Me: Lol Quake 2 sucks
Also me: Oh I have this remake because I own Quake 2 on Steam? Neat! Gonna play through Quake 2 and the expansions and Quake 64 again!
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nightdive should get in touch with the person who made this opengl driver for deus ex and rune. By far the easiest, least messy experience I’ve had running a UE1 game
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Been bouncing between Quake 2 and Call of the Machine. Have not gone back to Quake 2 64 yet but will once I’ve finished Quake 2. Been picking away at Quake 2 the past couple days. I’m in the processing plant. I’ve been playing on Nightmare because this is the only way I play either Quake anymore, and both remasters tweaked the difficulty enough to make Nightmare the actual true hard mode (debatable I’m sure but that’s what the thread is for come at me). It is a bit easier in this remaster than the Quake 1 remaster simply for the fact that in Quake 1 they tweaked Nightmare so that you only have 50 max health and here the base health is still 100 with plenty of opportunity to overcharge throughout the game. I started a game of Quake 1 (2021) on Nightmare and have only made it to the second episode whereas I’m kind of breezing through Quake 2 (2023) Nightmare.
I’m having fun but it is getting to be a bit of a slog and this is only like the halfway point I think. I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually gone all the way and finished Quake 2. This might be the furthest I’ve made it but maybe I’ll move into an area I actually remember soon. Seems like my memory of the game gets really fuzzy after the first couple units.
I wish the game did more with that shitty pea shooter blaster. If it did just a bit more damage and the projectiles fired just a bit faster, and there were more weaker trash enemies than big high HP tank dudes, I’d fall back on it a lot more. I think it’s possible to make a fun game around a pea shooter but the id games never seem to get there. In fact I’m struggling to think of any games that manage it. Now I want to make a Quake 2 map that’s designed around just the blaster.
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I’m nearing the end of Q2, at the palace in the final unit. Not burned out on it surprisingly though all these flying enemies are getting to be a bit annoying. Looking forward to getting back to Call of the Machine.
What I’ve played of Quake 2 64 is very similar to the PS1 version, just the colors might be a bit different and the texturing a bit muddier. Curious to find out what the other differences there are between the two versions, if any. Will have to find a comparison video or something.
I’ve never played the official expansions but probably will here, if not just to get the platinum trophy. Apparently the final boss on Ground Zero on nightmare has some stupidly high amount of hp, making the fight a real chore. Not sure if so want to attempt that or not.
QUAKE 2: REKONING
Well, if you don’t like Quake 2, this wont change your mind as it’s very much more of the same and has many of the same problems, including annoying backtracking and getting lost (though not as often as vanilla).
Having said that, I like this much more than vanilla Quake 2. It feels like a much more refined and polished version of it, with a much better sense of place and some solid environmental story telling. Combat encounters and environments are much more varied, and the level design and secrets are stronger and more imaginative.
It has some problems, like it gets rid of some of the more annoying enemies but introduces new ones (but they aren’t that bad), and there are still too many space warehouse and sewer system levels (in addition to some cool new ones and set pieces), but overall this was much stronger. It’s also less grimdark and schlocky than vanilla which I kinda miss, but it makes the experience feel much more cohesive as a whole (though it doesn’t feel as “epic”). So, worth playing if you don’t mind Quake 2, but you can probably give it a miss otherwise. Oh and the new weapons and items don’t really add much.
I’ve realised I hate the new AI. It’s annoying having enemies dodge all ten rockets I fire at them, I just want to gib shit. Wish I could turn it off. Also I realised a lot of the problems with Quake 2 come from the enemies having weapons that are too hard/impossible to dodge since fast paced FPS games to me are all about dodging and weaving. Quake 2 has too many attacks that are hitscan or move too fast to dodge easily and it doesn’t feel as good. Rekoning adds a new version of the railgun monster that fires slower moving projectiles instead and as a result they are way more fun to fight.
One of the funnier moments to me when playing Rekoning (or is it Reckoning? who cares) is that there are new enemies that are harmless to you but will fly around and bring dead enemies back to life (they are only in two or three levels… one thing I liked about this expansion is that different units have different enemy sets, so you dont get spammed with the same encounters constantly)… anyway I was off trying to figure out a secret, walked away to get some food, and when I came back the fuckers had brought back to life almost all the enemies in the level. well i guess you had to be there, but it made me chuckle.
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I too have started The Reckoning, after having finished Quake 2 for what is probably the first time (much of what I played after my last post was brand new to me so). It’s not bad. I am in the second unit of five (18 maps total I looked it up lol). Probably approaching the halfway mark? I just picked up one of the new weapons some of the trash enemies have been using against me. The one that fires discs that bounce off walls. I don’t know what it’s called.
I like the level design but so far it’s been a bit too claustrophobic for me. Quake 2 gave me plenty of open-ish areas in between all the cramped hallways but here it’s kind of cramped spaces all the time. You go into a warehouse and it’s packed with crates and shit which makes sense, sure, and makes for some decent surprise encounters but I’ve become spoiled by modern games ability to give me wide open places to move around in. I think there’s an arena battle just up ahead of where I’m currently at so that will be nice.
Also so far it’s not too far off the base Q2 experience as far as new stuff goes. It starts off weak in the first level that look like a bunch of caves but they call it “the swamps” and you’re fighting these alien gorilla creatures? Is this the Strogg planets native life form? Either way they’re goofy as shit lol. They bleed yellow too. Which is fitting since some of these spaces have a lot of piss yellow lighting to them.
