Frag-a-delic (Quake (PC))

Member Name: rob_writer

Product:	Quake (PC)
Date:	29/03/02 (65 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's still fun, It's a classic

Disadvantages: It does show its age in 1p mode

The original Quake may have been superseded by it's two sequels, but thanks to a freely available graphics update it got a new lease of life (in my books anyway). I'd never played it and had no intention to until my friend introduced me to it in the form of GLQuake. It's a little strange that I never played it first time around, being the classic that it was, but for some reason I skipped from Doom 2 to Unreal Tournament. Anyway, as the saying goes, better late than never.

Quake had a similar effect on the games playing world as Doom did. After Doom it was probably the biggest thing in PC gaming, and at the time was very popular.

Of course now it's old and wrinkly and not worth playing. That is of course until you discover GLQuake, a whole new way to play the original Quake! GLQuake makes the original game look much better by making use of OpenGL. What you get is a game that looks more like Quake 2, out of the old fuzzy Quake 1. This does require a more meatier system (the original game ran on a 486!) but is worth it for the improved Visuals.

It must be noted that Quake was probably the first game of its nature to use a true 3D world. This meant that you could look up and down, jump, everything you could do in real life. Before this Doom and Duke Nukem 3D were actually only 2D, giving the effect of 3D.

However, even with the enhanced visuals Quake still struggles to cut it in to days FPS world. Things have moved on a lot since the days of Quake; today it's level design looks positively old fashioned. It's all based around the age old collect red key to get through red door kind of gameplay. You play through a few levels then fight a boss. It's basically Doom levels in a 3D environment. Back then that was a good thing, but now with the likes of Deus Ex showing us how good an FPS can be we all expect more. Serious Sam recently went back to this kind of gameplay, but took a less serious, more full on ap
proach. Nowadays were used to fighting against a few intelligent bots, not destroying mindless goons in our search for that yellow key card.

The game is split in to 3 or 4 episodes, which you can play in any order, on one of a few skill levels. The episodes consist of a number of levels finishing with a boss level. The episodes do get harder as you go through them, so although the first one is easy the rest are more of a challenge! The weaponry in the game is rather standard, with shotguns, nail guns and rocket launchers all appearing. And of course the ever popuar BFG!

Multiplayer was one of Quakes big successes, with the game paving the way for internet gaming over modems.

Today Quake may not be the masterpiece it was once, but it's still worth digging it out and getting GLQuake (try http://www.planetquake.com for all your quake needs). It's still fun to play through the game, it's certainly not bad and if you haven't played it before it's actually rather enjoyable (or at least I enjoyed it anyway).

Summary: