Quake 2 is Surprisingly Good

Just a month ago or so Id Software, developers of the Doom series, released the latest installment in the series that being Doom: The Dark Ages. Only a month has passed and yet fans are already arguing over whether the game is good or not. Oh well, seems to be a recurring trend amongst all the Doom games. Ignoring the arguments surrounding the new Doom games you can’t help but admire just how unique they are compared to a majority of first person shooters nowadays. Instead of going from cover to cover you’re instead bouncing all over the place. This nice blend of old school game design evolved with modern techniques and ideas. Egging you to either play more or go back for another playthrough to see if you can do any better. I replayed Doom 4 one week ago for leisurely fun. To remind myself why I liked these games in the first place. Back in high school I remember it being one of the best shooters I’ve played, and to this day it remains to be so. Objectively I believe Doom Eternal is the better game, but in my opinion Doom 4 is my favorite. My opinion is similar toYahtzee Croshaw or Skill Up where sometimes simplicity really is king. It’s just a fun game with a great core gameplay loop of ripping and tearing.

Backed by a kickass soundtrack, good pacing, well balanced difficulty, and a straightforward plot that a lot of people tend to gloss over how well presented it is. It’s essentially a tale about a man being thrown into a situation beyond his control. Learning of the risks humanity took to survive an energy crisis. How they instead doomed themselves, and the man responsible hopes to reason with you during the continuing crisis. Yahtzee Croshaw made an excellent video explaining why the narrative of Doom 4 works and why the world of Doom didn’t need to be made complex as future entries rolled out. Doom Eternal kinda messed up the storyline in an attempt to conjure something the writers probably thought was cool and ended up being lame. From what I heard they doubled down on it in The Dark Ages, and while I do plan to play the game eventually I can’t help but wonder if the writing team went insane. Now the real reason I haven’t played the new Doom yet is not because of the discussions surrounding this entire ordeal. It’s because it’s a seventy dollar game and I don’t feel like paying for a ten hour campaign I’ll most likely only go through once. Game prices have gotten crazy these days, and I don’t see them going down any sooner seeing how crazy the world is as well. Instead we’ll be talking about something else.

Rather than pay seventy dollars for the new Doom instead I paid ten dollars to experience one of Id Software’s older titles. Quake 2, the sequel to one of the most influential shooters ever made,, was developed by Id Software and wasn’t Doom. The original Quake tends to be forgotten now that Doom and Wolfenstein are dancing in the spotlight, but it really paved the way for the many aspects seen in first person shooters now. You could move the camera around freely and gaze at 3D environments rather than the turning controls Doom had. You could also fire your guns in a multitude of directions, which changed the way combat worked. Levels had a ton of verticality, and gameplay was sped up to match the multitude of ways you could kill your enemies. It is a classic, and while I wasn’t a major fan of the first game myself I can’t deny the impact it had. So one year after the original Quake released, Id Software put out the sequel that being Quake 2. A game while highly praised for its time has received a bit of backlash over the years. Mainly for how it stands up to its contemporary. Ditching the gothic lovecraftian atmosphere the first game had for multiple industrial environments. In fact, Quake 2 may be the reason why a numerous load of shooters now have dark griddy settings. There was no continuity between these games, and a lot of the first’s game personality was lost to tell a generic Warhammer-esque story.

Quake 2 isn’t a bad game, but it is easy to understand why more people talk about the first game more. Which is a shame, because I fall under the category of people who believe Quake 2 is a lot better than its predecessor. My expectations were kinda low stepping into Quake 2, because to remind you again I wasn’t a big fan of the first game. I talked about it briefly during one of my Brief Looks, but basically I did not enjoy how often design aspects of Quake would clash and collide with each other. Creating an experience I feel as though it was a rough draft for a greater game. Quake 2 is just that. It’s Quake but better and I was hesitant to write this review. I didn’t write a full review for the first game and my thoughts on Quake 2 aren’t as much as the other games I’ve covered. However, I’ve been getting a kick out of old school games recently and this was the biggest surprise among all of them. Today we’ll be explaining how and why Quake 2 holds up almost 27 years later. 

