By Jim Rossignol on June 27th, 2008 at 9:36 am.
Carmack has been interviewed about Quake Zero over on Gamesradar. For an old Quake III creature like me it was pretty satisfying to see the big man say this:
Quake III Arena was always my personal favorite id Software game. It’s such a pure activity kind of game – more of a sport than a movie. And I’m excited to have this opportunity to bring back the pure type of gaming as opposed to the “everything and the kitchen sink” modern design. We have no pretensions about it being the best multiplayer game in all types of things, but for any player looking to test their [deathmatch] skill, I think Quake III Arena is the best there ever was.
He’s not wrong.
27/06/2008 at 09:49 MisterBritish says:
I could recognise that Q3 was the superioir DM, but I stuck with UT. Not really sure why now, was it the team stuff? I think I just played it first and got into the weapons and maps.
Anyone remember seeing this and thinking; ‘omg that looks fkin amazing!’? It was one of the first images of Q3 and it blew me away at the time.
27/06/2008 at 10:00 mpk says:
I dabbled in Q3 over dial up many moons ago. It was all a bit overwhelming as I was scythed down like the proverbial chaff by just about everyone else, but it suited my natural lemming tendencies to the tee. However when I finally moved onto broadband I discovered CounterStrike and Q3 fell by the wayside.
27/06/2008 at 10:35 Butler` says:
Q3A is FPS deathmatch perfection
27/06/2008 at 10:40 Seniath says:
@MisterBritish: Aye, the first shots of Q3A that ran in PCG blew me away.
And yes, in the age-old Q3A vs UT debate, I fell firmly on the Q3A side of the fence. However, personally, Quake 2 is my preferred iD game. Though that’s possibly due to it’s nostalgic position as the first proper FPS I played (yes, I’m a young-un and missed out on Wolf3D and Doom and Quake).
27/06/2008 at 10:48 Masterdog says:
Quake (esp. Quakeworld) for the ID win.
27/06/2008 at 10:50 Forceflow says:
Very interesting talk on the QuakeZero website
27/06/2008 at 11:33 The Hammer says:
I agree with Carmack there too. Though I’ve unfortunately never had the proper chance to play the game online, that’s gonna change with Zero. So yes. Can’t wait.
27/06/2008 at 11:37 andreas says:
the carmack is allways right!
im exited to try the browser thing
27/06/2008 at 11:50 Chaz says:
Out of Q3 and UT I preferred the latter. But to be honest I’ve never really been into the hardcore DM type stuff anyway. I much preferred stuff like Tribes and Half Life DM and TDM, jetpacks and laser trip mines FTW!
27/06/2008 at 12:03 Alex says:
Always preferred UT, really. Something about Q3′s style never gelled with me.
27/06/2008 at 12:06 Irish Al says:
Is there that much of a market for no-frills deathmatch any more?
27/06/2008 at 12:09 itsallcrap says:
Judging by UT3′s reception, no.
I also liked Q3 more than any other quake game, but preferred UT to that. In fact, I remember being really addicted to plain old Unreal in “multiplayer” against a load of bots.
About a thousand times better than the actual game, that was.
27/06/2008 at 12:18 randomnine says:
The Clan Arena mod for Q3A was fantastic. Almost perfect one-on-one and team DM. I’ve always considered pickups essentially a distraction.
That said I’m not much of a multiplayer fan, so I’m with Seniath – Quake 2 was the shit.
27/06/2008 at 12:18 Al3xand3r says:
UT3 is just shoddy, UT2004 was a much bigger success and a title as solid as that could certainly repeat that. UT3 just isn’t.
27/06/2008 at 12:26 Frans Coehoorn says:
I actually had more fun with Quake II. Went to CS when Q III came out… oh the days.
27/06/2008 at 12:27 Arnulf says:
But he’s not Wright either…
27/06/2008 at 12:31 itsallcrap says:
Well firstly, 2004 isn’t “any more”.
But actually that’s not even my point. I really don’t think plain old deathmatch has anywhere left to go. Q3 was the epitome of deathmatch-for-purists and any future version of UT can only ever be ‘UT with knobs on’.
