I Play Quake Everyday, Here's Why!

    

    Since the release of Quake II’s remaster I’ve been diving deep into the foundational FPS franchise, playing any Quake game I can get my hands on. Quake I and II, Quake Live, and even the divisive Quake Champions. Many people don’t even know what Quake is, my friends being some of those people. They ask… “What even is that”...“I’ve literally never heard of it”....something to that effect. What I always tell them is that it’s a snappy, dynamic legacy shooter that sets the standard for FPS games. Gamers today have been the beneficiary of one feature or another that Quake pioneered back in the 90s. Today I’m going to chat with you about why Quake I and Quake II still have compelling and interesting campaigns even 25 years after their initial release.

    When I migrated to PC in 2020 I made it my mission to play games that are best enjoyed with a mouse and keyboard, both new and old. As a former console die-hard, I fully understand exactly how expressive FPS games feel on a mouse and keyboard. The rapid, easy-to-execute inputs a keyboard offers, the dynamic range of possibilities available on a mouse… I haven’t looked back since. The games that have made this ‘responsiveness’ the most evident are FPS classics native to the PC Platform. Games like Half-Life, Doom, and Unreal are still cathartic, kinetic, and responsive, despite their age. Playing these franchises after having played FPS games my whole life has given me a newfound perspective on the shooter of my childhood: Call of Duty, Halo, and Battlefield. Out of all the legacy franchises I played, my Half-Life 1 and 2 playthroughs were especially transformative. Half-Life 1 is responsible for the normalization of emergent and evident narrative in a first-person shooter, and then the Gold Standard was set by Half-Life 2 and its subsequent episodes. No FPS has topped Half-Life 2 to this day. Every FPS that came afterward reap the spoils left in the game's wake. During my playthrough of both games, electricity ran through me every second. The responsive and reactive movement, innovative and interactive weapons, and the enrapturing world-building has left a long-lasting impression on me. Few games, even games I played in my youth, have left as strong of an impression on me as Half-Life. But then I went even further back and played Quake.

    During my playthrough of The Half-Life franchise, I did some research on Valve’s development process for Half-Life 1. What I found out surprised me, the original Half-Life engine (GoldSource) was a modified version of the Quake Engine developed by the grandfathers of The FPS, id Software. This sparked a great deal of curiosity in me, why Quake? What had Quake done that inspired the prolific Valve Software to use id’s Quake Engine? When I started playing through the Quake Remakes I got my answer.

 

    (Quake I - Castle)

     Thanks to id Software and Bethesda Studios, we now have the classic Quake I and II games fully remastered and compatible with modern machines. I took their re-releases as an opportunity to continue looking backward into the history of FPS. Quake I and II’s campaigns remain among the most engaging FPS campaigns Like Half-Life, Quake, is cathartic, and kinetic and demands the player be an active problem solver. Quake’s narrative is unlike Half-Life’s, in that no cinematic moments exist. Quake’s narrative is that of games that came before it, you are The Protagonist who , with your sheer physical might and proficiency with firearms, will squash the emergent evil that threatens all of humanity. Quake doesn’t have a complex story, but it makes up for that in spades with the rich worlds that each game creates. The first Quake is set in the 1990’s. Humanity is being threatened by Cosmic Elder Gods and their minions. The player character, designated as Ranger, teleports to various Elder God’s dimensions to retrieve their respective runes so he can vanquish the strongest of the gods: Shib-Niggurath. Quake II heavily departs from the dark-fantasy world and instead takes the player through an action packed science-fiction epic! You, the player, take on The Strogg, a cybernetic race that turns organic beings into one of their many mechanized soldiers. Their goal is simple: destroy humanity. The player character is tasked with spearheading the counter-attack on The Strogg's homeworld, destroying key points of the alien race’s infrastructure. Like Quake I, you navigate these labyrinthine spaces with dangerous, and varied, monstrosities at every turn. The settings are disparate, but the sense of kinetic flow and labyrinthine combat are intact in the sequel.

