Quake 3 Arena for Dreamcast Review

The Story

The strange Arena Masters have constructed the ‘Arena Eternal’ for their amusement and have brought the greatest warriors to fight and die for the alien’s amusement. If you die, they revive you only to fight again. That sounds like every fighting game known to man.

The Gameplay

In single-player you work your way through five tiers of four areas each. To win, you must be victorious in all four arenas. Then you’ll get the privilege of fighting the best fighters of them all. Lucky you.

In multi-player, whether on a single Dreamcast or over the network, you can participate in Deathmatch, capture the flag, and other familiar multi-player scenarios.

The Controls

This is the most innovative part of the game and every Dreamcast FPS after Quake. The buttons actually moved you. Since they’re in the shape of a diamond, the top and bottom buttons moved your forward and backwards and the left and right buttons strafed you left and right. The analog stick controlled your aim and looking. The right trigger fired and the left jumped. The digital pad switched weapons. Much like Turok on the Nintendo 64.

The configuration was easy to pick up and I thought it might be awkward at first. It took some time, but I adapted. The best part was that each FPS after Quake on the Dreamcast used this same style, so once I had it down I could easily play several other games.

After many hours of play though, your right wrist and fingers were a little sore and cramped up from all the pressing your thumb did on the buttons and right finger on the trigger. Time to adapt again...

The Graphics

The graphics in Quake 3 were top notch. No slowdown and smooth scrolling. Nothing really outstanding in terms of detail, but the fact the game sped along at a fast frame-rate did the Dreamcast justice. When using 4-player split screen, even on a 27” TV, the detail lessened greatly, however.

Thompson’s Two Cents

This game my friends and I played for many hours. We hone our FPS skills with this game. With intense action and good graphics, we found Quake 3 Arena for the Dreamcast right up there with Goldeneye 64.

But now we have Halo, even though I go back to my roots with Quake.