Tips for Quake 2

[TwelvNighn]

So i recently started playing Quake 2,

currently on mission 3.

Can anyone give me tips for the game?

[Edward850]

Shoot the enemies until they die.

[ducon]

But with the right weapon.

Save the powerups for the end of the game.

[TwelvNighn]

10 minutes ago, ducon said:

But with the right weapon.

Save the powerups for the end of the game.

i had accidentally used quad damage by pressing q,

and it was the only one i

had.

[Murdoch]

35 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Shoot the enemies until they die.

 

And try not to let them shoot you.

 

This concludes the detailed Quake 2 strategy guide.

[Sonikkumania]

-Remember to turn on the soundtrack. It's essential.

-Use quads on bosses.

[The_SloVinator]

- Experiment with weapons. Which are suitable for which situation.

- Know your enemy. Learn their weaknesses.

 

The more you play it, the better you get at it.

 

Have fun! Quake 2 is amazing!

[Dark Pulse]

Let them out.

 

And kill them if they ask for it.

[CittyKat112]

I thought one of the reasons people play games they haven't played before is because they don't know anything about it and get to experience something new and, uh, 'fresh'... I mean for real, asking stuff like this seems very weird to me. Not only because you're essentially spoiling the game for yourself, you also have a ton of online guides and video walkthroughs to choose from and yet you decide to make dumb threads like this. What's the point? Did you want to start a discussion? Should've asked something like 'what's your favorite Quake 2 weapon/enemy?' or something, but no, you've just started playing Quake 2, didn't even beat the game and felt the need to go on a Doom forum to ask for advice on what's the best way to play it. That's NOT the way to go bro...

(I hope I don't sound too dickish here, but oh gosh do posts like these grind my gears)

[Master O]

5 hours ago, Guest_129432 said:

So i recently started playing Quake 2,

currently on mission 3.

Can anyone give me tips for the game?

 

Make sure that in your inventory, you have 1 Invulnerability and 1 Quad Damage for the final boss fight...

 

Hehehe....

[Redneckerz]

6 hours ago, Guest_129432 said:

So i recently started playing Quake 2,

currently on mission 3.

Can anyone give me tips for the game?

If you shoot as if,

you were writing a haiku,

You will be dead very soon.

[ReaperAA]

@Guest_129432 As someone who has beaten Quake 2 on hard+/nightmare, I can assure you that it is not a very hard game at all if you know how to play other retro shooters. With that said, I can provide some tips to you:

• While you shouldn't miss out on any adrenaline (as each of it permanently increases your health by 1), you should generally try to avoid it if you have full health and grab it when you are low on health as it also replenishes your health. Unless of course you are not getting to that point at all.
• Once you get the energy armor (which I think you will get in the 2 or 3 hub I think), you should always keep it activated. Sure you will lose cell ammo everytime you take damage but the 2/3 damage reduction is too good. I daresay it is very OP. Red armor and energy shield makes you one of the most tankiest protagonist in the history of FPS games.
• If you are fighting Gladiators (the guys with railguns), try to get up close to them to force them to use their melee attacks. Or if that isn't viable, try to make sure that you are moving. They have a harder time hitting moving targets.
• If you are fighting Parasites (the doglike creature with long tongue attacks) and you have no cover, try to stay on a higher ground than him. You can even jump on it to stop its tongue attack. Shooting it with SSG at close range can also stop it's attack most of the times
• Machine gun has a vertical up-moving recoil, so practise to keep moving the mouse slightly downward so that you fire at the same spot when using machine gun.
• Try using chaingun only for extreme situations or against a single heavy enemy like Gladiator or a Tank, as it is not very ammo efficient due to wind-up and wind-down.
• While saving powerups like Quad damage for bosses is being recommended by folks here, I don't think you need to worry about them as the bosses aren't too hard and can be still be dealt with without much issue. Also you get plenty of Quad damage throughout the game and you can only carry 1 at a time. Instead, use it if you are in a hairy situation or if you not having much trouble, then use it if you feel like it.
• If fighting Brains (these you will encounter at around late game, but are easy to deal with), make sure to attack them from behind. You can even do so by throwing a grenade or rocket that does splash damage from behind them.
• Gunners (they guys with grenades and chaingun) are probably the most threatening enemies in the game due to their abundance and lethal grenades. Try to target these guys first and learn to keep best distance to avoid their grenades.
• Medics are type of Strogg enemies that you will encounter in late game and can revive strogg from their dead bodies. If you suspect one to be nearby, make sure to destroy nearby strogg dead bodies, especially those of bigger enemies like gladiators and tanks.

[ducon]

53 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

• If you are fighting Gladiators (the guys with railguns), try to get up close to them to force them to use their melee attacks. Or if that isn't viable, try to make sure that you are moving. They have a harder time hitting moving targets.

