Challenge:
Home
News Archive
Forums
CPMA
Maps
Smackdown2
People
Coverage
Features
Interviews
Links
Columns:
Hoony 11 May
Jjonez 10 May
Khaile 10 Apr
dethkultur 11 Mar
twoAM 23 Aug
Wiebo de Wit 08 Aug
Mr.CleaN 08 Aug
RooS 31 Jul
PhaNToM 10 Jul
jude 19 Jun
Hosted
Face|Off
3.A.C
Interfaced
QWF
Affiliates:
Cached
Gamershome
Methos
Friday, 10 December 1999 - Hoony
Conclusion
Of course, Q3A is a typical game from id Software - instantly recognisable as one of the lineage of games from DOOM to Quake II. The game I just described is not the sort of game that id Software produces. It would be such a radical departure that I doubt the team there would enjoy making it.
Q3A is a fun game and very few gamers will "miss anything" along the lines of what I have just described. Most gamers will play through the single player game thinking "that's pretty cool" and then hopefully progress into the real-world of competitive multiplayer gaming. There are links and resources provided "out-of-the-box" to help them achieve that transition.
But it's interesting to watch the multiplayer gaming community I know basically ignoring all the design elements that id Software worked so hard to produce, discarding them, and instead getting down to the only part of the game that matters.
This is the contradiction that is Q3A. Everybody knows that id Software have made a "cool" game that will not look out of place on the shelves next to all the other "computer games" out there. But the Q3A that will get played by the real multiplayer gaming community will be an entirely different game. They will go straight to the heart of the game - searching out decent Team DM and tournament maps, finding a model that is acceptable in competitive play.
If id Software had been focused on that design goal from the very start, instead of going off on this fantasy "tournament idea", the result could have been a game that more fully supported the multiplayer gaming community that use it. It wouldn't have been a game that the market really understood, of course. Which is why I said right at the beginning of this review that the market is probably not ready for such a thing.
Nevertheless, I believe that I've made a fairly decent argument that Q3A is a game with certain inherent contradictions that actually create obstacles for multiplayer gaming. They are not "show stoppers", but they do get in the way. Q3A will certainly take us all forward, but due to some of the design elements it will not be as quickly as it might have been.
If you have any feedback on this article, I'd like to hear from you. .
The End - Back to the News