When comparing Quake III Arena vs TowerFall Ascension, the Slant community recommends TowerFall Ascension for most people. In the question“What are the best PvP games on Steam?” TowerFall Ascension is ranked 5th while Quake III Arena is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose TowerFall Ascension is:
You run, jump, and shoot arrows, which anyone can learn in a matter of minutes. To become a great player, however, there is a lot of technique and strategy to learn. This includes aiming, using cover, reading your opponent, and many other things. As a result TowerFall Ascension is accessible to casual players while also being able to keep the hardcore players interested.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
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 Easy to learn but hard to master
You run, jump, and shoot arrows, which anyone can learn in a matter of minutes. To become a great player, however, there is a lot of technique and strategy to learn. This includes aiming, using cover, reading your opponent, and many other things. As a result TowerFall Ascension is accessible to casual players while also being able to keep the hardcore players interested.
Pro Feels fair at any skill level
Each player only has three arrows at the beginning of a match. Once they are fired, the arrows can be picked up by anyone. This way no player can build momentum that feels oppressive, allowing even new players to control the pace of a match since they can just hog all the arrows.
Pro Single-screen levels add depth to strategy
In the style of old school games like Asteroids, everything that moves outside the edge of the screen appears on the opposite side of it. Because of this you always need to remain aware of your surroundings and other player locations, so you don't get hit by an arrow coming from an unexpected direction. This adds a level complexity not found in many modern games, which is quite refreshing.
Pro Co-op mode that improves communication
TowerFall Ascension has a 2-player co-op mode where you and your friend fight against hordes of bad guys. It has friendly fire, so you need to communicate to avoid hurting each other. This creates a mode that motivates you to communicate with your friend more, leading to a lot of back and forth banter.
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 Really short co-op campaign
The co-op quest mode takes around seven hours to complete. So if you're not interested in the competitive multiplayer aspect of TowerFall Ascension, you'll run out of things to do really fast.
Con Limited to just local multiplayer
As it is now, you're limited to just playing with or against your friends or not playing at all. If you could play matches against other players online, the game would've been a lot more accessible.