You can duck when you feel that they will attack and strike back with your own railgun.

Quote

• While saving powerups like Quad damage for bosses is being recommended by folks here, I don't think you need to worry about them as the bosses aren't too hard and can be still be dealt with without much issue. Also you get plenty of Quad damage throughout the game and you can only carry 1 at a time. Instead, use it if you are in a hairy situation or if you not having much trouble, then use it if you feel like it.

Or use the grenades from atop (with [less damage] or without [more damage] grenade launcher), it’s very effective against the tank in the moat and against the mission pack black widow boss.

Quote

• Medics are type of Strogg enemies that you will encounter in late game and can revive strogg from their dead bodies. If you suspect one to be nearby, make sure to destroy nearby strogg dead bodies, especially those of bigger enemies like gladiators and tanks.

Always destroy the bodies with the laser gun, even from the beginning of the game. Thus, you will get the habit when you’ll encounter medics.

 

Don’t forget that the damage are doubled when you hit a monster that is not awaken (very useful against patrolling gladiators or icaruses, one railgun slug is enough).

[FistMarine]

Quake 2 is really easy compared to most games released at that time. Even as a kid, I found the game easy on Medium skill at least (unlike other games where I mostly played on Easy back then). The original game can be beaten even without dying if you are lucky enough, as the actual enemies are rarely a threat, especially when you get the Power Shield (first time in a secret in Unit 3) and combine it with the existing armor. The only things you have to watch are the traps that can insta-kill you (some of them even hurt/kill you with invulnerability activated, strangely enough).

On my older 2018 playthrough, I beat the whole game without dying (I played with mouse and WASD controls) but in my latest playthrough earlier this year, which I played keyboard only, I died only once at the beginning Unit 3 (which is quite tricky, as it has a few enforcers, gunners and those crushers, while all you have is 100+ health and 50 jacket armor). I played on Hard difficulty in both cases (I only beat the demo version on Nightmare skill) and from what I noticed, there's a few differences between the skill levels (more on that below), though Medium and Hard skills don't seem too different from another, based on my own experiences.

 

Anyway, here are some tips (hope that I don't repeat what others have said):
1) The starting Blaster has infinite ammo. You can use it to kill the weaker enemies or fire at enemies that stand still and take damage, so you can save ammo, although ammo is in general plentiful. You can also use the Blaster to destroy windows, blow up barrels, destroy corpses, etc.
2) As mentioned, you can destroy corpses of enemies. It is very satisfying to gib every corpse in game, including the marines (both alive and dead) that you can find in the levels. Strangely, Makron's corpse can't be destroyed at all (in the original executable at least).
3) Save the powerups for later and use the existing ones when you come across another and you can't pick it up, so you get some usage out of it. Depending on the difficulty chosen, you can hold a certain amount of powerups in your inventory (see below for more information).
4) When you finally collect the Power Shield, USE IT and from now on, you will become almost invincible. If you have any armor combined with Power Shield, the damage will be mostly split between the armor and shield energy (cells), with health being barely affected.
5) Related to the above tip, conserve CELLS by avoiding using Hyperblaster and BFG10K, so you can save them for your Power Shield. You can use them less often if you want, as cells are usually plentiful (especially later on in the game).
6) Some enemies will try to attack while they are dying. You can destroy their corpses or hide while they try to shoot. Destroying corpses is also advised to prevent certain enemies (such as the Medic in original game, Repair Bot in The Reckoning, Medic Commander in Ground Zero) from resurrecting them.
7) Powerups can be activated with their hotkey (q for quad damage, i for invulnerability, etc) or by selecting them from inventory. You can actually use more powerups at same time (even more of same type to extend the duration) but the timer will only list the last powerup you activate.
8) Find secrets and collect as many Adrenaline packs as possible. They give full health and also max your health by 1 point. In total, in original Quake 2, you can find 42 adrenaline boosts, which means your maximum health will be 142 by the time you reach Makron final boss. In The Reckoning, there are about 15-17 (18? don't remember exactly) adrenalines to find (some are in non-secret areas) and I don't know how many are in Ground Zero, as it's been a long time since I played this expansion last time, I promise I will do a 100% playthrough of it in next two weeks (in anticipation to the upcoming QuakeCon 2022 event) and I will find out how many are.
9) Save game once in a while. While the game autosaves at beginning of each level, I recommend to have a save made once in a while in different slots. The game seems to have problems with saving/loading sometimes, other than a delay of two seconds when you reload (so you end up with an enemy shooting you upon reloading), the mission packs have a weird bug involving loading saved games. When you try to load a save, it gives you error "function pointers have moved". I am using the latest 3.20 version (original CD version 3.14, as well as Mission Packs CDs that were all fully patched) and I still encounter this weird glitch. Sometimes the saves load fine (the autosave at level start works most of the time), other times they don't and I must quit game and start it again to have another chance to load it. This made every death in The Reckoning a lot more painful. I don't want to imagine what will be for Ground Zero which has the turrets that everyone seems to complain about on the internet...
10) There is a trick that allows enabling infinite ammo in single player, which works for every weapon (except the ETF Rifle in Ground Zero, for some reason). I will let the people to figure this one out by themselves. :P