Story

The game takes place hundreds of years in the far off future, because it’s science fiction and of course humanity needed to discover space travel for a story to happen. Busy, again, sailing across the stars in search of new life or planets to conquer. Unfortunately things don’t go the way the exploring space fleets hoped for, again. Humanity ran into the Strogg, a race of raging aliens who use advanced technology to upgrade their bodies and turn themselves into mindless cybernetic war machines. Taking any being they find, turning them into prisoners of war, and eventually turning them into one of their own. The Strogg is a threat and so humanity went to war with ‘em for survival. Invading their complexes and purging the Strogg left until none of them remain. Hoping no race out there in the galaxy would have to deal with a catastrophe like this ever again. The time of peace travels further and further away from their hands. No one knows if the Strogg will ever be defeated, but there is some hope in the form of one lucky marine who striked down.

Your name is Bitterman and you manage to land safely on a Strogg stronghold. You and a team of elite soldiers were shot towards an gigantic asteroid the size of a planet. There are structures down there, and all of them are laboratories and factories forged by the Strogg. All of you were supposed to split evenly and destroy key points that kept their facilities running. However, almost every soldier sent was either shot down upon entering orbit or captured by Strogg troopers. You are the only one left and angered by the needless death of your comrades you charge. Pistol in one hand room for a f*ck load of guns in the other. You will cut down every Strogg you run into. Gun them down until they are nothing but bits of meat flying gayly through the air. You’re more than just a marine. You are the hero everybody needs and you will do the deed that needs to be done. Not many get this far...

Gameplay

Now I’ve covered a very good share of boomer shooters in the past. Little too many to be honest with you. After you play your tenth one you start to realize a lot of these games play the same. I mean I went off in the intro about how Doom 4 is my favorite Doom due to simplicity, but in the case of boomer shooters nothing really separates them aside from the artstyle or premise. It gets tiring, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a boomer shooter every now and then. Late last year I played both of the Forgive Me Father games, and they were both awesome. Surprisingly I didn’t go and write a full review for them, but I was burnt out so whatever. Quake 2 is another boomer shooter I managed to like, because while the basic premise or setting didn’t impress me it still managed to be really fun. Much like Doom 4 or Dusk it manages to do a lot through simplicity, and does it really well. If you’ve played a boomer shooter before then I think you should know how one of these games function. Run through levels, shoot down anything that stands in your way, collect keys to open doors, and fulfill certain objectives before making way to the exit.

There’s a barrage of enemy types you’ll face and each one functions differently. Basic soldiers are easy to kill, but some blast you with miniguns and are heavily armored. Some charge straight out you to perform melee attacks, and others fly around. You have to know how to deal with each enemy and any given moment. Especially considering level design can be cramped or hazards in the environment limit where you can move about. As you journey forth you’ll pick up a supply of guns for which you can wield. Each is devastating if you know how to use them. A pistol with unlimited ammo but is rather weak. A shotgun for up close damage, or a super shotgun which is stronger but has a shorter range and consumes two shells each shot. An assault rifle for pressured fire, or a chaingun to rapidly fire the same bullets. Grenades with an arch, or a grenade launcher which shoots the grenades without having to prepare throwing them. A rocket launcher, railgun, and a BFG10000 for heavy damage, but ammo is rare for all these weapons. Guns in Quake 2 are very fun to use and the game doesn’t punish you for using whatever you want outside of the ones that explode. Get creative and fight hard. Fight till there’s nothing left.

Thoughts

Quake 2 is one of the more surprising classic games I’ve played considering the reputation that surrounds it and me not being a major fan of the original Quake. There’s a few nitpicks I have, which prevent me from saying it’s an amazing game. I was hesitant in writing this review as it felt like I didn’t have much to say about the game. It’s a boomer shooter, I’ve covered what feels like ten of these by now and all of them share similar problems. Yet, I let my thoughts cook for a bit and I ended realizing Quake 2 was worth talking about. Analyzing just to see what held up, what aged better than others expected, and some of the bad influences it had on future games. One of them being the many industrial settings the game has, and by that I mean all of them. I do understand what the art designers were going for. You're fighting a teched up mutant faction that are essentially those tech priests from Warhammer 40K, but worse and grosser. One of the enemy types you face are big boob ladies that shoot rockets, and I was wondering what was happening inside the mind of the person who designed this. Probably wanted to rock his socks off, but then remembered he was working on a game. Quake 2 takes place in mainly industrial places and if not then it’s steel hallways as far as the eye can see. Much like the original Quake they wanted to capture that feeling of somewhere alien. Being deep within the lines of somewhere you aren’t at all familiar with. Not knowing how to escape or if you’ll ever be able to escape. A hell human hands managed to conjure. Can you even say they’re human?

