May 2019 Retro Article:  Quake 3 Arena
By Thonos
5/28/2019
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​I always find it funny that I sometimes forget how much fun I used to have when I was younger with simpler games.  During Steam’s Spring Cleaning event this year I had Quake 3 Arena pop up as a game I haven’t played for a while. And after reinstalling and playing it for a while, I forgot how much I enjoyed the simplicity of the game.  Actually, I forgot how much I enjoyed arena games in general after playing this game again for this article.

Unlike the first two games in the series which were like Doom, this game is a arena shooter more along the lines of Unreal Tournament.  You get dropped into a map with a few random players, run around collecting weapons and power ups with the goal to get the most kills to win.  The game uses characters from the ID game universe which mostly consist of characters from the Quake series but a few Doom characters are included.  The game is fast paced and most matches are over in a few minutes. ​

When this game came out I remember going through the whole single player campaign and enjoying it.  While each tier got harder, it was never too hard that it was impossible to beat. While this is a multiplayer focused game, I had no problem just playing against the bots.  I actually never played this one online, unlike Unreal Tournament. I spent most of my time playing skirmish matches against the bots on capture the flag maps. ​

​Ultimately this game spawned a expansion that I never played until years later.  Quake 4 went back to the series’s stage exploring routes and other games in the series stayed away from the arena format.  It wasn’t until Quake Live came out that the series brought back it’s arena format. After the games release twenty years later I still enjoy the game.  While I might focus more on Unreal Tournament games if I’m in the mood for a arena shooter, this is still a good pickup and play game.