If you thought Quake II was bad..
and it was...
Back when Quake II came out, it was almost unheard of for a "civillian" to have a computer with a graphics card with 16MB RAM, and not many "civillians" had heard of the upstart video interface called AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port). As Quake 3 Arena comes out, a 16MB AGP video card still isn't standard equipment, but it's not nearly as exotic of an item as it once was. Again as technology advances (perhaps, in part, due to the gaming industry) and hardware powers up, game graphics come in to soak up the power and use it. And the first-person shooter works graphics power to the hilt for seemingly one purpose: GORE!

Here the two games are compared. Again, if you're squeamish, please feel free to skip ahead.

Quake II

These used to be Grunts.
Here are two Mutants, dispatched by that trusty super shotgun.
Here's another Mutant. The Machine Gun works just as well on them.
Here's a pair of Grunts not long for life on Strogg. It depends on the weapon you use, but sometimes a dying Grunt won't splatter. Instead it just loses it's head like this one has! Shocking imagery!

These could very well be the same grunts in the picture above, just a few minutes later. The black specks around them are flies! And yes there are the matching sound effects!

Granted all this is extremely ugly looking. But unless you checked out the crucifixion scene, you ain't seen nothing yet!
Quake 3 Arena

This is as tame as it gets. I'm having an "out of body experience". It happens when you get "fragged" (killed). And it happens to me a lot in this game! Again, notice those eyes in the icons there! It's like the lights are on, but somebody else is home! Okay, that was tame, so get ready for some splatter!

The moral of the story is: "the higher the polygon count, the smoother the splatter of blood of those we kill!"

Okay, enough already! As the scripture says, "let us hear the conclusion of the matter!"