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So I purchased the Quake complete pack on steam a while back, and it happened to include the original. I decided to write a fun review to enlighten those who don't know about it.
To some it may be TL;DR but if you've never heard about Quake or are on the fence about buying it, this should push you over
Here she is:
So what is quake? Quake was, and in my opinion, still is a benchmark of what a good absolutely amazing game should be. And that benchmark doesn't only aply to the FPS genre, but all games.
When this game first came out, there was a demo for it. (That's a sample of a game that lets you try it out for free to know if you like it). Only quake didn't do what most games do now. Firstly, It HAD a demo, and it was non-restrictive. No time limit, nothing. You didn't get the whole game of cource, but you got ONE QUARTER of it! That's better than the one dinky level you get to play with in modern game demos. Or the $4.99 you have to pay for a...sports game demo. *Cough* EA *Cough*.
Its this kind of commitment to giving the customer a great experience that contributes to Quake's general awesome factor.
This game came out before Triple A companies were pandering to people with... How should I put it... Less than adequate skills to beat a level. If you chose a hard difficulty, the game let you know, by PUNCHING YOU IN THE FACE if you were inept enough to shoot yourself in the face with a rocket, or give a Shambler a bear hug. Quake asks the question "What's regenerative health? You messed up and had yourself a new ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ripped by a demon? Tough luck bud, you're gonna play though the next two minutes with ONE helth!" This game made you feel like you actually acomplished something if you beat it on the harder difficulties. If you played through on easy, yah you beat it, but you can't look someone in the eye and say "I beat quake". You have to beat it on HARD...or NIGHTMARE. In fact, only the worthy Quakers could beat the game on nightmare mode because they hid it. That's right. They didn't want people smashing their computer screens because they thought they were home free with 49/50 kills, only to be mucked by a fiend.
There was more to this game, and more though put into it in 1996 than there is in a lot of big budget games of today. The levels weren't linear and you weren't forced to do anything, because that's stupid...STUPID!. I lookin' at you Call of Duty. All Quake did was say "Hey. You see that level there? There's an exit somewhere in there. If you find it, you beat the level." Then Quake patted you on the head, and let yo go on your merry way. There was no loud messages says "PICK UP THE GUNS AND SHOOT THAT ONE SPECIFIC GUY!". You could run though the levels dodging all the enemies and picking literally nothing up, although I speak from experience when I say that does NOT work on harder difficulty levels.
Quake has a lot of replay value. Mostly because unless you go down the scrub road and watch a walk through so you can brag "I got 100% completion on Quake on my frist play though!", then you're gonna miss stuff, such as secrets. Hell, sometimes even I forget to walk through that one window that looks slightly different than all the rest. But when you DO get all secrets and all kills on all four episodes (yes there are four), each of which contains 7 levels (not including the SECRET FREAKIN LEVELS), then you have won not only Quake, but life itself. Quake doesn't have achievements because it doesn't need them, because when you tell osmeone you got 100% on Quake on NIGHTMARE mode, they believe you. Because one does not simply lie about gett 100% on nightmare mode on Quake. Besides, if you want to play Quake for achievements, you're playin' it for the wrong reason.
Let's quickly talk about the story of Quake. There's not really a story to Quake, aside from a dinky little .txt file. That's because Quake IS the story. If somebody asks me what the story line of 'That old ♥♥♥ game' I'm playing is, I yell in a very peculiar voice "QUAKE. That's the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ story!"
The enemies in Quake are amazing. They show no mercy. They don't have some stupid weak spot for you to shoot while they stand still for 10 seconds. Oh no. If you're low on ammo, and you see a Shambler, you don't simply try and kill it. You have two choises. Run, fast, in as straight a line as possible to ammo, and to health because you had half of it zapped straigh out of you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, or you climb to the tallest tower that's convenient, jump off, and restart the level, this time not being so dumb as to forget to pick up that pack of ammo. If you're looking for epic climactic (hehe, that's a double entendre) boss fights, then you might be disappointed with Quake. There's two of them if you really want to call them that, but again, if you're playing Quake for boss fights, you're playing it wrong. Quake is about fighting through hoards of ememies that on their own may not put up a huge fight (although most of them could single handedly rip off your face while reading shakespear), when you have 10 grenades flying at your face at the same time as your testies are being gnawed off by demond fishies, you health goes from 100 to squichy mush pile status real fast.
