My Opinion
This used to be a section in the print version of Intervue Digest. Basically it's just an editorial column for just about anything on my mind. For the first topic, I flame Quake 3 Team Arena, because I think ID is just playing catch up to Epic's Unreal Tournament.

Eventually I want to have these articles in separate pages, SiteDB has to be overhauled, since I want to track more pages and setup more relationships between them, but anyway here's the article. (10/29/00)

Quake 3 Team Arena playing catch up to Unreal Tournament
By Joseph Delgado

Well they say imitation is the best form of flattery, but for ID I think it was a dull ache of acceptance that they screwed up and this will be a poor apology. It's also too late, with games like: Tribes 2, Halo, Team Fortress 2, and the Counterstrike Mod for Team Fortress Classic. Which offer: vehicles, massively team multiplayer maps, buildings that build units for the team. Death match will be dead and seems like ID wants to beat on a dead horse to catch up to UT.

From the articles I've read, Unreal Tournament still beats this expansion and Q3TA doesn't offer an assault like map and secondary mode weapon options, and Q3TA falls short with level design as well. UT maps are massive, well developed, and look better than the weak Tron-like maps of Q3A.

I used to love ID especially when they released Quake 2. We got death match, single player missions, and a co-op mode. We still play Quake 2 once in a while. Quake 3 only offered a cheating death match and four capture the flag maps. In single player, the last guy was so damn accurate that he can rail gun me off the map and then shoot me again as I was failing. Cheap says what?

I liked reading an interview from Computer Gaming World with Cliff Bleszinski, CliffyB, the lead designer for UT. When he was asked who would win the bots from UT or Q3A? CliffyB said, Q3A since they cheat.

ID's reputation with me has been shattered with Q3A and again with the idea for Q3TA, now they are going to release a new Wolfenstien. I've seen some art and the guys look like Quake 2 cyborgs. I think most of the people in ID said we do this next or we quit. Good choice, I enjoyed Q2 and I look forward to something similar again, but they need to expand it with some new ideas or it's going to be just another shooter on the shelf. Since almost every shooter is using the same Unreal or Quake engine anyway. It's a level playing field as far as graphics go.

Lastly Q3TA should be a free mod for all the pain and suffering Q3A players had to endure from UT players. UT rules forever! I don't even know where the Q3A CD is; maybe good will has it. (9/30/00)