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The Doomist

My opinion on Quake (The first one)

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Now this is my (huge) opinion on Quake, which you all probably know because, well it's pretty Doom's 3D successor.

Anyway, I'll start with the bad. First of all, my biggest complaint, the difficulty. The game is pretty easy. Easy and normal are expected to be, but hard and nightmare could've been harder. Take nightmare for example. In Doom, enemies respawn, attack faster, some move faster, and is stuck on Ultra-Violence. In Quake, enemies shoot faster and is stuck on hard. That's pretty much it. Most enemies have weak attacks and health!

It's too Doom-like. I know, it's based off Doom, and i made by the same company, but still, the weapons are similar, like the "super nail gun", it shoots 2 nails at once, and fires really fast, with multiple barrels, just like the chaingun.

You start off with the shotgun. This is a pretty bad choice. Many games, including Doom, will make the shotgun your next gun, but because it's your first choice in Doom, it's pretty bad. It also shoots as fast as the Doom pistol, and doesn't even finish it's cocking sound!

Ogres drop rockets. That's not a good idea, as the explosive weapons are one of the most powerful, and ogres are some of the most common enemies! I've only ran out of rockets ONCE.

Enemies are easy. Take the shambler for example. It the strongest enemy in the game, yet it has about half the health of the Cyberdemon in Doom! It's attack is very powerful, but is usually easy to dodge, as long as there's cover.

Now, I've bashed the game with very minor complaints. But, the game has many advantages to it:

Despite what I said earlier, the guns are still pretty good. I like the nail gun, as it adds another auto weapon to your arsenal, and the grenade launcher, because it's pretty cool, and the physics are actually pretty good.

The 3D engine. You know what that mean: more possibilities! Floor-over-floor, 3D models, more architecture designs to do. This really gave mapper more possibilities to put in their maps, like flying platforms.

Traps. Traps are cool, some are hidden, and some are obvious, like the nail shooters.

The enemies. Also despite before, the enemies are pretty cool too, but they could be MUCH better. The zombies are cool, as they throw their own guts at you, and have to be gibbed to die. Some more original choices here.

It's multiplayer. Probably the most popular part of the game. I love how fast paced it is, and not to mention, it spawned the Team Fortress franchise!


Now, one thing that I don't like is the community. It's not bad (not at all), but it's pretty quite. Try looking for a TF server. That's REALLY hard. When I look for server for Quake, usually only one or two FFA servers. I usually have to search for IP addresses.

Anyway, Quake is a fun game nonetheless, but could have been really improved. Although, it's an exception, as the graphics at the time were amazing, and computers had to work hard to play this game.

SO, what are your opinions?

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Shadow Hog said:

Best rocket launcher ever.

I reckon Quake 3 has the best rocketlauncher.

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Q3 was great, don't get me wrong, but I prefer the look/feel/sound of Q1's RL. Q3's, to me, sounds and looks light and underpowered next to Q1's more medieval grunge design.

I even liked Q1's shotgun. Very satisfying, with its k-chnk k-chnk k-chnk sound, plus it was excellent at longer ranges.

Also, I would personally never call Q1 too easy - Shamblers still make me figuratively shit my pants. They're like the Arch-Viles of the Quake world. *Shudder.*

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Q1 RL's thump is on par with D2's SSG.

Getting rid of 200 nails in a single SuperNG burst sounds great too.

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The original missions of Quake were quite boring. Themed in a very predictable way, each episode started you with a pure techbase with weak monsters, and all the missions after that were dark fantasy themed and looked too much alike. It didn't help that the monster usage was too consistent, no such thing as late-game zombiemen like in Doom. Sandy Petersen's Episode 4 was slightly less monotonous, with a refreshing return of Knights, more kinds of monsters (Spawns and Vores as non-bosses), with less emphasis on Ogres, and stranger level design.

The two official mission packs are way better. For some reason, despite also being mostly dark-fantasy, they're much more engaging.

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printz said:

each episode started you with a pure techbase with weak monsters, and all the missions after that were dark fantasy themed

That was the point according to the story IIRC.

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Here's my messy but honest thought:
To me, the shotgun feels like a pistol because of it's great range, and the super shotgun is the shotgun. Having lots of rockets is fun but in E4 it becomes a trouble as there are lot's of shamblers who take less rocket damage as you've wasted all your bullets on them, particularly in E4M4.
About the monsters, I like it when the second level of an episode has already strong opponents. Many enemy traps, such as the button sequence in E1M4 keeps the player in haste. Compared to Doom's Demons, the Fiends provide more serious and intense fights. Scrags in turn are annoying since it's very difficult to hit them with the SSG and grenades. Also, spawns are a pain as they explode onto player's face most of the time you kill them.
I like the dark and gloomy atmosphere in the game but that makes most of the levels too monochrome and hard to remember. There are some significant landmarks in the maps though, such as the lake in E1M3, the garden at the end of E2M4 and the cemetery in E4M3. I liked E3 maps very much when I played them for the first time and realized afterwards that most of the maps were designed by American McGee, the same guy who made maps 02-07 for Doom 2 that have infinite replay value. But E4 gave me a familiar dislike for its maps and found out that they were made by Petersen.
The modding possibilities for vanilla Quake are impressive; you can create your own weapons, monsters, power-ups, cutscenes, gravity, etc..
The Quake engine is diverse but the gameplay still can't beat the fun of Doom and Build games

