“Quake 3 Arena” is a legendary game. This classic shooter still has cult following to this day, attributed to it’s tight mechanics and complex gameplay with a pretty steep learning curve. But this game also known for it’s controversial decision to completely ditch classic single-player campaign in favor of purely multiplayer deathmatch carnage with a variety of maps.

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t play it by yourself. First option in main menu clearly states that there is, in fact, a singleplayer mode.

It is right here!

Unfortunately, excited fans of searching keys in abstract labyrinths would be quite disappointed. On the surface, Q3A’s singleplayer is a series of multiplayer maps with bots instead of real players. Maps are divided in “Tiers” filled with different bots and each tier has different theme and setting, ranging from gothic castles to random platforms floating in space. After choosing a map, players are presented with a generous choice of five difficulty levels, each affecting health values, accuracy and level of aggression that bot has. After that you just press “Fight” and start blasting.

Legendary Q3DM6

This is a pretty bare bones explanation of a singleplayer in Q3A. Passing observer might find this approach to a big chunk of content, that a customer pays for, lazy, and they may be right about it. But upon closer inspection you may find an interesting “tutorial”, that may teach you about many things this game has.

Let’s start from the beginning: Tier 0 “Introduction”. Player spawns in a small room with a teleporter, that is completely separate from the main arena, where he is free to experiment with controls. Player also gets a head start in form of a free weapon and a set of yellow armor. After you go through teleporter, your opponent spawns, a single bot, known as Crash. Crash is an extremely passive bot, that won’t attack you on easier difficulties, which gives time for new players to explore map. Not that there is much to explore. Map consists of three rooms, connected with a single corridor. Left room holds plasma gun, middle room has shotgun and on the right you can pick up yellow armor. The goal of a match is simple: who gets 5 frags first wins. In this small section you get familiar with controls, basic pickups and a couple of weapons, including starting machinegun and gauntlet.

After that you unlock Tier 1, where you get a little bit more open maps with more pickups. In “Arena Gate” you get familiar with Quake’s signature Rocket Launcher and basics of map control, since you will have to fight with your opponent to seize control over red armor, while not giving up control over smaller pickups in other room, including RL. In “House of Pain” you get your first taste of verticality, because you can get trapped in a small section in the middle of the map trying to get red armor. You also get a first taste of power-ups in this game, in a form of “Haste” that greatly increases speed of player who holds it. This map also introduces first really aggresive bot Phobos, who is going to fight back on all difficulties, including easier ones. In “Arena of Death” you will have to fight two opponents at once, which inturn will teach to control map with more competitors. Each tier also reaches it’s conclusion in a duel with a “boss’ of sorts. Each of this duels will teach you different things about game. First duel against Sarge teaches you to control power-ups, since in his map you will find powerful “Quad Damage” pickup that can dramatically change the tides of battle.

Arena Gate. One of the first maps in singleplayer

With each one passing Tier you may notice how maps become more complex, how they introduce new weapons and pickups, more and more maps itroduce danger zones, were get burned by lava or fall into pit of red mist which causes instant death and penalty for lack of awareness. Maps introduce more positions to control, be that Mega Health, Red Armor, Power-up, or some powerful weapon like Railgun or BFG10K. Some later maps introduce small gimmicks, like deathtraps, or obstacles that can instantly kill player if he’s careless. More and more maps introduce verticality into the mix and rely on jump-pads and crazy movement. Action becomes more hectic and chaotic as more and more bots fill the arena, and you have to find method to all of this madness.

If you look closely, you will also find some interesting things in behavior of bots. Behind their crazy designs and wacky quips in the chat you will find some patterns. Most of the bors from earlier tiers prefer using shotguns, which very easy to counter by just walking away from them, while bots in later tiers prefer using railguns and harass you from a far distance with deadly precision. Of course AI is mostly predictable, as it’s pattern is determined by running towards nearest pickup and shooting everything that stands in it’s way, but it is effective in what it does, and it’s tendency to use different weapons will teach players to handle different playstyles and situations.

Vertical Vengeance might be one of the more challenging and interesting maps in the game

Duels with tier bosses are the prime example of this behavior. Each of them fights with different styles and uses different weapons. Hunter on “Proving Grounds” uses Lightning Gun and rushes you down with it. Klesk on “Hell’s Gate” fights with Railgun and tries to get away from you, but the Arena is compact you easily chase him down. On “Vertical Vengeance” you will fight with Anarky, who also uses Railgun, but layout of the map allows him to get to a vantage point and rain down damage from a safe distance, which makes this perticular fight very challenging. “Fatal Insinct” is arena covered is thick orange fog, that you can’t really see through, but this is not a problem from AI’s perspective and makes boss of this arena, Uriel, seem to be far more dangerous. Duel with the last boss, Xaero, happens on a fairly compact arena with a simple layout. Just two floating platforms with a lot of pillars on them. You can go to other platform via jump-pad, or you can try and get yourself BFG that sits in the middle of the floating cube between two platforms. That BFG, however, can also be used as a trap, since you can use weird floating circle above arena as a trigger to squish your opponent with a cube above BFG. So this battle mostly comes down to Railgun duel, so it really tests your aim and movement.

Despite being one of the most popular maps, I was never fond of The Longest Yard

Going through with this analysis I actually realised the intent behind this weird singleplayer. This was obviously supposed to prepare new players for countless battles with ther players, get them familiar with maps and weapons, teach them basics of map control and combat. But there is couple of flaws with this mode. First, it doesn’t teach you the numerous complicated movement systems in Quake. Almost all of the maps were made with movement mechanics in mind, be that rocket jumping oe strafe jumping, but player can go through this mode completely unaware of those mechanics, which have a big impact on gameplay and are a big part of multiplayer. Second flaw is much more severe and it is in the fact that difficulty of bots in game is completely unbalanced. I consider myself a below average arena-shooter player, even though in theory i know far more than a someone who is new to genre. Like a said in the beginning there are 5 difficulty modes, first 4 of them are very easy to me, from “I am Ready” to “Hardcore” there is an exponential increase in difficulty, since bots become more agressive and actually challenge you, but if you try to play on “Nightmare” you experience a gigantic difficulty spike. Every single bot becomes very agressive and has almost perfect accuracy while dodging all of the players attacks. Combined that with very high damage that guns have in Q3A and you have yourself a mode, where even experienced players might have a lot of trouble going through. Because of that, new players that will try out this mode won’t have any realistic expectations going into multiplayer.

In the end, I feel like this mode might have ben a step in the right direction and could’ve even helped some people back in the day get into the game (certainly helped me at least). Maybe this is something that genre of arena shooters needs today. After all even this little push might lead into the right direction.