FPS games are having to find new ideas to master.
27/06/2008 at 12:54 AbyssUK says:
Q3 is deathmatch perfection anything else does isn’t quake3. The speed is the key I think UT just didn’t seem as fluid as Q3 for me.
27/06/2008 at 13:11 Morel Mushroom says:
UT2004 is still one of the most popular online FPSes – not in the same league as CS, but at peak times there are thousands of people playing. DM is still a popular mode. UT3 DM, not so much, you’ll be lucky to see a few hundred (at least on PC, I don’t know about PS3).
The UT vs Quake 3 argument is like arguing sex vs blowjobs. One may be a little better to individual tastes, but any sane person wants lots of both.
Q0 will be good if it brings some noobs in, I can’t play Q3 online against the people who have been practicing for 8 years.
27/06/2008 at 13:12 Mustache says:
Quake has always been the most important multiplayer FPS for me. As for quake 3, they style and probably my computer at the time does not put it at the top in my case.
27/06/2008 at 13:38 Forceflow says:
pa-dum-pish
27/06/2008 at 14:34 Putter says:
Always was a UT guy, always will be (though to be honest, I dislike Unreal, and UT2k4 and most likely UT3 haven’t done much for me). The gameplay felt tighter and a bit less forgiving, the weapons and maps were better, and the bots were amazing to play against.
Plus, like Carmack says, Q3 is like a sport. You feel like a (cyber) athlete playing it. When playing UT, you feel more like a gladiator.
27/06/2008 at 15:20 Po0py says:
I always had a lot of respect of Q3A but I considered UT to be the better and more fun of the two. Q3A is considered more skill based but I always beleived that UT was not given enough credit for the things you had to learn to become good. You had to know how to use your weapons and all their functions as well as timing pickups and learning when to jump into a spamfest and stand back. There was a lot to keep tabs on in a heated UT deathmatch. UT3 brought us back to that sesibility a little but for some reason it wasn’t quite the same. It just seemed like a tech demo with UT thrown in rather than a UT game.
Very much looking forward to trying out Quake Live.
27/06/2008 at 15:55 ack says:
Oh my, too many hours lost at after-work Q3 sessions to even consider any other DM shooter worthwhile. We tried playing UT2004 for a while, but there’s something with UT that removes the pure fun of DM.
Yeah ‘Pure’ has to be the keyword… all that stuff in UT… double-tap this, double-tap that, secondary fire modes, bla, bla, bla. Too much, it just distracts you from the purity of velocity, trajectory and strafing. Just my 2c of course.
27/06/2008 at 16:00 Duoae says:
Morel Mushroom says:
“The UT vs Quake 3 argument is like arguing sex vs blowjobs. One may be a little better to individual tastes, but any sane person wants lots of both.”
Wait… you can have BOTH??!!
Damnit!
Oh yeah, Quake 3 FTW! I loved DM, TDM and CTF – though (as i’ve mentioned here before) Capture strike from Threewave was my personal favourite.
27/06/2008 at 16:01 Butler` says:
Your 2c maybe, but i think you hit the nail on the head, and Carmack would agree.
27/06/2008 at 16:15 FlupKe says:
I am a huge quake 3 fanboy and I think the game has done the best gameplay and engine a deathmatch game can have. The strafe jumping gameplay, simple but very hard to master, the awesome weapons, everything stripped down to only let the skill be.
27/06/2008 at 16:45 chopsnsauce says:
Bah! Strafe jumping/bunny hopping are the WORST things to EVER happen to online FPS’ery. Having to jump around like a twat all the time is the most counter-intuitive stupid idea PC gaming has ever come up with.
Thank god game designers are now moving away from that shite!
27/06/2008 at 16:48 Jim Rossignol says:
Surely there’s room for hopping acrobatics and realistic movement? I actually enjoy both styles of play.
27/06/2008 at 16:59 Dogman says:
While bunnyhopping is surely silly in a thematic or aesthetic way, its appealing in that it adds another learning curve to a game and another aspect to get involved with, much like the reloading meter in Gears of War.
