The quality of the sound, be you randomly spraying bullets like a monkey with a machine gun or targeting a distant foe with your rail gun, is simply stunning. Perfect sound matches for everything in the game are hard to come by, yet ID have pulled it off to perfection. Loud clanks, metallic sounds and all sorts of eerie and positively strange ambient noises have made their way into the various areas of Q3As levels. You really have to hear them to understand the level at which they operate, that of far above anything else so far!

The Verdict

From the moment the thundering intro graces your screen to your first kill, Q3A is a masterpiece of gameplay. With the best graphics the industry has to offer and sound to compliment it, you simply can't go wrong with Quake3 this Christmas. Our only gripes are that it might be too hard for newcomers to get the hang of, lacks teamplay specific levels, have rather poor CTF ones and generally needs more.

ID could have also done better on gameplay modes, there are a lot of ideas in existence and it's a grave pity to see ID so blinding take advantage of the same and possibly most dated ones but not newer styles. Thankfully this doesn't fault the product so much, it's now down to the mod making community to show us the way =). Truly a game that will have you gripped until ID's next title and comes on a par with Unreal Tournament, exactly!

by Mark 'KILLZAT' Jackson

Graphics - 9.5 Sound - 9.5 Gameplay - 9 Originality - 7
Overall - 9 (90%)

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