nce upon a time, kids played cowboys and Indians, sneaking about their yards and shooting one another with toy guns. These days, kids (and lots of former kids) have computers and Internet connections instead of toy guns, and the name of the game is now deathmatching. This saves the "I got you"/"No you didn't" arguments, both because the computer tracks the players' shots and because the players are seldom in the same room. Most games take place over the Internet, the combatants miles and countries apart. Still, the theory is the same. Players stalk each other over virtual landscapes, savoring the thrill of pretend life and death.
id's Quake III Arena is the premier deathmatch game on the market. Its superior lag compensation and network protocols give it a better gameplay experience than its main competitor, Unreal Tournament, which has better graphics. UT also, until now, had better team play options. Quake III Team Arena is id's answer to
the lack of cooperative-play options in their initial game. To Q3's built in Capture the Flag game, Q3TA adds One-Flag CTF, Harvester and Overload.
Besides more games in which teams of players can compete, Q3TA also adds 15 new maps, some of which are large outdoor settings, something never done before in Q3. Laid out over these maps are new power-ups and weapons. The nail gun and chain gun are back from previous id games. To add some defensive punch to all the new games, a proximity-mine launcher
has also been added to the arsenal. This gun lets players shoot mines that attach to walls but don't explode until someone passes near. The new power-ups are Scout, which strips the character's armor but increases its speed, and Guard, which is basically the reverse, increasing health and armor at the cost of speed. The other power-ups are the Doubler (doubles damage), Ammo Regeneration (just what it sounds like), Invulnerability (which makes characters indestructible but takes all their movement) and Kamikaze (which kills the character and everyone else in a huge blast radius).
Non-cooperation can be deadly
Players used to love first-person-shooter (FPS) games. It took no time to learn the controls and there were no books of rules to read or stories to follow or levels to advance or unit types to learn or spells to remember. Players could just launch the game and start playing. Over time, though, FPS games have added plots, skills, stories, moves and powers. They aren't
as quick to learn and play as they used to be. The complexity, done well,
can make the current generation of games more fun in the long run, but it
makes them frustrating to jump into. There is no frustration with Q3. Players install the game and go. Q3TA adds just a touch of frustration because its emphasis is on team play; learning to play as a team is harder than just getting and going as a single player.
The new games in Q3TA break down this way: In One-Flag CTF, there is one flag in the center of the field and each team tries to take the flag to the other team's base. The advantage of this style is that it focuses each team by giving them one objective instead of the two in the traditional, two-flagged game. In Overload, each team has a skull in an obelisk. The point of the game is to destroy the enemy's obelisk, but it isn't easy. The skull takes 1500 points of damage to destroy and repairs 15 a turn. Victory requires getting a lot of team members shooting a lot of weapons. The coolest new game is Harvester. In it, when a player is
killed, a skull appears in the center of the arena. To win, players grab the enemy skulls and carry them to the enemy stronghold. If the player gets killed along the way, the skulls vanish. This doesn't take quite the skill or cooperation that the other games do, but it is just flat-out fun.
The biggest selling point of deathmatch games is also their greatest weakness: the fact that the game is played against other people. There is no quick-save button. In multiplayer games, the opponent who is blowing someone to bits right now is going to keep on doing it until that person gets better. The game contains handicapping to make things equal between players of different skill levels, but that only helps so much. Additionally, for Q3TA, the players have to learn to fight as a team, or they will be eternally beaten by teams who have learned that lesson. In the end, for all the ease in starting, the game still takes practice to master.
Quake III Team Arena makes a good game that much better. The new levels alone are probably worth the price of admission, but there is real joy in tucking a skull under your virtual arm and running for daylight.
-- Eric
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