Played the Dimensions of Past episode of Quake and thought it was a pretty fun, varied pack of levels. Some really fun segments like this tunnel you fall into that has a block pushing you along and into zombies, you just have to try to hop out of the loop when a side tunnel shows itself. And then the finale was cruel. No ammo, tons of shamblers and those spider monsters. I had to squat under a bridge and let a bunched up group of those monsters take each other out so I could finish them off with the 5 HP and just the 22 shells I had left.
The new episode, Dimensions of Machine, looks gorgeous from what I have seen!
update: was conflating q3 strafe jumping and q1 bunny hopping but now that i got my brain in the right mode i think it does mostly work on a controller? probably even easier than strafe jumping tbh. need to get used to the sensitivity or tweak it a bit but it kind of works lol
After spending some more time getting used to it and playing with the settings some more (x and y look speed of about 14-15 seems to be my sweet spot) Quake really is quite playable with a controller. Then again I donât know why that would surprise me considering there was an N64 version and there wasnât nobody playing that with a mouse and keyboard. Maybe I still have bad memories of the Xbox 360 version of Quake 2.
Played the Switch version a bit too. Really impressed with how well they put this together. Quake is so good itâs hard to imagine how you could make it better other than just keeping it current and available. Maybe some kind of official integration of Trenchbroom or something would be on my wish list. But adding all the expansions and then some along with working multiplayer is more than enough.
Playing Scourge of Armagon now. Love the scorpion monsters. And this gun that fires bouncing shots!
I look forward to seeing them do this kind of remaster again with Quake 2. I hope that one includes the PS1 version because it had some cool lighting effects the pc version didnât.
Quake 2 is weird because the essence of it is admittedly very unlike everything that everyone likes about id (the studio largely fractured after the original Quake and in that respect Quake 3 is more of an outlier for intentionally hewing closer to their early strengths) â itâs somewhat physically weightier, itâs more cohesively sci-fi rather than being an assemblage of a school shooterâs notebook drawings, the vanilla multi wasnât very popular â but it was the first one I played, it was released at a fairly pivotal time for both hardware acceleration and cross-platform ports so itâs technologically memorable, and it was as popular as any of them were with the modding community so thereâs plenty of stuff out there that feels fundamentally like quake 2 (eg blendo, goldsrc)
by the time 3.10 came out it was pretty massive, think even the most vocal âthis is slow bullshit lolâ part of the community had to acknowledge that the official dm maps were great
One thing I noticed is that the 200 health power up things keep on respawning? Like, super quickly when I donât think itâs supposed to at all. Iâm playing on hard.
I just canât make myself like Quake 2. It feels so wonky and slow, and despite its technical edge I think Quake 2 basically feels like the sweded version of Quake.
Yeap, itâs really noticeable in e1m1 if you grab the mega health in the underground water area at the beginning, then open the secret door leading back there right before the exit.
The Machinegames DM maps are really nice. I havenât checked them all out but a couple of them do the old remix of an official map thing well. One of them even draws from Q2âs Fragpipe.
I wonder if weâll see some of the popular community DM maps added and how theyâll handle that. Since they just live in the id1/maps folder itâs not like youâd need to activate a expansion for them. Not having that seems like the one big weakness of this project. That and skins but I get leaving that out. Servers used to just be overrun with naked hitlers.
However, I swear I saw a guy who was using an enforcer skin when I was playing coop online tonight.
The levels are well designed and the attempt at giving them transitions - making them into a massive world (like Half-Life, before Half-Life) was rad. The enemy animations were a big step up (though the designs werenât!). The audio design was charming with itâs faux military dialogue delivered via voice actors who are probably all design staff. I liked the soundtrack too. Most importantly it felt good to play.
The vanilla multiplayer was good but the mod combo of instagib + grappling hook was an especially good time.
What it did right in single player has since been done better by other games, and the multiplayer scene of the time wouldnât be something you could revisit now.
Quake II was fantastic.
The Xbox 360 port that was a bonus disc included with Quake 4 has split screen co-op and quietly runs at 1080p (even over component video) before home consoles were even supposed to be doing that.
The basic problem with Quake 2 is they introduced an emphasis on accurate shooting and slowed the movement speed to make that viable. They ended up with a game that felt ponderous and still was agonizingly difficult to actually hit other players in multiplayer.
Soon afterwards the genre manage to square that circle with either aim-down-sights or autoaim. That first wave of failed high-screen-resolution FPSes probably needed to exist to teach devs they did need to try unappetizing ideas like that
