Reply To: My first time playing Quake

[Pix]

#5838

I’ve been playing through the standard Steam version this month since it was the easy option. I’d agree that the original game as a single player experience is underwhelming. I think the enemies take loads of hits because PC’s at the time could only handle a few on the screen at once, so they wanted to make the fights last longer. There are so few different enemies that they grow old very quickly. Single player Quake was an underwhelming experience even at the time – I can only assume all the fuss in magazines was because they got to play it on a LAN all day. On my own, I’d far rather play the 2.5D games of the era like Duke or Dark Forces which have way more going for them.

The slight irony is that what I enjoyed most about the multiplayer was the sheer speed of it, and all the little tricks with bunny hopping and rocket jumping which you don’t get here. Essentially I enjoyed it more because of how it’s broken than by design. You can completely break some of these SP levels by doing rocket or grenade jumps in fact but I’ve been avoiding that.

I’ve been having more fun with the expansions. I’ve never played any of them before and they have more going for them with the exception of Dimension of the Past which is actually worse than the original game. Apart from that, each has been better than the last. The levels have way more character and the new enemies/weapons while not massively memorable are at least a welcome change. I’m currently playing Dimension Of The Machine which is the new pack that got included with the Quake update and that blows all the others away. It’s only used the original enemies, at least so far, but the level design is way beyond what would have been possible at the time on DOS. I’d definitely recommend giving that one a go.

Don’t be too hard on John. I got to meet him and Brenda a few years back at Revival and they seem pretty down to earth to me. The way John is mobbed at a convention like that would swell anyone’s ego. Brenda was essentially ignored by the same crowd despite being a developer in her own right which doesn’t seem right. I got her to sign one of the Wizardry manuals she wrote back at the start of her career at any rate. They are fellow big box collectors and both quite active in that community, especially Brenda, which makes them alright in my book. They are supposed to be opening a museum along those lines in Galway at some point which covid has delayed like so many things.