My first time playing Quake

[Canageek]

#5836

Alright, I shelled out $13CDN for Quake on Steam tonight, and then followed this guide to get a source port working and avoid the Bethesda junk included in the official release.

I got up to the first lightning yeti thing, and I’m underwhelmed. The shotgun feels nice, as do the chainguns, but of the first four weapons, two of them (Supershotgun and the triple-barrel chaingun) are just upgrades of the two before them.

Enemies feel more bullet-spongy then needed, like, even basic enemies take two or three shotgun blasts at close range. I do love the melee enemies rushing you and the fact they do a lot of damage if they reach you, but you have a gun. It reminds me a lot of using fire spells of enemies in Oblivion and (to a lesser extent) Skyrim.

The music is NOT working for me; I think I’m going to need to mute it and either put on some metal (or, to stay true to the 90s, industrial) or just put on a youtube video or podcast.

I love the medieval level design themes and lovecraftian bits. I’d say it is too bad Sandy Peterson left the company, but it turns out he is a transphobic turdwaffle, so *shrug*. I was not expecting John “I have an ego the size of a planet” Romero to be the one from the old ID team who turns out to be a decent dude, but 2020 pt 3 is a weird era.

I’ve gotten up to the first lightning yeti-thing, but can’t seem to get past it. I did just get the advice from the bit I linked above to NOT use explosives on them, as they only take half damage. WHY DO THEY GIVE YOU THE FIRST ROCKET LAUNCHER RIGHT BEFORE HAND THEN.

I can definitely see why Quake 1 isn’t nearly as well remembered as Doom, Doom II or Quake 3.

[Pix]

#5838

I’ve been playing through the standard Steam version this month since it was the easy option. I’d agree that the original game as a single player experience is underwhelming. I think the enemies take loads of hits because PC’s at the time could only handle a few on the screen at once, so they wanted to make the fights last longer. There are so few different enemies that they grow old very quickly. Single player Quake was an underwhelming experience even at the time – I can only assume all the fuss in magazines was because they got to play it on a LAN all day. On my own, I’d far rather play the 2.5D games of the era like Duke or Dark Forces which have way more going for them.

The slight irony is that what I enjoyed most about the multiplayer was the sheer speed of it, and all the little tricks with bunny hopping and rocket jumping which you don’t get here. Essentially I enjoyed it more because of how it’s broken than by design. You can completely break some of these SP levels by doing rocket or grenade jumps in fact but I’ve been avoiding that.

I’ve been having more fun with the expansions. I’ve never played any of them before and they have more going for them with the exception of Dimension of the Past which is actually worse than the original game. Apart from that, each has been better than the last. The levels have way more character and the new enemies/weapons while not massively memorable are at least a welcome change. I’m currently playing Dimension Of The Machine which is the new pack that got included with the Quake update and that blows all the others away. It’s only used the original enemies, at least so far, but the level design is way beyond what would have been possible at the time on DOS. I’d definitely recommend giving that one a go.

Don’t be too hard on John. I got to meet him and Brenda a few years back at Revival and they seem pretty down to earth to me. The way John is mobbed at a convention like that would swell anyone’s ego. Brenda was essentially ignored by the same crowd despite being a developer in her own right which doesn’t seem right. I got her to sign one of the Wizardry manuals she wrote back at the start of her career at any rate. They are fellow big box collectors and both quite active in that community, especially Brenda, which makes them alright in my book. They are supposed to be opening a museum along those lines in Galway at some point which covid has delayed like so many things.

[TigerQuoll]

#5839

The single player campaign is actually growing on me, and I don’t know why.
I agree 110% with every criticism of this game, plus plenty of my own, but… I’m most of the way through the second episode and for some reason I’m really getting into it and enjoying myself.

[Canageek]

#5842

OK, first: I forgot in games this old you had to manually save, so I needed to use cheat codes to get back to the level I was on.

Then, knowing that the lightning yeti was highly explosion resistant, I used the super-nailgun and beat it pretty easily.

The next level is switch hunting in a maze of traps. Nopenope nopenope.

Ok, once again it is reminding be of Oblivion, but each encounter isn’t interesting, and I already have most of the weapons, so I don’t actually see any reason to keep playing unless it is about to get a lot cooler.

[f2bnp]

#5843

Please don’t call Shamblers “the lightning yeti”. It hurts their feelings :(.

[TigerQuoll]

#5844

I’m beginning to wonder if the problem with Quake is not that the enemies are too bullet-spongy, but that they’re not bullet-spongy enough.
Given the creepy soundtrack and overall design of the game, I think id could have beefed the monsters up even more and slowed down the pace of gameplay and it could have made a pretty solid survival horror game.

[f2bnp]

#5845

thread should be renamed “the duality of man”

[watchful]

#5868

My first Quake experience was QTest, though only solo. It was still impressive to someone who was into modding and dreaming of more realistic gaming experiences. The true 3D on a PC was impressive, especially without Playstation’s warping problems.

Also agree the campaign is very weak, yet I did enjoy the eerie NIN soundtrack. Seems the levels and story were such a jumble with no clear vision. And all that despite claims it was based on years of DnD and brainstorming. (First mention being an easter egg in a Keen game.)

Playing multi-player on the local ISP’s server was fun, more so once we got it running in the school computer lab. Modding too was big with Quake 1, and we used to change the gravity, and try mods like AirQuake and QuakeRally. The QuakeC tech was very flexible, more so than Quake 2, at least until both engines had their full source released.

[dr_st]

#5908

My first experience playing Quake was from a friend who had been to the US shortly after the release, and brought back the shareware version on floppies. I remember I quite enjoyed it.

Then I had obtained the leaked Beta3 (for the love it, cannot remember where from), and decided immediately to warp to the last level.

https://quake.fandom.com/wiki/Shub-Niggurath%27s_Pit_(Beta3)

Little did I know that the last level in the beta was incomplete and could not be finished. 😀

Edit: you can now get Beta3 from here:
https://hiddenpalace.org/Quake_(Jun_21,_1996_prototype)