Dig out your old copy and have another go! (Quake (PC))

Member Name: theanarchistkid

Product:	Quake (PC)
Date:	05/04/01 (303 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's a tradition!

Disadvantages: It may take over your life, graphics are a bit simplistic.

I'm amazed to see that I am only the second person to write and opinion on this game. When it was originally released several years ago, it was hailed as the best game ever; something which is now becoming an increasingly common claim with game releases. The thing is with Quake though is that it really is the best game ever. I'm sure that the majority of Dooyooers will have heard of it, or at least its sequels. As far as its sequels go, Quake II was OK but not an improvement and Quake III was a bit of a flop really. During this opinion, I will try and talk you through pretty much all of the aspects of the game, so it may be a bit long-winded.

System Requirements:

This is one of a rare breed of games that doesn't actually require a 3D accelerator to run. The reason for this is that when it was released, 3D accelerators were a bit of a luxury item so they didn't include native support for it within the game itself. The downside of this is that unless you have a massively powerful PC, you have to run the game in a fairly low resolution. My P200 can manage to run it smoothly at 640*480 whilst my Athlon 700 can run it really well at 800*600. This was one of the first games that really ate up systems for breakfast and it was criticised during its launch for this. At the time of its release, a P133 was considered powerful and whilst it is possible, I wouldn't recommend running Quake on anything less than this. 16Mb of RAM is more or less a prerequisite but I would hope that most computers have this nowadays. The advantage of it being an old game is that the system requirements are so low that you can just dig out an old PC from the loft and run it on that. In my house, I've got several old PCs lying around of various specifications and I networked them cheaply (about £60) and now can play multiplayer Quake over the network. Some of you may well be thinking "Why does he play an old game, when he could be playing new games?"
;, well the truth is that I'm yet to find any new game which is nearly as much fun to play as quake.

As a single player game, Quake is very difficult at times. Sure, if you have it on the easist difficulty level, it's not too tricky but as soon as you try and make it harder, it rapidly consumes your life. There are many single player episodes to play on and there are also plenty of levels and addons to download from the internet. The variety of weapons on offer is pretty impressive, ranging from a plain old shotgun right up to a rocket launcher. These weapons cause various degrees of destruction and each have their own disadvantages. The shotgun for example has fairly limited range but is good for creeping up behind someone with and shooting them in the back. The rocket launcher is good for long range shots and if you're accurate enough you can kill an opponent with one shot, but it's no good in confined spaces because you'll end up killing yourself too. If you play the game a lot, sooner or later you'll realise what weapon to use in a certain situation so it just really takes a bit of practice.

As you progress from level to level you will come up against different monsters and they are also equipped with increasingly more powerful weapons. The learning curve on Quake is just about perfect, it starts off fairly easy and towards the end gets very difficult. This works out very well because towards the end of the game you will have gained a better understanding of the game so you will be better equipped to take on the bigger monsters.

Single player Quake is fine, but the real action is during multiplayer. Multiplayer Quake is a massively popular passtime and some people have even made a career out of it. The simple reason for this is that it is so addictive. The most common form of multiplayer Quake is known as Deathmatch. Basically the idea of this is to kill as many of your opponents as you possibly can. A kill is r
eferred to as a 'Frag' and as soon as you reach a certain amount of frags, or the time runs out, a winner is declared. It's incredibly simple, yet incredibly fun. There's nothing quite like getting a bunch of friends together and player Quake over a network. The good thing with Quake is that is isn't only designed for LANs; if you download some extra software (QuakeSpy for example) you can play it over the internet against other people.

Multiplayer Quake ranges from friendly competition to organised teams and events. Quake teams are commonly referred to as Clans and often one Clan will take on another Clan in a Deathmatch. It's such a simple process to setup and play that it really is a pleasure. If you do intend to play multiplayer Quake over a LAN, I would recommend investing in a good pair of headphones because if you are in a room with 5 other players, it rapidly becomes very noisy. Sound is a key feature of Quake because it allows you to tell how close your opponents are. This makes for some very intense gaming action and in my opinion there hasn't been a game since that has bettered Quake in any way.

If you don't have a network at home and you don't fancy playing against real people yet, you can hone you fragging skills using 'bots'. I have never actually used a bot but essentially all they do is mimmick the actions of a real-life human player. Unfortunately, they're not particularly intelligent so sometimes they are either too good or too bad, but they still make good practise partners. Having never used bots myself, I can't really recommend any specific ones but if you head over to www.quakeplanet.com I'm sure they will have some. Bots aren't built directly into Quake, so you have to download them from the internet somewhere.

This is one of the best things about Quake. Because it had (and still has) such a massive following, if something wasn't built into the game ori
ginally, someone will have developed it themselves and made it available on the Internet. The amount of maps, levels, weapons, monsters and total conversions of the game is incredible. A conversion is basically where the game is modified completely for example there is now Quake Football and Quake Rally. These aren't official updates or anything so they will have a few bugs, but they will keep you entertained for a long time.

Another update that was released for Quake was something called GLQuake. This is essentially a version of Quake for 3Dfx cards so it improves the graphics massively and makes everything run much quicker. This is a free download and is simple to set up although to my knowledge it does only work with 3Dfx cards, so if you have a different chipset, you may well be out of luck.

There has never been a game quite like Quake. The pure playability and fun of the game has never quite been matched. Even though its graphics are starting to look a little long in the tooth, don't be put off. The sound, attention to detail and fun of the game are still perfect and to be honest, I can't see them ever being bettered. Add to that the fact that it costs next to nothing and you're on to a surefire winner.

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