Quake [old revieuw found]

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dosraider
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Quake [old revieuw found]

Post by dosraider »

A review I wrote some time ago for a defunct French AW site, Thought I could post those ol'things here.

QUAKE

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System requirement :
MS Dos 5 or higher / W95 /W98
CPU:
Minimal 486/ recommended Pentium1
Memory
DOS 8Mb /recommended 16Mb
Windows: 16 Mb / recommended 24 Mb
VGA Video card
CD drive double speed.
Joystick and mouse supported.
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I can't help having some dual feelings about this game.
Technically it was certainly a marvel, the gameplay wasn't all that good.
The game engine developed at ID's was the best you could make running under dos, yes, even if you can run it on W95 and W98 it is a pure dos engine. A better more complex engine will never be developed running under dos. It was capable of giving you up to 1280*1024 screen resolution, even without a hig-end (for those days) videocard, as it was mainly CPU / memory dependent. If your monitor could work under this high resolution and your videocard could match up, you could use the high res graphics, the problem was more on the CPU/ memory side. Recomended as 16Mb for dos and 24Mb for windows, count on the double for smooth playing in high res. Regarding we are in 1996 when the game was released , we are talking about high-end PC's in those days. Luckely you could set the graphics from a low 320*200 up to 1280*1024, the most used were 640*480 and 800*600 or 1024*768. Those were pretty good settings.
Doom / Doom II are advertised as 3D games, they weren't, they are fake 3D, you can not cross corridors at different levels in Doom, neither can you design two rooms seperately above eachother.
The Quake engine on the otherhand is a real full 3D engine, no restrictions as in Doom here. It gives a extra dimension to this game. Lifts can be thin plates, you can ambush the enemy from below, above, everywhere. And get yourself ambushed from any direction.
Quake fully supports TCP/IP for internet play, also I think it was the first to use the now so common server-client facility (also known as dedicated server), if your modem was fast enough (not so common in those days) you simply could set up a full Quake server, and a working one.

Enough techy stuff, let's look at the game itself now:
Situated in a near future, scientist discover the possibility to travel through slipgates, nice. Not so nice is they connected to or another world or to another dimension, and a malevolent creature Quake is using the slipgates to invade Earth. He is preparing to unleash his army's and your job as soldier is to stop him. But as always, he moves fast, and overruns your base, you're on your own and the only way out is an ungarded slipgate ......here you go, into Quake's homeworld.

Your journey begins standing before three gates, they gives you the choice for the difficulty levels, easy, hard and hardest. The easy one is really too easy, a cake walk, the hardest is too hard in single player, best is to take the hard gate, gives you a good difficulty level without too much frustration. If you are in COOP you can set your skill level depending the number of players.
The game itself in single player is mainly the known search, unlock doors , kill and slaughter type. A level ends when you find and unlock the slipgate.Some variations when you are going further in the game, other artworks, some more and different enemies. The game is made of 4 episodes, subdivided into 8 huge maps. So don't think you will get the game finished in a afternoon's bloodshed. It takes more time. In fact it takes enough time to come close to being boring.

Your basal armement is a bloody double blade axe, no chainsaw here. A single barrel shotgun, a double barrel shotgun, double nailgun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher and some other energetic weapons are your weaponry. And of course my favorite, the fast firing multi barrel perforator nailgun. Yes, nailing becomes an art when you can hose nails around. Shame it depletes so fast the ammunition. Throughout the game you will find several kinds of usefull powerups, armors of several colors, health stuffies and the Quad damage, gives your arms quadruple power, short time anyway, but hey, you can't have it all.
The enemies goes from not-so-easy going down to damn-hard-going down. Some zombies only stay down if you blow them up, luckely the designers only put them in the game after you find the grenade launcher. Afterwards it's up to you to choose the right weapons on the appropiate targets. Some end level bosses you can't take down with your guns, you will have to find another way to deal with them.

The best way to play Quake is in multiplayer mode, some likes the deathmatch, killing and hunting eachother. Others as myself are only interested in the COOP mode, flaw here is the respawn after you die, you always respawn at the starting point of the levels, makes you travel trough the whole stuff again to match up with your mates. Can be really frustrating sometimes. But in all honesty, the COOP on hardest level with enough allies beats the Doom COOP game.
Multiplayer also includes the possibility of TeamPlay in Quake, divide yourselves into two camps and the slaughter can begins. But I still prefer the COOP game.

Even if Quake is in terms of PC gaming an old game it is still alive. You easely can find many fanmade freeware mods, addons and extra levels on the net. Shows the great achievement creating this full 3D game.

Giving this game a quote isn't that easy, if the single player isn't so good, the multiplayer is great.

My personal quote for Quake: b

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Publisher : id Software Inc.
Developer : id Software Inc.
Platform : Dos, W95/98
Released : 1996.
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The slaughter can begin when you go through one of those .....
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Slipgate
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Ugly ogre with big chainsaw
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Bad creature with big gun
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Nail deadtraps
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Gonna nail this one
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Hey you , yes you, I killed you two rooms ago, want some more ?
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Zombies , brrrrrrrrrr
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End level boss, a nasty one
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Big knight with big blade
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Crowded here, gonna make me some breathing space
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Teleport gate
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wardrich wrote:The contrasts in personalities will deliver some SERIOUS lulz. I can't wait.
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