Weapons

Weapons - General

If you're looking for some brand spanking "new" weapons like "Spaceman Spiff's super duper transmogrifier," that reads your brain waves and changes your target into whatever object you were thinking of….well you're not going to find them in Quake 3. If you would like a well balanced set of proven favorites, then sit up and pay attention. Id's basically picked the best of the best from its previous games, reaching all the way from Doom to Quake 2 to create its arsenal of 9 guns. Quake 3's weapons feel solid and powerful all around, with feel bolstered by a new audio cue. If you damage your opponent with your weapons, you'll know it not just with blood spray but with an audible beep. This proves to be indispensable for weapons like the machine gun and the shaft, since it can be somewhat hard to tell if you're on target or not.

Gauntlet

The Gauntlet is Q3's version of "shoot me because I have no more bullets left and I'm running around like an idiot with this glowing blue thing in front of me." On a more serious note, the Gauntlet DOES pack a good deal of power if you can actually back your opponent into a corner or if you're just messing around with a total newbie! Just hold the button down, run straight into the enemy and let the computer do the pounding for you. Each punch is a real wallop, taking away 50 points of damage. There's nothing quite like inflicting a "humiliation!" on somebody.

Gauntlet

Machine Gun

The machine gun is your standard spawn-in weapon. It's a rapid fire, hitscan (that means instant hit) gun that is actually pretty decent in a free for all. With each bullet taking away 7 points of damage (5 in team DM), the machine gun is a surprisingly good weapon for long range attacks if you lack a railgun. Although many have complained that it's overpowered, the machine gun still requires good aim if you expect to do any real damage with it. In the hands of an experienced player, it's not to be taken too lightly. It can sap away health in a hurry if you make the mistake of running in straight lines.

Machine Gun

Shotgun

The ubiquitous shotgun makes an appearance in Quake 3. Unlike other id games, there is only one flavor of shotgun here - the double barrel variety. Though it looks like you're ejecting two shells, rest assured that you only use one unit of buckshot per press of the trigger. The shotgun is a hitscan weapon like the machine gun, firing 11 pellets that do 10 points of damage each. The spread of the Quake 3 shotgun is such that it's primarily effective at medium-short to short range. At point blank it can be rather devastating, but it has its uses even at long range. The spread of the pellets at long range ensure that you'll probably hit your target with one or two. Repeated showers of buckshot can serve as a decent tool to distract railgun snipers as you try to close the gap with them.

Shotty

Grenade Launcher

Everyone's favorite spammer weapon (fire it over and over again hoping for a lucky kill) from Quake 1 & 2 appears in Quake 3 as well. It does do a lot of damage (direct hit is about 120 points) but the feel of Q3's GL is definitely not as crisp as it was in Quake 1, and the firing rate doesn't seem to be as high either. With a bit of practice, it's possible to use the grenade launcher effectively for FFA and CTF matches, but without a more crisp feel, we're not yet sure that it's going to be the "cult favorite" that the Quake 1 grenade launcher was.

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