Sound design is something that Triple A companies like to talk about a lot, but then they often end up goofing it up, providing me with a symphony of mushy repeating sounds. Quake isn't like that. The ambiant noise is actually scary sometimes. Not spooky... Scary. They sound track is bang on. People often ♥♥♥♥♥ that the Steam version's sound track doesn't work. It doesn't work 'right out of the box' so to speak, but give the game a break. Its running on an operating system SIX..count 'em...SIX generations newer than it was designed to do. That game was made in '96 and its 2016. The ♥♥♥♥in' game's onlder than I am, and I can't play that sound track either. But I digress. The sound track works fine with a few little tweaks, and its amazing.
Multiplayer is also something that is, or rather I should say 'should' be important today. It was important for Quake though. Over the years, there have been many MANY Quake tournaments. And they're still going on. There were no official dedicated quake servers, but there are dozens that you can connect to that have been running since '96. Have you got ANY idea how amazing it is that there are still multiplayer servers with people on them? Codemasters shut down all their Race Driver Grid servers two years ago for whatever new game they were releasing at the time, which nobody played online anyway. The Quake community does it RIGHT ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥it.
In 1996 people loved to mod Quake. Today, there is still a huge modding community (where's our gaddamn steamworks!?). You can play Quake in a client that can make it look comparable to some modern games (and no I'm not talking Minecraft or Clash of Clans graphics either. Proper graphics from today). And your not going to have some dickweed company try and ban you for enhancing graphics. Also, this game is DRM free, because DRM wasn't a thing in 1996, and thank ♥♥♥♥ that Steam or ID didn't try to empose some form of BS DRM on the Steam version of Quake. When I buy a game, and give somebody my money for their game, I don't wana have them check in on me every half our to see if I'm doing 'illegal ♥♥♥♥' with my game ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥IT! *Clears throat* Anywho, you can get countless mods and maps (some with stories too!) from a bunch of different websites over this magical thing called the internet. And the game wasn't built to reject mods because they didn't want you to 'tamper' with their baby...*Cough* Rockstar *Cough*
In conclusion, this game is WAY beyond amazing. No joke, I give this game 10/10. This may be the best game ever made.
Remember this. Whether or not you know it or not, you love Quake. And Quake loves you... In a rip you face of and make you restart the level because this game is not for the weak of heart and doesn't have stupid annoying auto save and you forgot to save your progress kind of way.
To some it may be TL;DR but if you've never heard about Quake or are on the fence about buying it, this should push you over
Here she is:
So what is quake? Quake was, and in my opinion, still is a benchmark of what a good absolutely amazing game should be. And that benchmark doesn't only aply to the FPS genre, but all games.
When this game first came out, there was a demo for it. (That's a sample of a game that lets you try it out for free to know if you like it). Only quake didn't do what most games do now. Firstly, It HAD a demo, and it was non-restrictive. No time limit, nothing. You didn't get the whole game of cource, but you got ONE QUARTER of it! That's better than the one dinky level you get to play with in modern game demos. Or the $4.99 you have to pay for a...sports game demo. *Cough* EA *Cough*.
Its this kind of commitment to giving the customer a great experience that contributes to Quake's general awesome factor.
This game came out before Triple A companies were pandering to people with... How should I put it... Less than adequate skills to beat a level. If you chose a hard difficulty, the game let you know, by PUNCHING YOU IN THE FACE if you were inept enough to shoot yourself in the face with a rocket, or give a Shambler a bear hug. Quake asks the question "What's regenerative health? You messed up and had yourself a new ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ripped by a demon? Tough luck bud, you're gonna play though the next two minutes with ONE helth!" This game made you feel like you actually acomplished something if you beat it on the harder difficulties. If you played through on easy, yah you beat it, but you can't look someone in the eye and say "I beat quake". You have to beat it on HARD...or NIGHTMARE. In fact, only the worthy Quakers could beat the game on nightmare mode because they hid it. That's right. They didn't want people smashing their computer screens because they thought they were home free with 49/50 kills, only to be mucked by a fiend.
There was more to this game, and more though put into it in 1996 than there is in a lot of big budget games of today. The levels weren't linear and you weren't forced to do anything, because that's stupid...STUPID!. I lookin' at you Call of Duty. All Quake did was say "Hey. You see that level there? There's an exit somewhere in there. If you find it, you beat the level." Then Quake patted you on the head, and let yo go on your merry way. There was no loud messages says "PICK UP THE GUNS AND SHOOT THAT ONE SPECIFIC GUY!". You could run though the levels dodging all the enemies and picking literally nothing up, although I speak from experience when I say that does NOT work on harder difficulty levels.