I'm also wondering about the minimal communities of Quake and Duke3D. I don't even know what are the most active forums of these games, like the Doomworld for Doom. For duke3d, I've followed 3DR forums but that's quite dead and in Duke4.net, people talk mostly about source ports and mods.

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ASD said:

I'm also wondering about the minimal communities of Quake


You won't find much in terms of a general Quake community, but as far as deathmatch goes, there are plenty of sizeable, active communities. Some notable examples are quakeworld.nu and ESReality (which primarily is a Quake III/Quake Live site, but QuakeWorld tournaments/events are discussed there too). The speedrunning community is still active on the Quake Speed Demos Archive (just google it).

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My opinion, Quake is better than Doom. Doom's engine is too clumsy to let me play at the level I want, the Quake engines got precision and the games play faster than Doom does when you know how to.

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When it comes to Quake, I'm of the opionion that a certain bunch of DW peeps should finally finish their levels!

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It's my opinion that the community is sorely lacking weekly co-op sessions.

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Bucket said:

It's my opinion that the community is sorely lacking weekly co-op sessions.

Ditto. Or at the very least, monthly.

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schwerpunk said:

Shamblers still make me figuratively shit my pants. They're like the Arch-Viles of the Quake world. *Shudder.*


I couldn't agree more here.

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All I have to say is, if you really want the Quake1 engine to offer an extremely challenging adventure with a decent balance of enemies and ammunition then you need to install Hexen2.
It's your fantasy come true. It's your destiny!

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I'm pretty sure there's only about five computers on Earth that Hexen 2 works on.

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1. No weapon animations, especially when it comes to the shotguns. In Doom when you fire a shotgun you get a large reloading animation, it's very fast, but I'm glad it's there.

2. Going with the above, Quake weapons are boring. The nailgun and the grenade launcher are good, but I could have done without the super nailgun and the almost useless lightning gun. The lightning weapon pales to the BFG or even the plasma rifle.

3. The levels are okay, but a little too puzzle heavy for me. A few puzzles are alright, but how about some action? A lot of them are really unnecessary too. Oh I have to press some lights in a certain order to open a door? Just give me a switch and some monsters.

4. Take out the tech levels and the dumb grunts/dog enemies and add more Lovecraft styled work. The knights are dumb as well, are we fighting in some kind of evil Lovecraftian dimension, or a medieval castle? They really couldn't pick a consistent theme.

ASD said:

I don't even know what are the most active forums of these games


http://www.celephais.net/board/
http://www.quaddicted.com/

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Bucket said:

I'm pretty sure there's only about five computers on Earth that Hexen 2 works on.

Eh, source ports exist; that should be sufficient, really.

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Jodwin said:

My opinion, Quake is the second worst FPS game iD has made.


And the first is?

No, I love Quake. I just wish that there were more PWAD paks for Quake.

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One thing that I'd noticed about Quake was a distinct lack of full-length map packs, actually. I mean, aside from the official expansions and a few handful of fan ones, it just didn't seem like there were many map packs that replaced every single map in the game, akin to a MegaWAD for Doom.

I suppose I just wasn't looking hard enough?

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Scet said:

The lightning weapon pales to the BFG or even the plasma rifle.

In a way the lightning weapon is actually a little better than Doom's plasmarifle because the lightning reaches the target instantly than the plasma projectiles and staggers them just the same.

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Bucket said:

I'm pretty sure there's only about five computers on Earth that Hexen 2 works on.

My old laptop used to run it fine before it got deader and died. Quake will always have a special place next to Doom in my heart. It was the first game to introduce me to 3D mouse-look and indulged me in worlds I hadn't seen in other games. Granted that the themes stayed relatiely the same thoughout I loved each of them. C'thon was actually a great surprise for me and prepared me for future gaming experiences.

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ducon said:

No, I love Quake. I just wish that there were more PWAD paks for Quake.

There's plenty of fan made projects for Quake of decent to high quality.

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Jodwin said:

My opinion, Quake is the second worst FPS game iD has made.

Oh no you di'n't. :)

I love Quake. I think the evil atmosphere and creepiness is way better than Doom's. I also like the gameplay with the new weapons, jumping, freelook, monsters, and powerups (quad damage!). But I didn't like the lightning gun. Unless there's a trick to maximizing it's damage that I don't know about, the BFG is a million billion times better. I don't think any game can compete with Doom's gameplay, that's why it will always be the best.

