Full 3D, wooo! Two things I need to figure out first, though: how to play with the Trent Reznor score, and whether the average player at time of release played this with mouse-look or not. In my Twitter poll, I've got 86% so far saying yes to originally playing with mouselook:
https://twitter.com/TimeGentleman/status/665633161037131776
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Quake is fantastic!
My Twitter poll went 60-40 for mouselook, but once playing I realised that original Quake, like Dark Forces and Duke Nukem, only allowed horizontal mouselook which for me is worse than sticking to keys. So I guess I'll have to wait a few more games for full-on mouselook.
Regardless, the feel of Quake is great, careening round the levels blowing enemies away. The weapons and enemies are all really well-balanced and varied - the ogres who throw grenades unless you dare get close up to them at which point they switch to chainsaw and axe, the zombies who don't die properly unless you gib them with grenades (this game really got the Romero feel of zombies right, with them slowly rising up out of the water in silhouette, shuffling towards you with groans and only becoming a problem if you stupidly let them get too close - just ignore the fact that they throw lumps of themselves at you!). I didn't think the move to 3D would make much difference without full mouselook, but it definitely makes the enemies feel more tangible and the physics of your parabolic grenades more rigid. I really like the Clive Barkery design of the enemies too, and the weird aesthetic mix between medieval and sci-fi.
I had started to wonder before playing this if I had somehow missed out on the Trent Reznor/NIN music when originally playing Quake, as I remembered being disappointed and instead putting Pretty Hate Machine and Downward Spiral on loop on my stereo. Turns out that aside from about 30 seconds of menu screen music, Reznor created a soundscape rather than a thumping industrial score. So in the interests of personal authenticity, I'm playing with Spotify looping those two albums in the background and it is great.
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Just finished the first episode - I got through that pretty quickly. My fondest memories of the game still hold up - the first appearance of the Shambler, which I felt so clever for escaping by simply running out of its arena, only to discover that it chases you through the whole level! And also the end of episode boss (Cthlon?) which is really big and impressive but isn't a bullet-sponge - you just need to flip a few switches to blast it with electricity.
I took a quick look at the manual, and realised that the mix of aesthetics is half-covered by the story, which is essentially the same as DooM's - evil creatures from another dimension invade your future army base. It's still kind of weird that as a space-marine you start off with a shotgun and a bloody axe! I guess at some point you also go to their dimension with the churches and lava pits and stuff... Hmm, okay, I guess the story doesn't cover it, which I prefer anyway. I always thought of it as an unexplained mix, kind of like He-Man's barbarians with lasers feel. I normally look at retrospectives of these games after I've finished them, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that the mish-mash of styles was due to disagreements during development and a whole Daikatana-style RPG element being removed...
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I noticed the key that you hold down for mouselook, but I didn't want to be constantly holding a key down! After some further advice, I'll give full mouselook a go, although having to use the console makes me feel like I'm not playing it as intended...
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I'm on the 4th episode and it's starting to get very tough, with the first annoying enemies - these weird slime things that are really tough to shoot, and explode when they die, which remind of me of the extremely irritating kamikaze things from Duke Nukem - and a couple of really harsh monster closets.
Generally still very much enjoying it, though. I like the homing rockets things that the vores shoot, and how you can generally trick them into hitting walls - there's unexpected comedy in legging it round the whole level getting chased by a rocket and trying to make sharp enough corners that it misses you. It's surprisingly short as well, but in a good way - I'm relieved it hasn't turned into the slog that led me to quit previous games.
Mouselook is generally an improvement, especially when the levels get multi-tiered. I do sometimes wonder if I'm missing a few targets that I would have got with no mouselook but auto-aim on (and set to the standard 0.93).
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Phew, I finished. The EOGB level is a nightmare - tons of vores and shamblers with nowhere to hide. The best tactic is to get them to fight each other as much as possible. It's not as interesting as the end of episode boss for Ep 1, but at least it has that little trick at the end.
It's still a great game - level design (all that nice Doom-y looping back on itself, and I never got lost), aesthetics (it may have a lot of brown, but I still love all the gothic architecture), balance, all top-notch.
Rating: Green.
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