27/06/2008 at 17:04 ack says:
@chopsnsauce: In addition to it being an interesting game mechanic while still being simple, if you take a look at good players you’ll notice they really don’t do it that much except for transportation. Thus you can be good while not having to do it all the time ;-)
27/06/2008 at 17:09 Plentiful says:
“While bunnyhopping is surely silly in a thematic or aesthetic way…”
Unless your game is about rabbits fighting!
27/06/2008 at 17:26 Radiant says:
For me Tribes was the turning point where it ceased to be about being the best and more about contributing.
“Wait. You want to do what all game? Build machines? The fucking fuck?” now replaced by “What? You spent the last 4 hours fishing so you can do what?!”
Tribes also introduced huge bf2 style maps and with it that weird sense of observing isolation that ends when you get disc’ed in the head.
In regards to Quake Zero; keep in mind that out the box Q3 deathmatch was shit.
It took 3 or 4 patches for it to balance out [it never really did balance out till cpma took an axe to it] .
Then when zero lag was introduced and the twitch speed skill of judging and leading your shots was lost to slow mouse accuracy Q3′s non hitscan weapons never really recovered.
I doubt Id have the design subtlety to recognise that.
27/06/2008 at 17:41 sherwinpg says:
Where’s the QUAKE 2 LOVE?
COME ON!!!!!!!!
27/06/2008 at 17:51 Andy Johnson says:
Quake III: back when id were good.
And even having said that, UT > Q3. Even the Queen agreed in about 2001, I seem to remember…
27/06/2008 at 18:14 Turin Turambar says:
Q3 for DM and TDM perefection.
UT was for fun Assault and some Dom and CTF.
27/06/2008 at 18:41 wcaypahwat says:
I took the UT side in that particular conflict I must admit. Just seemed….. more me, I guess. Its great to see people still happily debating the issue nigh 10 years on though.
I always wondered though…. why noone ever made a game to finally settle the matter…. say, one team with quake style weapons andgame play, the other with UT. Yeah, it probably wouldn’t work, but I always thought it’d be fun to see.
27/06/2008 at 19:21 Erlam says:
I still believe that Quake 1 (QuakeWorld, basically) is the best that iD have ever done. I still play Quake from time to time.
I liked Q3 a lot more than UT; mostly because I didn’t like the weapons in UT, and the game felt much laggier (at least, after Q3 patches).
Quake Zero will be interesting. I believe there is still a market for that style of game, even though console-style “durr, thanks for da auto aim!” has been making us all retarded.
27/06/2008 at 19:21 sbs says:
Bah! Strafe jumping/bunny hopping are the WORST things to EVER happen to online FPS’ery. Having to jump around like a twat all the time is the most counter-intuitive stupid idea PC gaming has ever come up with.
I strongly disagree, especially the “real” bunny hopping with high aircontrol like in Quakeworld, Q3CPM, Painkiller and Warsow is in my eyes very elegant and, after having played CPM for quite some time feels so natural and beautiful I don’t even consider ever playing anything less flexible, it adds a fluidity and depth to it which I miss in every FPS I try(It’s kind of a curse really)
Also I think complex movement like this is a hugely important addition to a shooter, for it can help you even out the odds playing against an opponent with much better aim, for example, and gives you an element in your play you can capitalize on when you put in time to try and master it.
Hell, Quake 3 even has a mod dedicated solely to movement with mappers doing levels which talented runners then try to run as fast as possible. Have a look at this: http://beta.vreel.net/index.php?q=watch&id=3651
Lots of those guys hardly play any deathmatch at all, they just enjoy exploiting the physics and mechanics to the full extent. I think that’s fascinating.
Just saying.
27/06/2008 at 19:31 Plentiful says:
wcaypahwat – UT vs CS could be a lot of fun. Maybe a UT guy with 5 respawns vs 5 terrorists.
27/06/2008 at 19:44 Radiant says:
@sbs EXACTLY!
The skill involved in strafe jumping your way around a map adds a depth to a game that far exceeds just opening and closing an umbrella attached to a bear.
Online FPS games have been around for decades on the Pc they really matured into some spectacular games and gameplay dynamics where skills like strafe jumping became the norm.
