The Team Arena expansion also added in the punishing chaingun, a proximity mine launcher, and the good old nailgun.Įvery weapon had a clear use, better and worse in various situations compared to others, fitting a variety of play styles and skill levels.

The lightning gun and machine gun let you damage someone as long as you kept them in your sights, grenade and rocket launchers unleashed splash damage chaos, shotgun was up close death, the plasma gun can keep the heat on with hard projectiles, the railgun was a death machine in the hands of an accurate player, and the BFG is the BFG. Even the weapon selection was carefully chosen for the game’s competitive balance, starting everyone off with the gauntlet (a chainsaw fist, basically) and letting you find a mess of classic guns on the map. You moved fast and fluid, and shooting never felt more natural.

Running on id Tech 3, Arena was a faster beast with some technical change-ups, including real time reflections that get shown off in the tutorial map. That change in focus also gave the game a different feel. The game got a huge community around it, and id was sure to keep them placated with ports, re-releases, and even a version of the game for browsers now moved to Steam.

Upon realizing just how big the deathmatching scene was for the Quake games, id Software decided to make the next one online play focused, and it paid off. Releasing just a month after Epic beat them to the punch with Unreal Tournament, Quake III: Arena is the moment that the entire focus of the franchise made a hard right turn.

Quake 3 browser