Even looking at it with an artistic standpoint it does get really repetitive quickly. The gimmick of the environment may change like you working through sewers or a storage depot, but at the end of the day it all looks the same. Every area is gray, brown, or a combination of the two colors. It is dull to look at. Top that with a narrative that sounds awesome on paper, but remember that this is a boomer shooter and these games have plots deep as water in scorching desert wells. There is no story to speak of, which is fine by me because these games prioritize gameplay. Will say that there is somewhat of a structured campaign now compared to the first game. Everytime you exit an area you’re given a brief cutscene of where you’re heading next. Told what you got to blow up or destroy in order to weaken the Strogg army. Nice, but much like the environments your goal for each area gets repetitive as well. Shoot everything, destroy things, and do it again but it’s now a bit different. Again, story is not the main focus but I do wish it was varied.

So how’s the actual gameplay and design of Quake 2 overall? It’s really good. Quake 2 feels like the original, but if they managed to fix a lot of the issues I had playing. Level design maintains the mazelike nature the first had. You’re still collecting keycards or pressing specific buttons to progress, but it feels tighter here. Weird because Quake 2 doesn’t follow the traditional mission to mission structure the first game had. Instead it has ‘units’ in other areas. You get dumped in one and occasionally branch off onto one of the many paths to access another portion of the unit. I never found myself getting lost in Quake 2, because the game has a good blend of linear yet well done level design and exploration. Buttons or devices you have to push are often green or protrude from the wall, and one addition I really love with the version of Quake 2 that I played was the compass. Pull it up in case you can’t find the doorway forward. Quake 2 got remastered by Nightdive Studios, a team well known for remastering old games not available for modern hardware, and they did a damn good job remastering this game. Quake 2 had multiple versions when it originally came out with some containing levels not available on the other versions. The remaster allows them all to coexist in one ultimate version, and that’s very nice of them to do.

Gunplay in Quake 2 feels a lot better than the first game, because they now sound like how you would expect it to. The combat shotgun packs a blast rather than feel like a p-shooter in the first game. The assault rifle is heavy compared to the nailgun, and everything matches the sci-fi world Quake 2 circles around. Bringing up level design, I felt Quake 2 gives you more room when you deal with enemies. Enough breathing space to move around or back peddle as enemies run up towards you. Guns feel more conventional than ever and I knew when to whip a specific one out depending on the situation or enemy. Bust out a railgun for enemies at long distance or are flying around, or bring out the rocket or grenade launcher for heavy armored foes. Combat is fast and reactive whereas in the last game it was fast but often grinded to a halt due to its cramp levels or situations that didn’t let you react accordingly. Enemies telegraph their attacks well and none of them kill you with cheap methods. Whereas the first game had foes that would rip your health bar apart without hesitation. I don’t know if this is new to the remaster or not, but it allows you to bust out power ups or special equipment. Essentially letting you heal for emergencies if yah got the item to do so. Quake 2 is a much better video game and you can tell by now.

The campaign took me around five to six hours to beat, which is a good runtime for a game like this. It was fun, but I feel like if I played more of it I would’ve gotten sick. Boomer shooters are good when done right, but they don’t bring enough mechanics or evolving ideas to make a time longer than five hours worth it. There’s a reason my favorites are Dusk and Cultic. They do what they need to do and leave. I do recommend Quake 2 despite some of the gripes I’ve had. This is a surprisingly good game, and with a remaster that contains all the content spread across multiple versions only costing ten dollars I don’t see a better robbery than this. Maybe one day I’ll get to play Doom: The Dark Ages, who knows? In the end I am going to have to give Quake 2 an 8/10 for being enjoyable.

8/10, Enjoyable