Unfortunately games like Halo really reset the online FPS experience to zero. If you think about it; Halo brought online FPS to the console masses.
I’m mean jesus every game on the xbox360 doesn’t even have zero lag net code. Let alone something as advanced as skill based movement.
Achievements? I’d rather learn new skill based ways to get around to nail someone with a rocket then spend most of my time farting around trying to fulfill some idiotic requirement that gets me a better gun.
27/06/2008 at 20:12 n3utr0n says:
Always preferred UT myself, but more for the maps than anything else. The look of Q3 threw me off, ugh brown (I know, it’s quake). Also UnrealED = win. Loved mapping back in the old days, good ol’ bsp. None of this staticmesh shiny glossy phong shaded normal mapped stuff of UT3.. /old
27/06/2008 at 21:42 Dean says:
As a level editor who wrestled with Build, Quake, and Quake 2, Unreal’s tools were a revelation.
I bought both Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament at about the same time, and after a quick futzing around with Q3′s tools, went over to UT and never looked back.
27/06/2008 at 22:04 Valentin Galea says:
There is something almost magical to that “Quad Damage” sound…
27/06/2008 at 22:18 Saflo says:
Quake 2 took my deathmatch virginity but I never bothered with 3. To be honest, as much as I enjoyed 2, still play 1/DMC on occasion, and had a blast playing dormwide UT matches in college, this style of multiplayer has never truly been my cup of tea. The speed, the endless deaths, the goddamned bunny-hopping; it all eventually leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
28/06/2008 at 14:06 Yhancik says:
“more of a sport than a movie”
This pretty sums up why I’m really not interested in such games…
(not that I like much the movies wannabe games with hours of cutscenes either :p)
28/06/2008 at 16:03 sigma83 says:
Quake is to UT as UT is to Halo? Quite interesting if you think about it. Halo DM is just… urgh. Especially with those stupid little sticks. No precision at all. No immersion either in single player.
28/06/2008 at 16:20 wray says:
Q3A is the best! CPMA Pro-Mode ftw! Rocket Arena for shots and giggles, man, and TDM was great
defrag anyone?! hahahaa
28/06/2008 at 18:47 zima says:
Never got into Q3 multi (only dialup with paying by the minute available here back then…), however the game still has a place in my heart; especially its engine.
So far not a lot of people (to which I mentioned that) agreed with me, but…for some reason Q3 engine is for me THE best ever when it comes to feel/immersion. It reacts perfectly to commands, presents the movement perfectly…no other game made me feel so much that “I was there” (at least when it comes to technical means :P )
So I’m glad it comes back…and this time I won’t skip on it.
PS. Though it’s a little frustrating that “pure DM” isn’t exactly my cup of tea…so I’m torn between games with immersive gameplay and…immersive engine/feel… :/
22/02/2009 at 01:54 gnustep says:
UT3 sucks (like you have weights strapped to your feet), but UT2004 rocks, especially in “Capture the Flag with Vehicles” mode, where your buddy can give you a ride on the hovercraft (Manta) while you carry the flag and stuff. Super fast, super crazy.
There is also a level-up mod called Rosebum which is an even better server (search for Rosebum VCTF) with 100+ different weapons and power-ups, of which you can choose only a select few, so every player has somewhat different powers. Plus hundreds of colorful and ingenious custom maps, jump pads, teleports, black hole gravity gun, Strangelove rideable missiles, TranslocatorSniperGun, etc. … Mucho Fun!!
Quake never really caught my interest, but maybe Quake Live will change that… ?
22/02/2009 at 22:49 qqq3 says:
best fps ever
playing it now, for 8 straight years
09/05/2010 at 01:22 l0co says:
I’m playing Q3 for about 10 years and I think it’s the best game ever. There are some voices telling that UTxxx is better. For some people Q3 is better, and for some – UT, no meaning. I’ve played both and I can tell that both games are very good. But Q3 is the game I return to frequently, and UT was only a single adventure. But it is me…
The thing is that both games were created about 2000 year, and there is nothing better made since. I spent some time on looking for similar game, but all of them sucks! Why? Is the Q3 (or UT) the best such game people can make?