When comparing Quake III Arena vs Age of Empires II HD, the Slant community recommends Age of Empires II HD for most people. In the question“What are the best PvP games on Steam?” Age of Empires II HD is ranked 11th while Quake III Arena is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose Age of Empires II HD is:
While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time. And when combined with the history behind the game and its wonderful soundtrack, the game comes across as extremely polished.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Worthwhile time investment for competitive play
Not many available FPS games have such a high skill ceiling as Quake III Arena, making this a great game to invest time into, for those that want to get to a competitive level.
Pro Offline LAN support
By using a LAN connection, multiple computers can facilitate multiplayer without the need for an internet connection.
Pro You can easily run the game on low end PC's
Due to the age of the title (released 1999) and the requirements of said title in the modern day, the game can easily be played on just about any PC from the last 10 years.
Pro Plenty of variation with multiple game modes keeps the gameplay fresh
Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag are the various modes that players can select within the game. This allows for enough change in gameplay for the user so that the game never gets old too fast.
Pro Awesome ambiance with a great finish
While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time. And when combined with the history behind the game and its wonderful soundtrack, the game comes across as extremely polished.
Pro Runs on very old computers
As this game is quite old, requiring only a 1.2GHZ processor and 1 Gigabyte of RAM, this title will run on older PC's and laptops alike without issue.
Pro Facilitates the user's preferred pace
This game neither gives the impression of being thrown to the wolves nor that of being left stranded on an island. Whether you want to move slowly and steadily through the game or take things at a more heightened pace, Age of Empires 2 will allow for both (given a little planning).
Cons
Con Poor quality voice-overs
Given that it is an older title and thus released when studios put little money towards quality voice-overs, Quake III Arena stands out as one of the worst of its kind, not least on account of the game announcer who is one of the main culprits.
Con A lack of proper User Interface scaling makes a clunky UI worse
While this is a remastered edition of a classic Real-Time Strategy title, the UI was left largely unchanged. Selecting workers still prompts you to click buttons to bring up both economic and military buildings, then choosing whichever building you wish to construct. This is uninteresting design and makes the UI difficult to navigate.
On top of this, the game does not feature UI scaling. Since the game is bound to your current desktop display settings, the UI will adjust itself to match that resolution. This means if you play at 4K resolution the User Interface will be absurdly small, making it near impossible to see what buildings you wish to construct or what units you want to train. This is counter-intuitive design, for this era of modern gaming, and makes properly playing the game more of a hassle than it should ever be.
Con Age of Empires II HD is an unsuccessful remaster due to its outdated graphics
With the only notable upgrade being high resolution options, Age of Empires II HD fails at being a proper remaster. While higher resolutions give the game a slight face lift, the rest of the engine is left largely unchanged. This means the graphics we see in this remaster are nearly the same in its original 1999 release. Due to this, the game is grating to the eye and does not deliver on its high definition promise.