Quake III Arena, the game that spawned the interests of many in multiplayer first-person shooter games, was released on December 2nd 1999. The game is commonly referred to as Quake 3, Q3A and Q3. This game had set new standards in FPS ( first person shooter ) games making them at par with other popular game genres. It is the third game in the Quake Series and surpasses the previous games due to the fact that it excludes the simple single player characteristics and focuses on the multiplayer action. The single player experience is similar to Unreal Tournament (UT) and deals with the player versus AI (Artificial Intelligence).
Like many of the first person shooter games, the main objective of Quake III is to kill other characters ( whether AI or other players ) which in Quake III terms is known as “fragging.” The points which a player gathers, depend on the game mode which he is playing in. As soon as a player’s health meter reaches zero, the character (avatar) which the player has been using gets fragged. It can then respawn at another area and carry on playing with its health meter back to full. The only thing which an avatar loses after getting fragged, is the weapons and power-ups, which he has gathered. The game finishes at the moment when the player or the team gathers a pre-defined score, or when the time limit of the game ends. With the speed of the game, it is enjoyed enormously by people who like fast moving action packed games. So if you are one of these, be sure to try your hands on Quake III.
The single player mode of the game constitutes the same effects, which are done with AI bots. The game for the first time featured improved AI which contained many different difficulty levels as each bot was made up usually with a humorous personality. This personality came out with the pre-scripted chat sentences which were “spoken” by the bot during the gameplay and made the game more interesting (funny to be precise). The bots pass scorning comments on the opponent when they were fragged and bragged themselves on fragging others.
“Quake III: Team Arena” was an expansion pack launched for Quake III by id Software, and was released in December 2000. It created many new player models, new weapons and items and also made significant changes in the team gameplay by introducing new game modes. But such additions had already been released and implemented by fan modifications and thus the expansion pack was criticized due to its late release. “Quake III: Gold” also followed after some years, which bundled together both the main game and the expansion pack and was re-launched with great advertising.
Quake III Arena’s multiplayer advantages led to the development of a large community of Quake III addicts and like the former games of the series, this game too was used a lot in professional tournaments. The end story is that if you are a hardcore action FPS fan, be sure not to miss Quake III. 
