Quake 3 Team Arena
Preamble
rant
So
its about 14 months or so since the original Q3 came out.
The WOW! factor of Quake 3's graphics wore off about 10 months ago, and
the game sat deinstalled from my system for ages. The original Quake 3 to me was
a very shallow and disappointing Deathmatch-only experience. There were a few
token CTF maps in the original, but they were badly designed and didn't have all
the runes and grapples that CTFers yearned for.
Christmas
2000: Quake 3 Team Arena is out in the States. Usual situation of the only
people playing it in Europe are the pirates, who have a more competent
distribution network.
End
of January 2001. The damned game finally hits the shops in Europe. What the hell
takes these people so long to put games out here? RRP is something like £20,
though I picked it up for £15.99 online.
So
wotcha get for your cash?
Fire
it up
Q3TA
will update your install of Quake 3 to version 1.27, which may knock out compatibility
with some mods you may have installed, although most mods are now 1.27
compatible. I tried it with CCTF and it seemed OK, and I'm told Q3F works fine
with it too. The first thing you'll notice with Q3TA is the new interface, which
is quite a bit slicker than the old Q3 one, and feels a bit less like using the
DOS command prompt. There are lots of nice touches like little video clips
playing behind the menus, although
it does slow them down a bit. There is even a drop-down in-game menu system too,
working a bit like Unreal Tournament.
The
maps
A
bit of a mixed bag really. The good thing from my point of view is that they're
largely modern / futuristic style maps rather than the dull brown Quake 1 style
gothic maps. A few are just rehashes of the original Q3 CTF ones, with a few
extra jump-pads and passages chucked in for good measure. Mostly these new
versions are improvements, but as they account for about 4 of the 16 new maps,
already you're feeling short-changed.
The
most impressive new maps are the outdoor (mpterra) ones, which feel very much
like Tribes. The sky effects casting rippling shadows off the clouds works well,
and if I could find a server with any players to try these on it would be nice.
The biggest complaint about these maps is that it takes AGES to get across them.
Doing a flag run takes absolutely forever, and I can forsee these maps having a
zero point score at timeout time regularly.
The
other maps in the pack are generally quite good. Certainly they generally look
better than the maps is original Q3, with a corresponding increase in level of
graphics horsepower needed to make them play well. I wuold certainly advise most
people who play with in-game videos disabled as they cause things to chug when a
few models appear at the same time.
As
I said earlier there are also 4 new Tournament deathmatch style maps chucked in
too- why I don't know. I sometimes think DM is all that ID software really
understands.
Game
types
The
maps above, with the exception of the tournament maps, are all playable with
each of the 4 game types. These are:
Capture
the flag Standard
CTF - grab the othe side's flag from their base and bring it back to your own
flag.
One
flag CTF A
single flag appears in the middle of the map and you have to grab it and touch
it down in the other side's base. this works well and has a high death-rate.
Overlord
Each team has to try to blow up a statue thing in the other side's base, which
is tricky as it can take a lot of damage and constantly regenerates. The
gauntlet with the doubler powerup works really well here if you can get close
enough. This works quite well as a team-game, although it can be a bit static -
teams tend to split 50 percent defenders, 50 percent baseblasters, with little
real dynamic use of the map.
Harvester
Basically
the same as the old headhunters mod. For each member of the other side that gets
fragged, a skull appears in the middle of the map. These can be collected and
taken to the enemy base for points. The skulls show up as a trail behind the
person carrying them, so the more you carry, the more of a target you make
yourself. I wasn't initially too impressed with this, but with my increasing
frustration at a lack of online players, I've found this one works best with
small teams of 3 or four per side.r
Powerups
and new guns and stuff
Rather
than classes ID seem to have gone with powerups (basically runes) to make
playres have different roles. There are a limited number of these, soon busy
servers only about one in 3 players will have a powerup at any time. The
available powerups are Doubler (double-damage), ammo-regen (shoot-faster), guard
(health has higher max and regens), and stealth (speeds you up and you shoot
faster, but can't use armour). These don't wear out, but last until you get
killed. The powerups are okay, but do give a bit too much of an advantage to
those who have them, to a point where players tend to hover about round the base
till the next powerup appears.
The
new guns are frankly piss-poor. First up comes the chaingun which is ludicrously
powerful and is going to be a camper special. It a machine gun that does about
double the damage of the standard machine gun, and combined with a doubler
powerup can slice through anything in a few hits. At least it has limited ammo,
but as I said, its just going to be a camper's wet-dream. Next up comes the
nailgun, which is a bit like the UT flak-cannon except its utterly useless.
Finally comes the prox launcher. This allows lamers to go around laying mines
all over the place which slow the game to a crawl. They only detonate when the
other side go near them, but can be laid in groups near each other and make flag
grabbing a real pain. They do at least detonate on their own after a while, and
can be shot, but really, they're
just a bore.
Finally
there are a couple of special items. One is a suicide skull thing that blows up
and kills everything within a certain range unless you can run away fast enough.
This is okay, but again can make flag capturing even more laborious. Secondly
there is the invulnerability sphere, which makes you invulnerable to everything
except prox mines. Which might be okay except you can't move while its on. So
its useless.
Gameplay
On
the plus side you still get the basic Q3 engine, with its tasty graphics and
spot-on physics. While I have questioned many of the ways teamplay have been
implemented, there is no getting over the fact that this is a top-notch engine
powering it with highly refined controls. Netcode
is also still good for those of us with good connections - it plays fine on a
sub 100 ping environment. once you start getting into 56ker land though, I find
Q3's netcode decidedly poor compared to other engines.
What
you DON'T get in the pack is any kind of grapple or translocator or anything to
get round some of the big maps quickly. Oh well. While I did find grapples a bit
too fast in Q2 and translocator hopping in UT unbearable, moving round the big
maps in this game is painfully slow compared to the backpack-aided ease of
Tribes.
Single
player is really a waste of time in Q3TA. The bots are simply far too stupid to
be any good at it. While they do just about understand the new gameplay types,
they don't play as a team and can't even manage basics such as chasing a
flag-carrier or making a half-baked attempt at sensible base-defending.
They also tend to make flag-runs exactly the same way time after time. At
least it gives you an opportunity to try out maps before going online and making
a pillock of yourself.
I
have now had the game for a couple of weeks and have STILL to find a decent
range of servers in Europe for the game. Even worse, the few that there are
don't seem to have many players on them .This is strange because there were more
servers for the test than for the full thing. As it stands there are a couple of
empty servers in Holland and Germany, and I usually end up playing on East coast
US servers from the UK. This may of course be largely due to the demise of
Barrysworld, who act as a kind of focal point for UK gaming. I can just hope
that the more relaible UK server operators like Jolt and Demon take up the game
or it will be a flop here.
So
in conclusion
If
players show some restraint on those b100dy prox mines, the game can be fast and
furious fun, and is certainly the most up-tempo of the teamplay games around. If
it can get a few decent servers, I think it will attract a lot of the old-school
teamplay types from Q2 CTF. It doesn't really push at the forefront of teamplay,
like TFC's classes or the base system of Tribes, but it has a faster pace about
it as a result. What may let all this down though is the potential for exploits
of the rather badly balanced new powerups items available. Time will tell - I
have still to see a decent range of servers operating with poper teams to jusdge
this - but I'm no 'pro' player and I already see lots of imbalances and abuses
within it.