Quake has a lot of replay value. Mostly because unless you go down the scrub road and watch a walk through so you can brag "I got 100% completion on Quake on my frist play though!", then you're gonna miss stuff, such as secrets. Hell, sometimes even I forget to walk through that one window that looks slightly different than all the rest. But when you DO get all secrets and all kills on all four episodes (yes there are four), each of which contains 7 levels (not including the SECRET FREAKIN LEVELS), then you have won not only Quake, but life itself. Quake doesn't have achievements because it doesn't need them, because when you tell osmeone you got 100% on Quake on NIGHTMARE mode, they believe you. Because one does not simply lie about gett 100% on nightmare mode on Quake. Besides, if you want to play Quake for achievements, you're playin' it for the wrong reason.
Let's quickly talk about the story of Quake. There's not really a story to Quake, aside from a dinky little .txt file. That's because Quake IS the story. If somebody asks me what the story line of 'That old ♥♥♥ game' I'm playing is, I yell in a very peculiar voice "QUAKE. That's the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ story!"
The enemies in Quake are amazing. They show no mercy. They don't have some stupid weak spot for you to shoot while they stand still for 10 seconds. Oh no. If you're low on ammo, and you see a Shambler, you don't simply try and kill it. You have two choises. Run, fast, in as straight a line as possible to ammo, and to health because you had half of it zapped straigh out of you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, or you climb to the tallest tower that's convenient, jump off, and restart the level, this time not being so dumb as to forget to pick up that pack of ammo. If you're looking for epic climactic (hehe, that's a double entendre) boss fights, then you might be disappointed with Quake. There's two of them if you really want to call them that, but again, if you're playing Quake for boss fights, you're playing it wrong. Quake is about fighting through hoards of ememies that on their own may not put up a huge fight (although most of them could single handedly rip off your face while reading shakespear), when you have 10 grenades flying at your face at the same time as your testies are being gnawed off by demond fishies, you health goes from 100 to squichy mush pile status real fast.
Sound design is something that Triple A companies like to talk about a lot, but then they often end up goofing it up, providing me with a symphony of mushy repeating sounds. Quake isn't like that. The ambiant noise is actually scary sometimes. Not spooky... Scary. They sound track is bang on. People often ♥♥♥♥♥ that the Steam version's sound track doesn't work. It doesn't work 'right out of the box' so to speak, but give the game a break. Its running on an operating system SIX..count 'em...SIX generations newer than it was designed to do. That game was made in '96 and its 2016. The ♥♥♥♥in' game's onlder than I am, and I can't play that sound track either. But I digress. The sound track works fine with a few little tweaks, and its amazing.
Multiplayer is also something that is, or rather I should say 'should' be important today. It was important for Quake though. Over the years, there have been many MANY Quake tournaments. And they're still going on. There were no official dedicated quake servers, but there are dozens that you can connect to that have been running since '96. Have you got ANY idea how amazing it is that there are still multiplayer servers with people on them? Codemasters shut down all their Race Driver Grid servers two years ago for whatever new game they were releasing at the time, which nobody played online anyway. The Quake community does it RIGHT ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥it.
In 1996 people loved to mod Quake. Today, there is still a huge modding community (where's our gaddamn steamworks!?). You can play Quake in a client that can make it look comparable to some modern games (and no I'm not talking Minecraft or Clash of Clans graphics either. Proper graphics from today). And your not going to have some dickweed company try and ban you for enhancing graphics. Also, this game is DRM free, because DRM wasn't a thing in 1996, and thank ♥♥♥♥ that Steam or ID didn't try to empose some form of BS DRM on the Steam version of Quake. When I buy a game, and give somebody my money for their game, I don't wana have them check in on me every half our to see if I'm doing 'illegal ♥♥♥♥' with my game ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥IT! *Clears throat* Anywho, you can get countless mods and maps (some with stories too!) from a bunch of different websites over this magical thing called the internet. And the game wasn't built to reject mods because they didn't want you to 'tamper' with their baby...*Cough* Rockstar *Cough*
In conclusion, this game is WAY beyond amazing. No joke, I give this game 10/10. This may be the best game ever made.
Remember this. Whether or not you know it or not, you love Quake. And Quake loves you... In a rip you face of and make you restart the level because this game is not for the weak of heart and doesn't have stupid annoying auto save and you forgot to save your progress kind of way.
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