Fragging for it! (Quake 3 Arena (DC))

Member Name: Captain Kidd

Product:	Quake 3 Arena (DC)
Date:	31/12/00 (43 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Pure genius on a console & on-line capabilities too!

Disadvantages: None yet!

Finally. The game that your Dreamcast was made for has arrived. Quake III Arena has more blood, guts & kills than you can shake a stick at.

Sega's promise of "up to 6 billion players" was seen as a bit optimistic when the DC came out, but with Quake III, the ultimate on-line gaming contest is about to begin.

Sega gave us 'Chu Chu Rocket' back in the summer to hone our on-line skills - now is the time to announce your winning mentality and frag people from all over europe.

As you may very well know, Quake III Arena is a first person shoot 'em up game where you basically have to kill or be killed - it's that simple. Or is it???

With 5 levels of difficulty ranging from the optimistic "I can win" (easy-ish) to "Nightmare" (Outrageously hard) and 5 tiers of difficulty within each level, you truly get the feel for fragging.

After you complete each level, you are presented with a screen telling you that you are a Lord in the fragging department and you will be rewarded. This ' reward' is a mini game on your VMU which is a maze game. When you find the end, nothing actually happens which can cause confusion, but when you carry on with the game, you can access the cheats!! These are your rewards by the way. Basically, you can unlock one cheat after you've finished each level. It is almost essential that you have a VMU (Visual Memory Unit) plugged in to your controller otherwise you will lose all your frags and you'll have to start again. Boo.

The controls are a bit more difficult to get used to which can hamper you in the early days of your killing spree, but once mastered you can easliy while away several hours in one sitting. Serious fraggers will be using the Dreamcast keyboard and mouse to take full advantage of the controls, but this isn't essential as with a lot of practice, you can become quite adept at using your controller.

Once you'
;ve mastered it all, then your challenge begins by going on-line and having a network game. I tried this for the first time last night and was on-line for well over an hour! WARNING: Totally addictive!!!! The lag was almost non-existent so thumbs up in all areas, but your phone bill WILL suffer.

Whether you play as a single-player, multi-player (you can have up to 4 mates with split screen) or on-line, this game is most definately the 'must have' of the Dreamcast catalogue. BUY IT!

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