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Quake III Team Election 2000
by Tom Chick
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December 22, 2000
"Okay, I'm tired of Quake III. I don't really like the weapons.
They're too..." Trevor searches for a word. He finds one. "Consistent,"
he says.
"Consistent?"
"Yeah." He's idly pushing the mouse around now.
"That's a bad thing?"
"Yeah. I like weapons with variety. Like Unreal Tournament."
"Which is inconsistent?"
"Okay, maybe consistent isn't the word I was looking for,"
he jiggles the mouse back and forth the same way you jiggle a stick
shift to make sure it's in neutral. "How about 'uniform'?"
"The weapons in Quake III are too uniform?"
"Yeah. Can we play something else now?" He has picked
up the optical mouse and is looking into the laser.
"But we've only played two rounds."
Trevor's head snaps back and he tumbles to the floor. "Ah,
I'm blind," he shrieks, clutching his eyes, "The Microsoft
Intellimouse has blinded me!"
"Yeah, that was really funny. The first six or seven times
you did it."
Trevor gets up off the floor. Jeremy comes in from the other room
where the other computers are. "These weapons don't seem to
work very well," he says, "I was shooting you."
"You were using the machine gun."
"I know. It wasn't doing anything."
"The machine gun in Quake III is the worst weapon," I
explain, "It's not like the machine gun in Unreal Tournament."
"Then why aren't we playing Unreal Tournament?" Jeremy
asks.
"You don't play a game just because of the machine gun."
"Why not? Is it too much to ask to play a game with a machine
gun that works?"
"I have to review this," I tell him, "It's for work."
"That's what you said that night you made us play that Star
Trek game," he says.
"He doesn't need us for that," Trevor tells Jeremy, "You
don't need us for that,” he tells me, “Just use bots.
Or go online."
"Let’s play a little longer. The weapons work just fine."
"I was also shooting you with the rocket launcher," Jeremy
says. "It's too slow. You kept moving out of the way. To hit
you, I have to guess where you're going to go."
"That's the point."
"What's the point? That you have to be psychic to use the
rocket launcher?"
"That it takes some strategy."
"The chaingun is no good either," says Trevor, "It
doesn't hold enough ammo. No one would use a chaingun that only
holds a few rounds like that. Didn't you see Jesse Ventura's chaingun
in Predator? He had a whole freakin' backpack for ammo."
"Predator's just a movie," I tell him, "This isn't
a movie -- it's a game. There's a difference."
"Also, the laser gun doesn't shoot very fast," Jeremy
says, "It takes like five minutes between shots."
"It's not a laser gun," I tell him, "It's a rail
gun."
"That's no rail gun," Trevor says, "I've seen Eraser
and I know what a rail gun look like: they shoot that swirly line
inside that smoke trail. Also, this game is lame because the lightning
gun only shoots about six feet out. Everyone knows real lightning
goes for, like, miles."
"I can't even figure out how to get the translocator or the
sniper rifle," Jeremy says.
"Also, the bots keep running backwards and shooting me while
I chase them. How come I can't do that?" Trevor asks.
"You can," I tell him.
"Yeah, but I always run into things or fall off cliffs,"
he says.
"Apparently you have to be psychic to play Quake III,"
Jeremy tells him.
Cont'd
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