A matter of life or death

The gameplay eventually moulds into a frantic flurry of bangs, blasts and none stop action that will make your eyes go red with pain. Often death comes from simply gaping at the world around you unaware of the danger fast approaching, either that or the latter end of a BFG. Q3A makes a break from the usual Quake2, Unreal Tournament, Half-Life and similar styles of play and takes you right back to the tried and tested methods of Doom and the original Quake.

The result is a game where standing still gets you killed, not understanding the controls gets you killed and essentially being anything but a good or expert player gets you killed, which is where elements start to fall out of place. We decided to test the theory that Quake3Arena was too hard (even on the lowest setting) for your average 'not on-line' sprog. Nabbing a couple of late teens - early twenties lads from neighbouring areas we quickly set about letting them boot up the game and seeing how far they got.

They appeared un-daunted by setting up controls and choosing their models, so we decided to get them started on the first tier. The initial levels saw much frustration as is to be expected when experiencing Mouse movement and weapon dynamics for the first time. Thankfully as we stood on and bit hard into our hands with frustration, they did eventually get it. Unfortunately as soon as the bots started to fight back they lost it completely, often hitting the Mouse and banging the keyboard (I had to restrain myself from using a cup over their heads at one point, no maybe it was four?).

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