that Q3a is worth buying. But jesus H christ it
is! What id has done with the single player is fine, but makes no difference. Some of the
models suck, but it makes no difference. Most of the levels are aesthetics over game-play, but
it makes no difference. No one I know has a system that can run it well, but it makes no difference.
In four months time there will hundreds of new models, thousands of new levels and a dozen or so
mods that ameliorate almost ALL problems. The Voodoo 5 should be out and people will have
systems that will be able to run the game. And, of course, someone will remake Quake DM4. Playing through the single player, I constantly said: "I hate this," but then during tier five, I
started having a bit of fun. Tier five is a stint with some rather good levels in it, like
Brimstone Alley, and it contains some of the better models. A few of the levels
in that tier are super
tight, rather than the typical Q3a flat open area with some curves spread around, so I
was in my element: fucking bot ass. It was during this tier that I was able to get the "haste"
power up and I realized that there was a ray of hope in terms of runspeed slowness.
If server admins can set run speed.... Excellent!
After I finished off Xeroe (hi, yes bot you can aim better than I can but you jump to the same places
every time) I started up a skirmish with nine or so bots on Brimstone Alley with a frag limit
of 100 and went to town. Within 10 minutes I realized I liked Q3a, within 20 I loved it.
It's hard to describe the moment where I shifted from hating to loving Q3a, but it happened
and here I am writing this review.
Basically the Q3a you get in the box is good, but it's what you will be able to get off
the net in four months that will make this game fantastic. Better CTF with the hook, better
levels, more models and more fun and silly mods. With time and better processors we will be
able to actually play without a ton of slowdown when someone is gibbed or uses the plasma
gun. There is a lot more to be explored in Q3 so I'm going to cut this off for now. It's not my beloved friend Quake, no, and only time will tell if it's a worthy
successor. It IS certainly beautiful graphically.
Binary score: 1
Links
id software
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