 

Notes about difficulties. There are four difficulty settings: Easy, Medium, Hard and Nightmare (aka Hard+ as listed in the Objectives menu). Hard+ can only be accessed with console commands, listed below. Some source ports add Nightmare (Hard+) difficulty to be selected in main menu, so extra steps aren't necessary in those cases.

 

Differences between difficulty settings:

Easy - Half damage, fewer amount of enemies, you can store unlimited powerups in inventory
Medium - Normal damage, normal amount of enemies, you can store 2 powerups of each type in inventory
Hard - Normal damage, higher amount of enemies, you can store only one powerup of each type in inventory
Nightmare (Hard+) - Same as Hard, except enemies are more aggressive/faster (they don't enter the pain states when hit or enter the pain state just once like in first Quake on Nightmare skill).

 

Accessing Hard+ difficulty in the original executable:

Start a new game (any difficulty), then type in console:
skill 3
map base1
Or if playing Demo version, instead type map demo1

Anyway, I hope you find these tips useful!

[Dusty_Rhodes]

10 hours ago, The_SloVinator said:

- Experiment with weapons. Which are suitable for which situation.

- Know your enemy. Learn their weaknesses.

 

The more you play it, the better you get at it.

 

Have fun! Quake 2 is amazing!

I love Quake 2

[DavitW]

Circle strafing and back pedaling will get you through 99% of the games enemies.

[Ludi]

Don't get bored by level 6 lmao

[Ludi]

5 minutes ago, DavitW said:

Circle strafing and back pedaling will get you through 99% of the games enemies.

 

I never found Q2's level design allowed for that. It often involves being a tunnel rat with a rail gun in cramped hallways from my experience

[DavitW]

3 minutes ago, Sr_Ludicolo said:

 

I never found Q2's level design allowed for that. It often involves being a tunnel rat with a rail gun in cramped hallways from my experience

Alright, add strafing back and forth to the list then. But I agree with you, very few of the levels stand out from one another. I can't even remember which one hub 6 was.

[heliumlamb]

i like the playstation version for a little bit

[Ludi]

10 hours ago, DavitW said:

Alright, add strafing back and forth to the list then. But I agree with you, very few of the levels stand out from one another. I can't even remember which one hub 6 was.

 

Hexen fans (me) be like

[Kyle07]

On 7/29/2022 at 1:36 PM, CittyKat112 said:

I thought one of the reasons people play games they haven't played before is because they don't know anything about it and get to experience something new and, uh, 'fresh'... I mean for real, asking stuff like this seems very weird to me. Not only because you're essentially spoiling the game for yourself, you also have a ton of online guides and video walkthroughs to choose from and yet you decide to make dumb threads like this. What's the point? Did you want to start a discussion? Should've asked something like 'what's your favorite Quake 2 weapon/enemy?' or something, but no, you've just started playing Quake 2, didn't even beat the game and felt the need to go on a Doom forum to ask for advice on what's the best way to play it. That's NOT the way to go bro...

(I hope I don't sound too dickish here, but oh gosh do posts like these grind my gears)

Yeah I'm currently playing mission pack #2 for Quake 1 and at some point and some time I might start playing Quake II. I would also not ask for real tips for singleplayer (but for multiplayer it could be a different case). I would ask rather for the best setup to play the game with a source port etc.

 

Or I would ask what is the best difficulty to go with, if I'm unsure. But with Quake 1 I experienced quickly, that hard difficulty is okay for a first playthrough.

[CittyKat112]

1 hour ago, Kyle07 said:

Yeah I'm currently playing mission pack #2 for Quake 1 and at some point and some time I might start playing Quake II. I would also not ask for real tips for singleplayer (but for multiplayer it could be a different case). I would ask rather for the best setup to play the game with a source port etc.

 

Or I would ask what is the best difficulty to go with, if I'm unsure. But with Quake 1 I experienced quickly, that hard difficulty is okay for a first playthrough.

Right, and also figuring out how to deal with different types and combinations of enemies / what weapons to use in certain situations is part of the fun, so I think the question in the OP is equivalent of asking for spoilers for a movie you're about to watch. That's probably a bit far-fetched, but still...

[Kyle07]

Yeah I would also not tell someone, which weapons have to be used in a Serious Sam game. Its either personal taste or you will find it out anyway.