Quake III Arena

Quake III Arena is all about the multiplayer action and getting frags (kills). In Quake III you can compete against bots or other players. Game types include Capture the Flag (CTF), Free for All Deathmatch (FFA), Team Deathmatch (TDM), and Tournament (1v1 or Duel), among others.

The unmodified game of Quake III is often referred to as "Vanilla Quake Three," or "VQ3" and its physics known as VQ3 physics. There are several commonly-known modifications for the game. The Challenge ProMode Arena mod, or "CPMA" offers a more challenging game and is often used by more advanced players and pro gamers. It was the main competitive mod for Quake III. Other major mods include Rocket Arena, OSP, and DeFRaG. Because Quake III is so customizable, with simple sophistication of play, movement, design, and programming, many loyalists regard it as the greatest and purest arena for multiplayer competition existing to date, and it has been used in tournaments a great deal. Many professional "cyber athletes" have trained in Quake III, often with CPMA.

Playing Quake well does require a great deal of skill which is developed over time. For example, you will need to learn to properly strafe jump.

Quake Three was a big hit. It still has a strong following and active community, even almost ten years after its initial release, and you can find lots of Q3 content online, such as videos, free mods, custom maps, and resources to help you get acclimated to the game. Quake III is worth a try, and it should not cost much for a used copy.

The Quake III: Team Arena expansion pack was released in December of 2000, and added some additional features for team play such as new game modes and weapons. Versions of Quake III have been released for various other platforms, but I will mainly be discussing the PC version here.

I first came to Quake III a few years ago after being encouraged to play it with a friend. Trying to learn was very difficult and I was constantly being beaten by others, but I still had a fun time. After a few months of playing Quake every so often I stopped for some time, although for a while I was into Quake 4. However, last year I got back into Quake in a big way when I joined the beta program of Quake Live. Quake Live is a free to play update of Quake III which, it is hoped, will reintroduce people to the magic of Quake III Arena in a big way. One advantage of it is that there will be skill matching. The game keeps track of your stats as you play and assigns you a skill rating. Then you will be able to join servers with others at your skill level, easing some of the difficulty new players have learning the game.

Here are two very good guides to the game:
http://planetquake.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Guides.Detail&id=38&game=4
http://guidesarchive.ign.com/guides/10794/

The following are much the same sites as I've listed for Quake Live and would probably list for any Quake Games. I believe they have info and communities for many different ones.

You will probably want to check out the talk and the info on such player communities as True Carnage, a "by gamers for gamers" site at truecarnage.com, esreality.com and its forums, Planet Quake at planetquake.gamespy.com, and Quake Unity at quakeunity.com. Global Gaming, ggl.com, and IGN Entertainment, ign.com, are other gaming organizations. You can hop onto the Quakenet.org chat network on IRC and visit a Quake III related channel. Wikipedia's article on Quake III Arena can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III.

      
    

The map is q3tourney4, Vertical Vengeance II.


When he enters the game, the player can uses the machine gun, one of the two weapons you always have when you spawn. The other is the gauntlet, to be discussed later. He spawns with 100 machine gun ammunition (lower left in yellow) and 125 health (next to armor indicator in white). You can have up to 200 each of health and armor, but when health or armor is over 100, it will gradually decrease back down to 100.

  
At 0:28 the player picks up the plasma gun, which rapidly fires pulses of radioactive goo, and later kills Visor with it at 0:50. He then picks up the rocket launcher Visor dropped. The rocket launcher is one of the most used weapons and one great thing about it is that it does splash damage. Players will often aim towards another player's feet or towards a wall next to the other player in order to increase the splash damage done to them in addition to the direct damage from being hit with the rocket. Just don't fire at anything too close to yourself and blow yourself up! The rocket launcher can also be used for rocket jumping, where the player propels themself with the rocket launcher, usually up into the air by jumping and shooting downwards at the floor. Similarly, the plasma gun can be used for "plasma climbing" walls.


At 1:03 he kills Crash with the rocket launcher and then picks up her shotgun. The shotgun shoots a cluster of pellets and is more effective at close range.

      
At 1:13 he picks up two yellow health bubbles, each worth 25 health. There are also gold bubbles which give 50 health. The yellow and orange health bubbles will not bring your health up past 100, so if your health is 100 or higher you can't pick them up. At 1:59 he picks up a green health bubble, which gives 5 health. The green bubbles will go over 100. At 2:17 he picks up the blue mega health, which gives 100 health. It also goes over 100 and can bring you up to 200 if you already have health of 100 or greater.

    
After emerging from the portal and just before picking up the mega health at 2:17, the player also picks up two of the four armor shards. Each one gives five armor. You can see his armor indicator to the right of the health indicator. At 2:26 he picks up the yellow armor, which gives 50 armor. There is also a red armor which gives 100 armor.


At 4:06 the player picks up the rail gun. The rail gun is another good weapon that scores an instant hit with a fine straight beam which appears somewhat like a laser. It requires good accuracy.

      
The grenade launcher, lighting gun, BFG-10K, and gauntlet are four weapons not seen in the video. The grenade launcher, of course, launches grenades. You can score a nice frag if you hit another player directly with a grenade. The lightning gun shoots a crackling white stream of electricity. The BFG is a special, powerful gun: a big freaking gun. It shoots giant globs of green plasma. The gauntlet is a melee weapon like a portable saw blade worn on the arm. If you run out of ammo for a weapon you are using, you will be switched to using the gauntlet.

As you watch the game, you may notice that each item or type of item has its own sound when it gets picked up by any player. Later this can help you to discern where other players are on a map if you know the placement of the items you hear them picking up. Each item also takes a specific amount of time before it comes back. Generally, health spawns every 35 seconds and armors every 25 seconds. Weapons take about five seconds. Learning to anticipate when health and armor will respawn can help you to stay stocked up and keep it away from your opponent.