Terrcraft

COMES WITH QUAKE II 64 AND NEW CALL OF THE MACHINE CAMPAIGN

by sarinwrapped on twitter

You could tell me this was idtech 4 and i would believe you.

So I've beaten all the campaigns including the new ones for the remaster. and I must say that this remaster is very good and makes Quake 2 hold up closer to Quake 1. The new enemy behavior for the most part is vastly better with only one exception. I played Quake 2 64 first and my thoughts were that it's cool it was preserved, but it's the weakest campaign of the lot. very small levels, the new ai are clearly not built for the environment. and the levels are the least interesting looking as well. the only plus is the new environments when they are not borrowing basic room layouts from the base game and 2 og expansions. Quake 2 64 is clearly here for preservation 1st and enjoyment 2nd. And thats fine but dont expect as much of a change as Doom 64. The Base Quake 2 campaign was "good" in the original release. but this remaster with the better visuals and ai, makes this campaign even with Quake 1. Also additions like the unused now used environments are very nice. But when I got through this campaign. 2 things were agitating me and they are the 2 worst things about this remaster. 1. Berserker leap attack shockwave range is too damn high, you could be 2 units away from the attack and when the Berserker hits the ground you will be launched. unless you are bhopping while the enemy leaps, kill the berserker before it hits the ground, or rocket jump out of the way, you will be launched. no questions asked. you cannot outrun this attack. 2. railgun nerf. the railgun does 100 damage instead of 150, this is because, at least what ive heard, to make the railgun damage the same as its multiplayer damage for simplicity. But this nerf makes the railgun feel so lame. 3 shots to kill a berserker is 1 too many imo, and the general game balance change this does for the single player makes the 1st railgun in gaming (that matters anyway) lame. Is the railgun a little too good in the original game? Maybe so but both these 2 changes are clear over corrections because the base version of Q2 is piss easy. and clearly with all the AI and gameplay changes it was meant to make the game a lot more engagingly difficult. But the 2 negative changes in the remaster, veer the game into annoying bullshit. Thankfully a mod on the Quake 2 remaster nexus called Quake 2 Unmaster allows you to unnerf the railgun, and either revert the berserker behavior or just tweak it to reduce the shockwave range. I used this mod for the remaining 2 base expansions, and call of the machine. And I probably enjoyed it more than if I didn't use it. Next I played The Reckoning and it was fine? not exceptional but a decent campaign, probably not as good as base q2 but brief and a fun time. new guns are cool but this campaign felt the least changed from the og. i dont have much more to say. Ground Zero got the most improvements here because simply the turrets are no longer bullshit and annoying. you can outrun them and you don't die 25 milliseconds after they see you. this change makes ground zero a great expansion that is better than base Q2 in this remaster. And lastly call of the machine the new campaign exclusive to the remaster. Visually beautiful and with as many monsters as a doom level. this campaign is the best one out of the lot. which is surprising because I've heard very mixed reception about it. but i found it pretty good. Although it was pretty clear that these new levels might have been made in mind of the railgun nerf. given that you are given it pretty early in each unit. But even with the unnerfed rail gun. on nightmare, the difficulty was just right. Ranking of campaigns from worst to best The id vault on offer here is extensive and very cool and more in-depth than I would guess it would be, the playable levels from early builds are nice to see. Also, the deathmatch/ctf is superb and I've had lots of fun with this remaster. I know that I had strong words for the 2 things I'm not a fan of but for each 1 thing done wrong here, 100 is done right. Big thanks to everyone at Nightdive, id software, and machine games involved in making this happen. Quake 2 will rule the cosmos forever!

To anyone who has played the whole thing about how long is this?

general understanding is post quake/2 interest fell, then picked up with source ports, then wanned, doom 3 comes out and brings some interest but its still pretty niche, interest remains pretty level but still a small community with few new people entering, then brutal doom gets picked up in gaming news websites bringing a new casual interest which would result in some bleeding through to the wider community over the past decade or so. The BD momentum rolls into DOOM 2016 which introduces the series to a whole new demographic that gets into the series, around this time Skillsaws AA was also covered by some news outlets which probably brought some people in. Then a retro FPS wave accelerates with DUSK, AMID EVIL, ION FURY, etc bringing more eyes to the retro fps scene in which doom is a predominant feature of. Then Doom eternal and the Pandemic results in even more people being introduced. and recently with MyHouse.wad getting pretty popular. Doom is about as popular as its ever been. It probably has enough momentum to keep going, but if it were to slow down it would likely be if somehow no interesting mods were released which is unlikely because something pretty interesting comes out every week, and if ID software goes through another period where no new doom game comes out for 12 years.

will there be gold versions of 1 and 2?

very nice

call of the machine is basically the end of the Strogg story.

devs say psx is coming later and here is a screenshot.

Sascha D also known as sonic mayhem posted this tweet yesterday about getting the original source files for quake IIs music. in response to a question about a quake II remaster he replies I imagine this all but confirms a quake II remaster is on the way. EDIT Korea has rated a quake 2 remaster seen here https://www.gematsu.com/2023/06/quake-ii-remastered-rated-in-korea

cant believe they put these in the expansion.

some of them are the quake 2 64 music but other than that idk

yeah they have also been making these expansions to launch with the remasters

play call of the machine ;)

I think the new expansion has them

Lots of cut content, i think there is also a beta campain as well.

UPDATE ON STEAM IS LIVE

Some more info https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/quake-ii/9p7l9h478ggv?rtc=1 trailer goes kinda hard ngl

microsoft store page went up so made a new thread for the remaster.

i wonder who bumped the thread this time? WTF?!?!! It looks good.

supprised this isnt getting more attention.

BD and PB have a (semi-earned) stereotype around them that people who like those mods believe them to be an outright replacement of Vannila gameplay, and get upset when a wad doesnt work with it. But other than that people seem to like it.

It will probably come to gog at some point but probably not the same time as it comes out to steam.