Past and Present: Quake Arena Arcade Review

By: Michael Carusi | February 28th, 2011

The verdict: If you’re a serious nostalgia buff you may see this as worth 1,200 Microsoft points, but you’re not missing much if you never got into the original game.

Towards the tail end of the 20th century into the early years of the 21st we lived in a gaming era where the Unreal Tournament model was influential in first person shooters. Shooters released around this time generally featured heavy emphasis on multiplayer while single player was scaled back to a series of fights against computer-controlled bots without any story. One of the earlier pioneers of the model that Unreal Tournament would eventually popularize was Quake III Arena, now the latest port to come to Xbox Live Arcade as Quake Arena Arcade. Eleven years hasn’t done much for Quake III Arena nor its archaic design philosophy, and hindsight gives us the perspective of why we can’t abandon single player.

The most glaring problem with Quake Arena Arcade is the aforementioned the lack of any story, narrative, or discourse. There isn’t even a setting so much as a generic cyberpunk backdrop. Battles are in brown, gritty futuristic scenarios and the only exposition we get is one-sentence blurbs that outline the NPC opponent you face in single player. Ranger has explored the Slipgates and survived unspeakable evils, Phobos is a veteran soldier who died facing demons on one of Mars’ moons, and on and on.

There’s no incentive or reason to care about any of these opponents, and in fairness I don’t think that was the game’s intent. The problem is that it underscores the fundamental flaw with a multiplayer-centric game. Why would I play Quake Arena Arcade when I could play Half-Life 2, Halo, or any first person shooter with an actual single player story in addition to excellent multiplayer? It’s especially important this many years later with even more games like Gears of War 2 or Halo: Reach out that have both single player and multiplayer.

The other problem is that like many games of the fourth console generation Quake Arena Arcade has aged poorly. The medieval castles and space stations that make up the bulk of the game locales are all so dark, brown, and gray that it’s impossible to make out exactly where your opponent is. Even when you do the gunfire effects are so blinding in stark contrast to the dark environments that getting disoriented as you’re madly trying to circle strafe around your opponent is easy. Environments technically don’t look that bad even though models are extremely lumpy, but the entire game is just such an assault on your eyes because of the coloring.

This issue is only compounded by the slippery controls. At its heart Quake III Arena was a PC game and the transition to a controller has been messy for Quake Arena Arcade. Without mouse control tight aiming or some form of auto-targeting is mandatory, but the game has the same problem as the 2008 Turok where it’s difficult to effectively aim at your opponent because the controls are hypersensitive. I lost count of how many times I would try and gently nudge my controller towards my strafing target only to swivel past him and have to desperately try to get him back in my sights as I strafed around his own attacks.

This again brings up the question of why I would play Quake Arena Arcade – for 1,200 Microsoft points, no less – when multiplayer-centric games like Team Fortress 2 look and play much better. Even Battlefield Heroes plays better than this, and that game is free. It’s also worth noting that Team Fortress 2 opts for a more unique appearance and cel-shaded art style. Eleven years can change a lot and I can’t say whether or not multiplayer-based Team Fortress 2 will still be worth playing then, but you need to make a multiplayer game unique in order to give it lasting appeal. Quake Arena Arcade has even less of an excuse because the first two Quake games had single player modes, so Quake Arena Arcade feels as much of a step backwards now as it did then.

Single player being as insubstantial as it is the only noteworthy part of Quake Arena Arcade is signing online and I can’t really vouch for the multiplayer either. The game has to compete with dozens or more games with multiplayer – everything from Gears of War 2 to Monday Night Combat looks and plays better. There’s a small crowd of players but finding a game can take several minutes, and controls are no less slippery online than they are off. At its best the multiplayer is functional and never lags or slows down but compared to more comprehensive multiplayer modes the standard menu of Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag is starting to seem very passé.

Quake Arena Arcade is one of the most prominent examples of a fourth generation game translating badly into our glitzy modern times. A multiplayer-focused game from 1999 simply can’t compete with the bountiful offerings on Xbox Live, especially as a straight port. I appreciate that Quake III Arena helped pioneer first person shooter multiplayer but it’s a thin framework relative to multiplayer as we know it today. If you’re a serious nostalgia buff you may see this as worth 1,200 Microsoft points, but you’re not missing much if you never got into the original game.