even the wheel of time fps had a railgun
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my personal theory is railguns fell off because laser mice made them effortless to use. go back and watch 1997-1998 q2 demos, even guys like thresh are only batting like .400 with that thing til trackballs and even then it’s only a little better, it’s exciting because you don’t know if you’re gonna fuck some one easily or not…ut2004 instagib is just point and shoot because your mouse didn’t suck fucking ass
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the huge startup and cooldown on the railgun in both q2 and q3 also helped balance how it was a high damage hitscan but yeah, modern mice made them way too easy to use
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I’m having fun with port so far. Still early on and none of the levels I’ve played are new to me. But… despite playing this on my steam deck rather comfortably, Quake 2 just feels paced much quicker and is pleasantly snappy in a way that doesn’t match with my memory of the original PC version I’ve played in the past. Maybe Nightdive really tweaked something here which, if it didn’t address an essential criticism I had with the original, would be a change I am usually totally against. Though also maybe it’s finally figuring out a custom control scheme that makes playing FPS games on my steam deck actually fun and comfortable is what I am really deriving so much pleasure from. Playing this in the way I am, I keep thinking “I could play Prey, custom Quake maps, Daiktana and Unreal…” which maybe paints a different picture than one of somebody actually enjoying playing Quake 2 lol
they’ve removed the weapon switching delay, completely reworked the enemy ai and gave them a bunch more animations (dodging, diving to the ground, rolling out of the way, etc) so it feels way less shit than the original game did (it’s still bad but not as bad as it used to be)
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jumping in quake 2 still sucks, I hate how sticky it is
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yeah these fuckers seem to crouch like 45% of the time you fire anything at them. I feel like it was much more novel when the basic grunt enemy would fakeout die and shoot a couple shots at you, but they either tease doing it or actually do it all the time.
i am curious how much giving certain enemies the ability to jump down to lower ledges fucks with encounters. these changes are drastic, but, yeah, if it makes a bad game better then maybe that’s okay?
no this is how it was in vanilla q2, I remember how quickly I made it a habit to gib enemies as soon as they started their death animation, just in case
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honestly, it’s a cool little trick. if it was less common I think I would get caught by it more often.
i love the contrast between the first level of quake 2 (confusing layout, stuck fighting goons with the awful blaster forever) and quake 2 64 (immediately gives you the shotgun, has a super shotgun hidden, clear straightforward layout)
quake 2 is improved by having a big green arrow that points the way and that isn’t a complement in the least lmao
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The shop class teacher was surprisingly proud of the broken window caused by my friend’s successful rail gun project.
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That always threw me in hopping between multiplayer and single player in the original. Sounds like everything works like it did in multiplayer now?
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I’m enjoying the new enhanced Q2. The changes they made to the enemy AI behaviors push the game from
“aggressively mid” to “kind of fun, actually”. It’s definitely better than the original.
Also you can play the 1997 E3 demo levels in the id vault menu so that’s neat. Supposedly the PS1 version is coming at some point in the future as well.
I’m going to check out the Machine Games episode soon since everyone is saying it’s legit. I’ve heard they’re working in a few different things at the moment and I hope one of them is a new single player Quake.
There’s an interesting article on Bethesda’s website going over all the stuff they changed from the original to the new release.
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Playing Call of the Machine now. It’s not just a new episode it’s a full on whole other game. You start out on a space station and select from several different Operations to deploy your marine to to “collect data”. The one I selected saw me going deeper and deeper into these mines, fighting tons of enemies and even a few big arena style boss battles. It ended up with me in these ancient ruins deep underneath everything where I ”awakened an ancient evil” and literally tied Quake 2 directly to Quake 1. Like I’m literally fighting Shamblers right now in Q1 style environments as part of this operations final level.
This feels like the game Quake 2 should have been. Definitely play this one if you haven’t already.
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Yeah I’m enjoying Quake 2 at last.
did anyone notice they heavily altered the maps in the vanilla game?
base1 original, grabbed from a youtube video
base1 remastered
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whaaaaaat… this is like a Quake 2 DX or remake at this point instead of a remaster.
Quake 2 multiplayer had QPong, so that was pretty good.
Holy crud this website: QPong - Planet Quake
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its quake 2 dx for sure, most of the major changes are cut content (several of the AI changes are present in the vanilla q2 expansions for this reason), it would be disingenuous to pretend like it was their idea. however quake 2 dx is by all accounts a major improvement over the original, so this is a win for the gamers regardless
this is the only vague reference to map changes in the steam page fwiw
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I kind of assume Nightdive is always doing this cuz the Turok rereleases reportedly had the same thing. It’s interesting they always sort of glaze over it tho
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