Cyborgs, Huge Guns and Heavy Metal (Quake 2 (PC))

Member Name: Burning_Darkness

Product:	Quake 2 (PC)
Date:	29/06/09 (20 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Hugely fun, gratifying and exciting gameplay, good graphics, amazing music

Disadvantages: Ludicrous gibbing spoils the atmosphere a little.

After the visually astounding but gameplay-wise rather dull Quake, ID appear to have learned from their mistakes in creating the dynamic, high-adrenaline blaster that is Quake 2.

Casting you, yet again, as a square-jawed space marine, the game starts with you having crash landed in the middle of a high-tech industrial city on the surface of Mars, belonging to a race of ugly, cybernetically enhanced aliens known as the Strogg. Your fellow marines have, again, all been wiped out, and it is up to you to cripple the Strogg's defences on your own.

Whilst essentially completely linear, Quake 2 does at least give the impression of freedom, its various missions requiring you to travel back and forth between already completed levels with objectives such as rerouting power to allow exploration of pitch black areas, or redirecting orbiting satellites to gain security-clearence to new levels. Its all find-the-key-to-open-the-door stuff at the end of the day but it does help to create atmosphere and draw you in to the game's world.

The graphics are quite crude by modern standars but still aesthetically pleasing, posessing a chunky charm that goes well with the utilitarian, heavily mechanised world of the Strogg. Quake 2 was one of the first games to take advantage of the sudden proliferation of 3D acceleration cards, and whilst it has been criticised for over-using browns and oranges, the overall effect is great, especially the lighting, with levels bathed alternately in neon-blues, emerald-greens and emergency-reds.

The game's main appeal lies in its visceral, ultraviolent nature, with a series of superb, bombastic 'Rob Zombie' style heavy metal tracks keeping adrenaline levels high at all times. These tracks are so good in fact that the audio cd has been a regular player on my stereo for many years now. The weapons feel incredibly powerful, and therefore are immense fun to use, including a ludicrously heavy-duty double barrelled shotgun, an insanely fast minigun with realistic wind up/wind down time and of course the return of Doom's BFG (Big Fucking Gun), which can only be a good thing in anyones books.

The enemies are a diverse mix of cybernetically enhanced monsters, most with guns replacing their hands, ranging from puny humanoids with arm-mounted blasters right up to giant, lumbering monstrosities on metal legs sporting railguns and missile launchers. Fighting them is great fun, with some excellent character animation throughout adding to the enjoyment: for example machine-gun guards will often fire aimlessly into the air after having their heads blown off before tilting over backwards, and other enemies will prop themselves up one one hand after being shot onto their backs, letting loose one last volley of fire in your direction before collapsing again once and for all. One criticism though is that baddies often tend to explode or 'gib' into small polygonal pieces of gore, which looks rather unimpressive and spoils the atmosphere a little, but this is a small point and does little to detract from the overall experience.

Put simply, Quake 2 has a timeless arcade quality to it that makes it ideal for a quick or even sustained blast even today. The multiplayer mode is good fun too, although that has perhaps been superceeded now by more modern developments. After this one ID would scrap the single-player mode from their Quake series for good, which is a crying shame, but Quake 2 still stands up as an excellent, no-nonsense, all-out blast fest with few worthy rivals.

Summary: A timeless blast-fest, made even better by a truly fantastic soundtrack