10 Best No.3's In Gaming History
7. Quake 3
This writer is old enough to remember scoffing at Quake 3 upon its release.
"A multiplayer only game?", 12 year old me said. "Who the heck buys games just for the multiplayer?"
12 year old me, it turns out, was an idiot. (A trend many would say has continued to this day).
Quake 3 is as close to perfection as games have ever got. Not in the sense that it does everything brilliantly, but in that it focused on one aspect of gaming - the deathmatch - and delivered as pure a distillation of that experience as possible.
Whereas Quake's great rival Unreal Tournament offered a bevy of modes - including, shock horror, a single-player campaign - Quake 3 put all its energies into creating the best online deathmatch experience possible. The result was a gloriously frenetic, furious FPS that still holds up today in all its hyperkinetic glory.
Many multiplayer games offer more, but few have ever come close to usurping Quake 3 as king of the deathmatch. Playing it is like watching a master artisan at work - it's a highly specific kind of genius, but genius nonetheless.