Back in the 90s, before Master Chief suited up, and before Call of Duty hooked us in, there was Quake 3 Arena. A multiplayer focused First Person Shooter, it was the paragon of twitch gaming, and a staple in many a PC (and later, Dreamcast) gamers’ collection. Fast forward to the present day, and ‘Quake Arena Arcade’, essentially a Quake 3 Arena port, is now available to download via Xbox LIVE – but can it hold its own in an online environment that is vastly different from that of over a decade ago?

Load it up and the first addition you will you notice is a single player campaign.  Those expecting a narrative tour-de-force will be bitterly disappointed, as it is essentially a training mode to get you used to the various modes.  Credit where credit’s due though, because if you crank up the difficulty you are presented with a good challenge as the bots hunt you down relentlessly, and if you pause for a moment you’re more than likely going to get a Rail Gun inserted into you.  It’s fairly sizeable too (the campaign, not the Rail Gun).

Let’s be honest though, it takes on odd sort of person to buy a Quake game just to play against bots; the online multiplayer is where this game will live or die.

Unfortunately, analogies with death are actually quite apt as the servers are, quite literally, dead.  I’ve sat down for over half an hour at a time trying to get a ranked match going but to no avail – nothing; nada; zip. It is the very definition of frustration, especially as a reviewer, as it renders that part of the game unquantifiable.  Fortunately unranked matches are more readily available, albeit still ridiculously infrequent and with only a handful of players on at a time.

When you finally get into a match you are blasted right in the mouth with a massive dose of nostalgia – QAA is one of the most old school experiences you will find on your Xbox 360 today.  Having gorged on a feast of current, weighty FPS games, to suddenly revert back to Quake’s control method is extremely jarring.  Your character feels as light as a feather, and over-the-top fast, resulting in a number of suicides at first simply because there is very little connection or feel between the controller and the on-screen avatar as it runs off the edge of a level.

You also need to jump.  All the time.  Everywhere.  This is one of the things I struggled with about Quake back in the day; you are forced to jump from place to place instead of run, because running leaves you open to a rocket in your face.  What this leads to is a map containing what looks like armoured kangaroos carrying guns.

Actually managing to hit anything also takes lots of practice, as the crosshairs feel like they are attached to springs.  You can reduce the sensitivity but it never feels quite ‘right’ – although everyone’s definition of right will be different, so let’s just say I never really felt comfortable and in total control.  This is quite clearly a game that is at home on the PC with a mouse, rather than on a console with a pad.  It is also an incredibly unforgiving game to get into for new players.  You can obviously say that about most online games these days, but with Quake the combination of speed, unfamiliar controls, and core players make for an experience that, at first,  isn’t really enjoyment, rather a test in patience and endurance.

If you do endure though it will eventually click, and you do actually start having fun as you learn to anticipate people’s moves, and that you need to fire ahead of your opponent rather than at them.  There is also a pretty darn impressive 45 maps for you to play through, and they are just as good as you would expect from a Quake game.  They are well designed and small enough so that no-one encounters any dead spots.  Saying that, the maps never feel cramped.

Visually QAA swaggers happily between ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ without a care in the world.  Its decade old roots are clear to see, and whilst it has been updated for the HD generation there are still lots of ugly, flat textures on display, with little animation to speak of.  The trade-off is that it, mostly, runs as smooth as silk.  I couldn’t get on with the music at all though, and it has some of the worst voice samples I’ve come across in a long, long time.

Pros

• Lots of maps
• Maps are well designed

Cons

• High price point
• Empty servers
• Unwieldy control scheme

So how do I go about scoring this game?  Whilst it can be fun, the translation to pad control isn’t a good one and can cause immense frustration.  It’s hard to find a match online, and when you do it’s against those core Quake fans who have happily scanned the online vista for hours on end like some kind of FPS spider, waiting patiently for some ‘noob’ (i.e. me) to foolishly wander into their server.  Add to that the lofty 1200 MS Points price tag and you may want to look elsewhere.

Score: 6/10