Well before players turned to the Call of Duty and Halo franchises for their first-person shooting fix, there was Quake, the spiritual follow-up to id Software’s Doom games. Several Quake games came out over the years, but one of our personal favorites was Quake III Arena, a game that focuses more on tournament-style play than a single player campaign. It was a hit on PC, and the Dreamcast port wasn’t too shabby either. Now this experience thrives once more, thanks to the release of Bethesda’s Quake Arena Arcade. While the game doesn’t have a single player campaign, you can go through it playing against bots, should you not find any of your online friends immediately available. The AI is actually not half bad this time around, relentlessly hunting you with rail guns and rocket launchers while you scramble to find a more powerful weapon than they have. Combine that with the blazing speed of the game, and you have a frenetic action game that never gets tiring.
But, of course, Quake Arena Arcade was built for multiplayer thrills. Up to 16 people can take part in battle across 32 locations, including such classic maps as Cliffside, The Ankh and Hazmat. All the maps have nooks and crannies to duck through, and weapons scattered everywhere, giving you more than enough chances to survive a hectic firefight. The game runs incredibly smooth online, and it’s a fun game to pop in between your dedicated multiplayer sessions of Reach and BLOPS. Quake Arena looks fantastic, running at a screaming 60 frames per second as you jump across platforms and get the jump on your opponent with a spray of gunfire. The enemies look okay, though somewhat primitive by today’s standards.
But hey, we are talking about a game that’s several years old, one that thrived long ago on the Dreamcast. At least the map design more than makes up for it, with lots of savvy atmospheric touches and cool effects, like flowing lava. The sound is pretty good too, between a deep-voiced announcer letting you know what’s up in the match (“THREE FRAGS LEFT!”) and a pounding music score. At 1200 Microsoft points, Quake Arena Arcade may not be your ideal first-person shooting experience on Xbox Live – especially since other games run for 800 or even less. But if you’re a Quake fan or need a fulfilling multiplayer experience that will keep you busy for hours, you owe it to yourself to enter the Arena.
