What do you think is best and worst about Quake?

[Grim Warlock]

What do you think is best about Quake? For me it's the gameplay and the looks of the maps. The worst thing is the storyline.

[gdiddy62]

For me it was the "atmosphere" of the ancient castles and ruins. I'm not as fond of the industrial maps, but loved the overall "feel" of the original that hasn't been matched. Of course, our first impressions from games of old we always hold dear don't we?
I agree about the storyline. Maybe they'll fix that if they decide to redo the original as per comments from Carmack?

[Hazza]

Best:
1- broadness and diversity of enemies open to better more varied gameplay in the pure action section and also creativity section
2- being able to make a few fairy tale entities and make them REALLY twisted
3- REALLY refined touches in monster design; the ogre looks cross between a troglodyte and a bloody butcher with an added facelift- the fiend looks like what happens when a hellish pit monster, a shark and a velociraptor have a baby- the shambler is a refined creature of pure nightmare
4- The right balance between sci fi, fantasy, horror, satanism, and lovecraft- without being superglued to any one.
5- Mystery, and the enemy being appropriately disturbing in that there is a reason all the humanoids are drooling mute crazies!

The bad;
1-The rest of the game couldn't touch Episode 1's quality, neither flow nor level atmosphere- and if anything seemed very rushed
2-zero boss fights- Cththon was fun- but technically a puzzle sequence; Vores don't quite substitute the Barons of Hell as mini bosses- especially when I've probably met about 20 Shamblers already)- and every episode finale after that was plain shit.
3-Weapon duopoly, particularly when the lack of a standard machinegun and a pistol leaves a strong craving; If I were in charge, I'd have one shotgun, one nailgun, a pistol and a heavy assault rifle or machinegun of some kind.
4-The game just jumps into castles most of the time and completely ditches the other half of the content- particularly considering every level past ExM1 lacks any light or medium ranged enemies whatsoever

[JH24]

The best: Atmosphere, sounds, monsters, medieval theme.

Worst: Lack of story, not many bosses, later episodes (although good) didn't really match the feeling of episode 1.

[DaniOcampo1992]

I agree with JH24, the lack of story and just 2 bosses..
But then everything is perfect..

[Jochem Hraback]

I don't care about history. This game is just primal violence. No scripts, no tons of stupids bosses at each level, no goodies, just essential: violence, seeping atmosphere, dark ambient. I like to play in complete darkness. The sounds and music are simply oustanding (NiN); no words to exprim what I feel.

[LambentHammerBurst]

Best: Basically everything. You had what you needed for weapons. 2 hitscans and you had machine guns (nailguns) which were nicely balanced as they were not instant hit but still hard to avoid on many maps due to narrow hallways.
Worst: Storyline (however one could easily rewrite it without having to change the maps ect) and DoE's unoriginal ideas (however were still fun to use their weapons).

[Hazza]

Well if we are going into expansion packs too (though these are stepping into more interpretative grounds with both)

Scourge:
Best- every level, weapon, setting, enemy, and even layout and pacing of things was insanely awesome to a refined degree- even with THREE secret levels, it is the ultimate compliment to Quake (even better IMO).
Hell, even the fact that the start level of each episode actually just says "yep- you already played Quake, so here are half the standard weapons- go nuts- mind the giant cyborgs and beasts though!" Best way to get kickin'! No more faffing around with the standard shotgun against light enemies- you jump straight into the moshpit of enforcers and centroids with half of the arsenal ready to roll!
Even the fact that episode 3 actually connected Episodes 1 and 2 together was brilliant- meant I got to be tackling enforcers or knights in a completely logical setting!
Worst- WAY too little and left my wishing for more- should have had more of everything (though mainly more monsters- two and a half monsters and one boss does not go far enough)!

Dissolusion;
Er, to be honest I only liked the statues and the boost provided by the alt ammo. Otherwise it was kinda cheesy and lazily-made.

[JH24]

^

Very good points. You've worded it very well and I agree. Out of the two expansion packs I enjoyed Scourge of Armagon the most. It really felt as a very polished experience with a good flow, progression and a feeling that everything felt connected. I loved the design too and the way all levels had a consistent theme to them.

As a bad point I would say it was a little too short, left me wishing for more. I was okay with the number of monsters though. I liked their design and they really fit into the Quake theme.


