Despite Q3A's eye opening beauty, as you might expect there is a price to pay for being so stunning and it's quite a high one. For a start it lacks outside arenas, which had me surprised as even its late predecessors managed such areas some way or another. It's also not perfect and no game ever is, sometimes lighting isn't correctly placed and gives the wrong impression and the same for textures. Overall while you can run Q3A on a Voodoo2 (minimum) with a P2-266, you'd be better of putting a TNT2, G400 or ATI Rage Fury 32Bit card in and complimenting it/them with at least a P2-350.

Sound thinking

Q3A isn't just a good looking and playing game but it's also a sound one and I don't mean in the perfection sense of the word. It supports standard stereo and the remarkably good A3Dv2 sound standard that take on-line gaming into a new world of play. Being able to hear opponents all around you in 3D Space is something professional gamers like us relish and can use to our advantage more than ever. Sadly EAX and Direct Sound3D users have once again been left in the lurch and it is unlikely ID will bother to rectify this.

The music is your typical style of rock heavy beats that can only be found and put to proper use in a game by ID. It's a pity they didn't implement code to allow the music to attune itself to the action like other games, maybe for their next title. Despite not being rock fans ourselves we still found the tracks to be heart pounding and VERY strong, appropriate for the gameplay we think.

Next >>

<< Previous