Been having a bit of a bash of Team Arena, so I thought I'd just rustle together a few thoughts on it; be good to get some feedback so we can see what everyone else thinks of it as well.

OK, so what's the demo got that normal Quake 3 doesn't? Its got a new map, 2 new models, 3 new gametypes as well as CTF, a new weapon and a new item, 3 new powerups, and a brand new in-game GUI (a first for id, really). So, there's a stack of new stuff. In addition to this, its using what looks and feels like one of the 1.25 builds, so it has a few other changes as well - the magic points system is in place. Its got a couple of other neat things in order to be a bit more appealing to newbies - things like being able to issue voice taunts. There's a few new nice graphical bits as well, like the screens in game showing little movie snippets; looks very pretty indeed.

The single level included is fairly typical for a CTF map; one of those symmetrical things with a railgun on either side of a big opposing gap. Giving it a bit of a bash with bots, it seems to play OK.

Probably the biggest disappointment to me is the significant performance decrease - its noticably slower on my PC than normal Quake 3. That said, I haven't tried any of the tweaks that are being mentioned in a few places, so its entirely possible with a bit of work I could get my framerate up.

It feels a little different as well - not bad, just different. Chalk this one up to the 1.25 physics, I guess.

The different gameplay modes - One Flag CTF, Harvester, and Overload - look interesting. They don't really offer anything radically different, in my opinion, to normal Quake 3 gameplay, but I think they'll provide a few more options to increase the longevity of the game. The effort they've put into the interface to better facilitate team games should hopefully get some more people playing Team Arena.

Anyway, overall, its definitely worth checking out, especially if you are a CounterStrike or TFC player that wants to try something with a faster pace. If you've got a hardcore system, you should be right as far as performance goes.

You can grab it locally from our official mirror. We'll probably have a server or two up at the finals to get people having a bash; there's no Linux version yet so we won't have an online server until they put one out.

wheres my chaingun!?