I’ve always been familiar with Quake, but only as a multiplayer game. I’ve played a lot of arena shooters (I’m more of an Unreal Tournament fan), but for whatever reason I never got around to playing the real Quake. I didn’t really expect much considering how badly DOOM has aged, especially in terms of level design and general game feel, but I was really impressed.
Quake holds up on all fronts. The gunplay feels good, the movement feels great, the enemy variety is pretty good, and the level design is a night and day difference from DOOM and DOOM 2. It’s hard to imagine that they came out only two years apart.
Despite being copied a million times, I feel like Quake holds its own against modern shooters. I would recommend it to anyone who likes movement shooters, and I probably should’ve played this ages ago.
P.S: I HATE SHAMBLERS I HATE SHAMBLERS I HATE SHAMBLERS
Quake 2 also holds up really well. The remaster added a guide compass to point you to the next objective that is a godsend.
I recently replayed Q2 and I found it… decent. Alright but not amazing in basically all respects. Just like I remembered it. I hate the fact that enemies have collision until their dying animation is finished, that was a constant annoyance. Quake 1 got it right, so I haven’t got a clue why they screwed it up in the sequel.
The Quake remasters are well done and I’ve been enjoying them on the Deck. I wanted to play something I already knew to get used to the gyro aiming and the remasters came out shortly after I bought it. Perfect timing.
The games have aged surprisingly well. I don’t think you give Doom 1/2 enough credit but I’ll be the first to admit I liked Heretic more. Hexen on the other hand has aged poorly but when modded it is fun.
Heretic, damn. I hate to put Doom behind any of them, but Heretic is engaging as hell.
I think the one area that Quake really falls flat on modern playthroughs, is the level aethetics. The assets all look fine, in my opinion, but the levels visually, all just feel so bland and same-y. So much of it is just brown-grey tunnels. The closest thing to a landmark within a level tends to be a stained glass window. It really highlights just how much of an improvement Half Life was. While I enjoy Quake on a moment-to-moment basis, I find it gets a tad tedious purely because everything looks too similar, and it doesn’t feel like you’re making much progress.
The original Quake is one of my favourite games of all time and absolutely holds up! … Until episode 4, at least. Episode 4 is rubbish.
I should really play this game again some time.
Still have a lot of fond memories playing this with my brother when I was little, we played the campaign together if I remember correctly? That was a thing you could do, right? (I guess those memories are fond but not very clear :)I didn’t really expect much considering how badly DOOM has aged, especially in terms of level design and general game feel, but I was really impressed.
I unironically think Doom aged better than Quake, especially in the audiovisual department.
Doom has a nice style to it but the level design is just masochistic. Most of the levels are just spamming powerful enemies and having you run in circles to whittle them down, that is if the level isn’t intentionally claustrophobic and obtuse. I love GZDoom and all, but the official campaign isn’t fun imo.