    These games manage to generate feelings of cathartic and kinetic combat through each game’s robust arsenal. The heavy boomstick shotguns, snappy and smooth hitscan weapons, the phenomenal to fire rocket and grenade launchers—these weapons are brimming with possibilities. No two weapons in your arsenal are alike and each serves a particular purpose. For example, the rocket launcher and grenade launcher, in each game, launch high burst damage projectiles towards your foes. They each do so with their respective nuances. The Rocket Launcher is best used when peaking corners or poking at foes from afar. If you can lead your shot, you’ll reliably ‘gib’ one or more enemies quickly. The Grenade Launcher, by comparison, is best used when enemies are coming at you en masse. When one too many Lovecraftian creatures or soldiers of the Strogg are trying to rip you to shreds, a few preemptive grenade shots around a corner will stop them dead in their tracks. Each incarnation of these weapons are not only effective, they are phenomenal to listen to. The musical bouncing that grenades make as they escape your barrel and roll towards your foe is akin to gaming ASMR. Whether it’s the iconic rocket launcher, the inspired lightening gun or the other-worldly railgun, each weapon is oozing with personality, in both function and design.

 

(Quake I - Shambler)

    What are great weapons without engaging arenas? A state-of-the-art playground built on top of rough asphalt. Thankfully, id software provides you, the player, with the best space to utilize the game's superb arsenal of weapons. Both games feature labyrinths the player must navigate and overcome. These spaces are not real places, something Half-Life always achieves with its map and world design. Rather, Quake's maps are these fantastical arenas for players to exercise their mechanical abilities and problem-solving skills. These cascading mazes that you are thrusted into are emanating with atmosphere. Medieval castles with deep purple skies, the winding mechanical hallways of The Strogg’s munitions factory, murky, dim-lit dungeons with zombies, ogres and spawns, laboratories where humans are turned into cybernetic abominations— each level is dripping with tone and ambience. No matter where you’re fighting in Quake, each game offers interesting enemies that are placed in novel and creative ways. Each room you enter is a combat puzzle you need to solve swiftly, or else you face having to reload your most recent save. Quake I and II levels don’t ask you to enter into a claustrophobic room and mow down 10-15 squishy, low-health combatants with your automatic hitscan weapon like most contemporary shooters. 

    Rather, these games pits you up against an array of abominations with different health values, unique pathing and varied ways of dealing damage. Some enemies will lunge at you and gnaw at your face, others will fire a barrage of missiles or spells your way. Each of these two styles of attack come in various, nuanced, forms. In Quake I, there’s the infamous, foreboding Shambler. A large, pale-white abomination that has blood dripping down its face. When you see this creature, you’d better find cover to weave in and out of, unless you want to get nuked by its deadly lightning attack. Not only does The Shambler have the longest ranged attack in the game, it also possesses the largest non-boss health pool out of any enemy, making him a deadly tank.The Shambler, by himself, is an enemy you can defeat easily when you play your corners well. This enemy is at its most threatening when other creatures are in play. Death Knights, Fiends, and Ogres can all be chasing you across an arena while a Shambler sits back, conjuring balls of lightning and directing them right at you. What allows for intriguing and dynamic problem solving within Quakes’ arenas is how each diverse enemy is brought together. Each space you enter demands you think creatively and critically. You have to pull from memory what enemy has which attacks, what weapons will dispatch each target efficiently, and from there, you have to weave that information together to come out the other end ‘the victor’. 

 

 

 

(Quake II - Flyers)

    Sometimes, you’re placed into a room with slow, unassuming enemies(i.e. the Quake I zombies or the Quake II flyers), but that room is tight and cramped, and suddenly these enemies become far more lethal. Whether you weave around these enemies, or retreat back, you are being asked to respond to this problem with immediacy and confidence. And not all of the games tools are created equal. Fire a rocket when you’re around a large, close quarters horde you will suffer massive self damage. In moments like this you want to pick weapons that do high burst damage at close range or that fire beams of sustained damage. Another scenario I ran into during my playthrough is as follows: you walk into a room and all around you, at varying elevations, there’s monsters that want you dead. You’ve entered into this room of raised platforms, and you’re at the basin of this large room. They have the advantage. With your skills,wit, and varied arsenal you carefully dispatch each creature. After a well fought battle, you find yourself standing at the top of the room, the lifeless models of your foes laying still on the cold floor. No matter the situation, it’s up to the player to solve the problem. There’s no ‘one size fits all’ strategy, and no two levels are made the same. Quake games want you to have fun through personal achievement. The weapons at your disposal are your tools, each offering thrilling and satisfying ways to engage with the games’ sandbox.

     Quake is pivotal to the FPS genre. This franchise was the first fully 3D first person shooter, it helped popularize the online FPS gaming, and the laundry list of innovations goes on. If you want to play an enriching and engaging first person shooter that is of a bygone area, but still is as approachable today as it was on release, give Quake I and II a try. Both games are 10 dollars on all platforms and are available on Xbox Gamepass. They have one of the lowest entry prices for games of their caliber. The heyday of Quake may be behind us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look back and see what makes them so great.