That first level was so weak though! What a terrible first impression. Thankfully it gets better once you get out of the swamps and into the built environments with twisty pipes and corridors and machinery. I found an item in the second or third level that sucked enemies into it and turned them into a meat cube to be consumed as a stimpack for some minor health. But after finding it that one time I haven’t seen it again yet.
Oh and you get a flashlight right from the start. That was an interesting addition and I’ve kept it on throughout though I’ve only really needed it like once so far.
But yeah. Levels have a good flow so far. I haven’t really gotten lost yet. Or maybe I have but it doesn’t feel like being lost because these areas are small enough you can run through them in a few minutes covering old ground trying to find the door that opened or whatever else changed from the last switch you hit. That was sort of my impression with Quake 2 as well.
I also wanted to say the controls are excellent. I’m playing on PS4 and the move/look acceleration on the sticks is perfect. I played the Xbox 360 version of Quake 2 that came with Quake 4 and that version did not handle well on a controller at all. You’d move the stick to look around and it would be too slow then speed up too quickly. But here they’ve got it just right. Probably the aim assist. I haven’t messed with the control settings yet. I’ll try without the aim assist for a bit and see if I’m still dominating as much as I have been.
As far as weapons I haven’t found the rocket launcher to be very useful at all so far. I’ve found the grenade launcher, super shotgun and (newly recoilless) machine gun to be the most effective tools for slaughter. Most enemies I just rush up on and unload a few super shotgun blasts into their face. They won’t fire projectiles when you’re that close to them and will instead use their melee attack. Basic Shambler tactics work for the most part, just zoom in take a shot, back up and strafe around the melee attack, rinse and repeat. The machine gunners can chew up your health but there are so many health packs laying around it’s not that much of an issue.
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I think I found like three of these in the entire expansion lol
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Hilarious! I thought wow what a neat new wrinkle to the game but maybe it would work better as an item you can keep in your inventory instead of something you use immediately upon pickup.
But apparently it doesn’t matter since they forgot to use it haha.
Eh? You do keep it in your inventory! Or rather, it’s stored with your weapons
Oh you probably didn’t realise you can cycle out of it back to your weapons
Yeah that’s what I meant. I used it immediately thinking it was a new weapon but if I had known it worked like a one-time use item I would have held onto it. Maybe if I had used it against a bigger enemy it would have given more health back? That would have been cool…
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I agree the first level is weak BUT… I like what it does to make a sense of place. Like, there are (almost) no strogg in this section, just the gorilla monsters (who gib really nicely), with the strogg staying behind electic fields to keep them out of their territory. and then later on you turn those field off and they infest the area. i thought that was cool!
also i agree that quake 2 gave you much more open areas, but felt reckoning made up for it by making more interesting smaller areas to fight in (and i didn’t find it too cramped, possibly because i just played through quake 2 64 which is SUPER cramped)
EDIT: actually no, the first few levels were definitely too cramped, especially the area with all the rusted piping. it gets better with that later on
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I’m not feeling particularly inclined towards reckoning so far because it has taken me from swamp-cave to sewer level and I cannot find it in myself to forgive a sewer level in the worst quake game
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what’s cool is that later on there is a “water treatment plant” which is just another sewer level
but there is good stuff in here too!! but too many sewers
spoilers
you end up in a spaceship (with a cool sequence where you have to stop a self destruct sequence) and on the MOOOONNNN
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Yeah it was peak sewer level in game design when this one came out and it shows lol. But Reckoning does have a good sense of place and the kind of environmental storytelling cycle is talking about was a cut above much of the other games that were contemporary with this. Everyone was really chasing Half-Life by this point. It wasn’t enough to have good levels now there had to be an overall point to everything, like just solving each of these levels wasn’t enough for people anymore. That’s the aspect about these kind of games that I miss the most in the post Half-Life world. Spaces are now just vehicles for storytelling instead of interesting puzzles to be solved. We’ve lost something.
All this talk about sewer levels has got me thinking about what a good sewer level would be like. I like the idea of a sewer space that is adjacent to the main space but entirely optional. I need to get back into Quake mapping and make a map with a sewer area as a huge hidden area that you could just as easily miss. Like it would be a regular Quake level but there would be this whole badass subterranean component to it that you might never find.
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I lied earlier. I have found the rocket launcher useful against bosses and enemies too big to dodge the rockets. Against those guys it’s a good tool to have in the arsenal. I like how all the trash enemies being agile enough to dodge the rockets incentivizes you to save it for the bigger, tougher enemies you actually need to use it on.
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Nah they just drink a lot of coffee
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Finished Reckoning. I said it was chasing Half-Life but I looked it up just now and Half-Life didn’t come out until two months after these Quake 2 mission packs. So chalk up the design similarities to the zeitgeist I guess.
I ended up liking the two new guns, the Ion Ripper and the Phalanx. They ended up being part of my regular rotation but on the hardest difficulty every gun ended up being part of my rotation.
On to Ground Zero.
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What you meant to say its the natural evolution of xatrix’s work on redneck rampage, of course,
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I never played Redneck Rampage but I knew people who did. Does it still hold up?
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Hahahahahahahahahaha
No. The best part is mojo nixon. The CUSSIN PACK the game comes with is like 80% enemies threatening to sexually assault you, because in 1997 that is the funniest joke you can make about guys apparently
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