Introduction
Originally released in 1996, Quake has been remastered by Nightdive Studios! Experience the original games with all the expansions, and a brand new one, developed by MachineGames (Wolfenstein New Order/Old Blood/New Colossus). Stop the army of Quake in this action packed FPS, at 60fps! The remaster was released August 19th, 2021.
Review
Take on the role of the Doom Ma…Duke Nuk….The Ranger! That’s the one! The legions of Quake have moved to conquer Earth, and it’s your job as The Ranger to stop them at all costs. Travel through deep dark caves, lava filled trenches, and gothic castles, as you pillage, loot, and murder everything in your path, as you find the runes to stop the Legion and kill Shub Niggurath!
The story for the game is very basic “stop the bad guys”. But in the era of old school first person shooters, story wasn’t necessarily a thing. It was there in a basic function, but it was all about the “arcadey” action! Boy is there a lot of “arcadey” action in this remaster from Nightdive Studios. You get the base game, plus 4 expansions! 3 of the originals plus an all new story, about going through time to once again stop the legions of Quake!
Again though, the story? Meh. But the gameplay! Ohhhh baby the gameplay is where this shines! The levels are a bit generic, though working with the tech when this was originally created, I’m sure they were quite limited on the type of environments they could create. So if you’re not walking in caves, you’re going through big gothic castles with enemies lurking around every corner. Trust me, there are a lot of enemies lurking behind every corner! In the base game, it felt manageable. Walking into a level going “oh sweet, there’s only 32 enemies in this level!”. But in the expansions, all Quake breaks loose! There was a level with 131 enemies in it! By that point I knew I’d be in for a slog. Or if there were only 50ish enemies, I knew I’d be up against some of the toughest enemies in the game. The levels also become quite the length! The base game levels clock in at a couple minutes a piece, whereas the last expansion had levels that would take 20-30 minutes. It was crazy!
At least when I was trouncing around those levels though, there was a nice variety of weapons to kill things with, and I actually used all of them! Plus each expansion seemed to add its own new weapon to the mix of weapons. Though I will say the weapon selection was a pain in the butt. Maybe it’s because I’m blind and was sitting at an angle of my TV, but I couldn’t make out a thing on the weapon wheel, and I couldn’t remember what weapon was which on the quick select that was mapped to the d-pad. So if I wanted a specific weapon, I was stuck flipping through all my weapons, one by one, using the buttons I mapped it too. But again, that’s more my fault than the games. But I can’t tell you how many times I killed myself with a rocket launcher shot because I shot a wall when strafing, or an enemy was too close to me and I took damage. Luckily the game has a great Quick Save/Load feature, that I took full advantage of…even playing on Easy.
My god am I happy I chose Easy too. When I first started the game, I sat there trying to figure out what to play it on. So I decided Easy, because I just wanted a chill and relaxing experience. But it was anything but. It was fast and frenetic and ruthless. As I said I blew myself up alot with the rocket, but even outside of that. The enemies killed me a lot, there were some sections I just barely survived, and the amount of traps that killed me was insane! I had fun with the difficulty, but honestly, if I played on Normal, I felt I would’ve lost some fun, mostly due to frustration. Like the amount of times I almost died in an arena after getting a key card, is more than I’d like to count. It also sucked when in the middle of a shootout, the game would decide to randomly freeze for the briefest of seconds. Though there were some framerate drops when I would use a specific rocket launcher, but unless you really look for it, chances are you won’t notice at all.
If you do play on a higher difficulty though, at least you can play the whole thing in co-op! You and another friend can play through literally every level in online (not sure if there’s couch) co-op! Plus there’s classic online Deathmatch baby! I’ve literally kept the game still installed on my system to play a game every once in a while. Plus when friends start getting it, it’ll be a good night of old school fun, that I can’t say no to!
Rating
Pros:
- A Lot Of Content
- Runs At 60 Frames
- Gameplay Still Holds Up
Cons:
- Some Levels Get Long
- Game Freezing For Brief Seconds
Summary
If you’re a fan of Quake or old school games, get this. There’s so much content packed into it to play, whether alone or with a friend, plus fun levels to explore with traps and enemies galore! Yes some levels get a bit too long, and I couldn’t handle the weapon selection, but that last one was my fault. Plus I’m sure they’ll iron out the framerate issues eventually! You also can’t say no to classic Deathmatch! So go buy it, and save Earth from the legions of Quake as the badass that is The Ranger!
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Game & Developer Information
Developer Website: Nightdive Studios
Developer Socials: Twitter
Publisher Website: MachineGames
Publisher Socials: Twitter
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