I liked Dissolution of Eternity as well, but if I had to choose only one pack I would go for Scourge. IMHO it delivered a better experience on almost all points.

[LambentHammerBurst]

SoA was the better of the 2 however like said above it didn't bring anything extra overall. It was a map pack with a few extras.
DoE is where the extra's thrived however they also did it lazily. The Wrath is basically a flying Vore (it's projectile is exactly the same, same model but reskinned, functions the same). The Statue's are the standard knight and death knight. The green Spawn is the same, just green and can split into 2. The Mummy was a Zombie with more health. The Multi-Grenade Ogre - the standard Orge that shoots Multi-Grenades.
The weapons:
Unoriginal too, a grenade that splits into mini clusters, rocket that splits into 4 separate ones, the Plasma Gun is actually a clone of the Rocket Launcher (compare their code), the Lava Nails are just simply stronger nails in Single Player (in Deathmatch they actually have noticeable differences - they ignore the players armor, so they always deal full damage).

However even with the unoriginal ideas it was nice as when playing it for the first time you were surprised. When you initially played you never knew wtf to do against these guys as they were "new". However once you played through, you could then simply treat them the same as you did to their original counterparts as their AI was the same and had the same "flaws". I was happy with DoE in every way except the Dragon Boss, it was just bland. They could of kept the same AI and all but made something else that flew. Once DoE's source got released, I did have fun years back as I changed around the "cloned" enemies AI a bit so they were actually different in function. I gotta check all my backup CD's to see if I can find it again.

[Teflon]

I liked DoE's weapons, even if they were unoriginal. Spamming enemies with the multi-rocket was always fun, especially if all of the rockets connect.

I think DoE's biggest problem was the mediocre level design. Some of the levels (like the first E2 map) felt more like above average Doom maps than a proper Doom level. The levels felt like they didn't give you enough room to maneuver, especially with those dickhead Wraiths. There were some good ideas like the Aztec, Egyptian and elemental-themed levels that could easily be used by map designers. I think a few custom level sets for DoE would really make it great. Accessibility for new DoE levels won't be that much of a problem thanks to Steam distributing them now.

As an aside, has anyone played CTF DoE? It looked pretty fun based on the demo of it included in the game.

[Quake Jesus]

Well for me it was quakec. I remember learning QuakeC and thinking how awesome it was to change things. The first thing I did was make all my weapons super powerful and make gibs fly everywhere.

i = 0;
while(i < 20)
{
   ThrowGib
   ThrowGib
   ThrowGib
   ThrowGib
   ...
   i = i + 1;
}

I thought the story in quake sucked for a long time but now I changed my mind and think the game is the best. The story isn't much but it provides endless opportunities for new worlds and enemies through the slipgates. I don't know why Id never cashed in on that idea, I wanted to make a Mud where servers all connected togethor running different maps and content, adding in a persistent character system. Yeah I had thought of doing an MMO with Quake before the crap existed but I couldn't do it in QuakeC and didn't really know what an MMO was then either.

[Kronox]

Only thing I don't like about it is that you can play through the entire game in one sitting. But hey it is a game from 1996 and there are thousands of custome maps. I guess the thing I dislike the most about it is that they never made a REAL sequel. Never was a big fan of Carmack's techno- zombie strogg quake games. Doesn't have the same feel.

LK

[Hazza]

I thought the story in quake sucked for a long time but now I changed my mind and think the game is the best. The story isn't much but it provides endless opportunities for new worlds and enemies through the slipgates. I don't know why Id never cashed in on that idea, I wanted to make a Mud where servers all connected togethor running different maps and content, adding in a persistent character system. Yeah I had thought of doing an MMO with Quake before the crap existed but I couldn't do it in QuakeC and didn't really know what an MMO was then either.

This.
Agree!

[Polarite]

Hi my name is Polarite and I am a addict from day one.

I still remember the day my friend came over to my place with quake shareware on his 12floppy disks or so , took ages to install
I loved the game from day one !!!
It was so easy to play some multiplayer ,join a online server and frag frag frag ,die 1 click and some more action again frag frag frag away.
Played those e1 maps over and over ,never could get enough of it...
So much fun even tho I was playing the game over a 14k4 modem , switched soon to a 28k8 modem.
There was no stopping me then with my l33t 120-130 ping on Holland and Belgian servers.
Still does !

This game has give me houres and houres of gameplay , online and offline.

From work