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Good points about Quake 1:

  • Texture artwork is very good and very atmospheric! Even the ones recycled from Doom and Wolf3D are touched up to look nicer. Okay, it gets razzed for having so much brown, but there's enough variety to keep it from getting TOO monochromatic -- and it avoids the "angry fruit salad" look of other games (HacX, anyone?).
  • Although there are only two boss encounters in the entire game, they're both of the "dead easy once you figure out the gimmick" kind, which is how I like 'em. :)
  • Although it's a compromise based on one of the bad points (see below), it's still nice that each map designer gets most of his own episode to work with, giving each episode a cohesive feel that the game overall so tragically lacks.
  • The "Quake C" scripting language allows some impressive flexibility in designing mods while keeping them cross-platform. To do anything even close in Doom requires executable hacking. (And to do so in Quake's successors requires recompiling libraries for each targeted system, which nobody ever does because everyone uses Windows am i rite?)
Bad points about Quake 1:
  • The downside of being a pioneer fully-3D game is that models are very low-polygon and blocky, and animation is actually choppier than Doom's (only about 10 FPS).
  • Most of the enemies seem like Doom stand-ins with minor tweaks. Ya got yer zombieman and shotgun guy (grunt and enforcer), yer demons (Rottweiler, knight, fiend), yer imp (death knight), yer Baron of Hell (ogre), yer cacodemon (scrag), yer lost soul (spawn), yer revenant (vore), and yer arch-vile (shambler)! By my count, the only really original additions are the rotfish and zombie, and I suspect even people who quibble about individual enemies will agree with the general point. ;)
  • Even by "nobody cares about an FPS's storyline" standards, Quake's storyline is lazy, being virtually a copy and paste of Doom's. You're a marine, again, and you start off in techbases and proceed to more abstract caves and temples, again, to fight off an invasion of demons, er I mean otherdimensional beings. Yawn!
  • Although the collaboration was hyped up at the time, Trent Reznor's sound effects and music are disappointing. Machinery, weapons, and ambience are decent (though, like Doom's, heavily appropriated from sound libraries -- they could've hired Robert Prince again to do that!), but the enemy sounds largely make me think of someone making goofy noises into a microphone, and the release version's sounds are all 8-bit 11kHz mono, which represents another step back not only from Doom (which has some 22kHz sounds), but even from qtest1 (which has some higher samplerates, some stereo sounds and some 16-bit sounds)! Plus the "music" is mostly ambient noises. And that jumping "hunh!" sound is terrible. I usually use a female model in Quake II just so I don't have to hear that damn thing again.
  • As alluded to above, the general incoherence of the game attests to the bad blood and falling-out at id Software at the time. Seemingly all the designers wanted to make a different kind of game (Romero wanted it medieval, Petersen wanted it Lovecraftian), and let's not forget that the game's concepts have a tortured zigzag history going all the way back to the original Commander Keen trilogy! The result is a messy mishmash of a game with each designer playing in his own sandbox. No wonder the id guys (those who didn't quit, ahem) blew everything away and started over with Quake II. :)
  • The vast majority of effort went into multiplayer deathmatching. This tendency only got worse with Quake II, and of course peaked with Quake 3: Arena. Okay sure taking on fellow humans is more fun than any enemy AI can provide (as attested by the popularity of Team Fortress 2 and suchlike), but if multiplayer gaming is what they really wanted to work on, why bother with the solo game at all? It's yet another messy compromise.
Altogether, Quake is a mess. Occasionally a nice mess, but mostly a messy mess. I consider it the breaking point beyond which id Software could no longer be considered the same company that developed Commander Keen, Wolf3D and Doom. Sic transit gloria mundi.

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Bucket said:

I'm pretty sure there's only about five computers on Earth that Hexen 2 works on.

Someone somewhere on another forum is saying the exact same thing about "Classic DOOM", completely unaware of the existence of our huge community over here.
There's always someone who is yet to wake up, and it is up to us to open their eyes and let them see.
If I was able to get Hexen2 to work on an Intel COREi7 laptop with a Windows8 OS, then so can you! And I'm there to help.

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Urban Space Cowboy said:

  • The downside of being a pioneer fully-3D game is that models are very low-polygon and blocky, and animation is actually choppier than Doom's (only about 10 FPS).

While I'd agree that Doom has aged better than Quake, I think it's a little harsh to qualify this kind of shortcoming as a negative. In the mid-90's it was visually pretty spectacular, in my opinion.

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I actually really like Quake's models. I think they hold up better than Quake 2's, probably because most of them are actual monsters instead of goofy looking cybernetic humans.

The monster thing is kind of grasping at straws, too. Similar behavior, but they feel entirely different when you fight them, and isn't that all that really matters?

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The only thing I didn't like in Quake was the monsters. they pretty suck in my opinion.

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