When most people think of first-person shooters, id Software immediately springs to mind. The small Texas-based company has been involved in almost all of the first-person shooters that are considered classics. Quake spawned a rabid fan base on the Internet that still watches id's every move. So when id revealed that the next game in the series, Quake III Arena, would be specifically designed as a multiplayer game, fans weren't quite sure what to think. But id's purpose became increasingly clear when it released a succession of Quake III Arena technology demos for public scrutiny. The resulting game is not only worthy of its lineage, but it may very well be the best Quake yet.

While Quake III Arena's focus may be its multiplayer deathmatch component, it does have a single-player mode. When playing alone, you can go up against artificial intelligence-controlled bots. The bots do their best to act like human players, and on the higher difficulty settings, they put up an excellent fight. Each bot has different characteristics that govern the way it fights. The portly biker chick Lucy tends to duck a lot. Xaero, a Zen master and the final boss of the single-player mode, is also master of the railgun. The single-player mode is a lot like the kind in an arcade-fighting game, such as Mortal Kombat. You'll move through several different competitive tiers, each with different arenas and bots. At the end of each tier is a one-on-one showdown; these fights take place in smaller, tournament-style arenas. The bots are downright chatty - when you get a group of them together, they'll hold small conversations with each other, which are displayed in text onscreen. In team games, you can order bots around, or even let a bot take control of your team and tell you what to do.

For Thumbdrive and is playable online!!