While Starfield is the big sci-fi shooter on Game Pass right now, folks fancying shootier shooting should see another FPS owned by Bethesda: Quake 2. Id Software's 1997 shooter was fancied up with a remaster released as a free update in August, complete with all the old stuff and one notable new addition. MachineGames, the studio behind the modern Wolfenstein games, have created a whole new story campaign for the remaster. I've really enjoyed playing it. It's the old Quake 2 you know and have complicated feelings about, filtered through modern design sensibilities. I think both veterans and newcomers could enjoy blasting these biomechanical alien horrors.
]]>Surprising few but delighting many, id Software and Bethesda have released a Quake 2 remaster to inaugurate this year's Quakecon. An enhanced edition of the 1997 game, it includes the mission packs The Reckoning and Ground Zero alongside a PC version of Quake 2 on N64. All that for £8 or $10, plus a brand new expansion titled Call of the Machine, developed by Wolfenstein: The New Order studio MachineGames.
While not as beloved or enduring as its predecessor or successor, Quake 2 is one of the Grand Old Shooters. I recall being introduced to it at a covert LAN party in a school IT room, plonking myself down at a monitor and instantly being reduced to a fine red mist (and in the game, etc). The singleplayer campaign had you scrapping across a muddy alien world with shotgun and hyperblaster, with larger levels than in the original Quake, and missions where you'd use heads as keys.
]]>Following in the footsteps of its older sibling, a remaster for seminal shooter sequel Quake 2 will reportedly get an official announcement at next week’s QuakeCon 2023, which is an in-person event for the first time since the pandemic era. Earlier in the year, Quake 2’s remaster accidentally poked its head out in a ratings board leak, but let’s all pretend to be surprised when Bethesda announces it next week, okay?
]]>Last time, you decided that elaborate corridor architecture is better than funicular fights. I wholeheartedly agree with you, but needed to check because the number of video game funicular fights compared to real-world funicular fights did suggest they might be wildly popular. Now we know. As we continue the mission, this week I ask you to choose between the evils of violence and money. What's better: Quake 2's railgun or the currency 'Gold'?
]]>This year’s QuakeCon begins today, and it’s once again being staged as a digital-only event. The organisers say they’re committed to being an in-person event again in 2023 but for now there’s still some intriguing streams to tune into starting from 6pm BST/7pm CEST/10am PST. Read on for more info and our personal highlights on what’s happening at QuakeCon 2022.
]]>Have you played Quake? The eldritch lords at RPS HQ don't let me write HYP posts, of course, but I thought I'd ask anyway. See, it's QuakeCon At Home this weekend, and Bethesda are giving away a seminal piece of shooter history - and every character in its arena-blasting descendant Quake Champions - for free 'til the end of tomorrow.
]]>Whatever your feelings are on Quake II RTX, it looks like it won't be the only classic PC game getting Nvidia's fancy pants ray tracing treatment. A recently posted job ad for Nvidia's Lightspeed Studios has revealed a new "game remastering program" that aims to bring "some of the greatest titles from the past decades [...] into the ray tracing age". There's no word yet on exactly what games they're remastering at the moment, but the first will apparently be a game "you know and love".
]]>One of the last of the Id Software old guard is parting company with the studio soon. Tim Willits wasn't part of the original team of founders, but was there early enough to be credited as level designer on 1995's Ultimate Doom and have a credit in almost everything since. After working as a designer and creative director on the likes of Quake, Doom 3 and Rage, and acting as studio director through the release of Rage 2, he's left a mark on the FPS genre as we know it. After QuakeCon next week he'll say his goodbyes and announce his plans for the future.
]]>When Nvidia showed off their ray traced Quake II demo at the beginning of the year, everyone (including our own Alec, RPS in peace) went a bit nuts for it. Despite being a heck of a lot older than all the other shiny RTX games on show, it was Quake II that really made people sit up and pay attention to what Nvidia's new fancy pants reflection tech could really bring to the table. And now, Nvidia are releasing a full version of Quake II RTX on June 6 from GeForce.com, with the first three levels available for absolutely nothing - just like they were back in the good old shareware days.
]]>The other week, I got my y-fronts in a bunch about how some clever fella had added raytracing to Quake II. A 22-year-old first-person shooter had effectively beaten everyone else to the punch when it came to the new*, more naturalistic form of game lighting currently only available (at least without calamitous performance) on the most recent RTX cards. (You can do it a bit, sort of, in Battlefield V, but that's it for now).
But I couldn't play the bally thing, as I didn't have an RTX graphics card. Now I do, for a bit, so I've been back to give 1997's old Stroggs a 2019 paint job. Here's a spot of compare and contrast, and quick thoughts on whether or not it was worth it.
]]>"Daddy, why are you cross?"
"Because, my little one, someone's just added some lovely-looking raytraced lighting to seminal 90s first-person shooter Quake II, but I am unable to experience it myself because I don't own an RTX-series graphics card. Now repeat what I just said back to me flawlessly, or you're sleeping in the shed again tonight."
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Have you played the Quake II mod CrateDM? If so, please tell me all about it. It's a simple but oh so wonderful idea, which is best explained in its readme file: "CrateDM pits opponents against each other in a room full of crates, and the players are crates." That's it. All-crates Quake 2 deathmatch. Before Old Man Murray even created their Crate Review System, CrateDM was at the cutting edge of crate culture.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Quake has seen plenty of mods adding oodles of wacky weapons but the one that most caught my eye was Chaos Deathmatch [official site] for Quake II. If you weren't poisoned and being chased by smiley-faced homing proximity mines while juggling another player with an air blaster, you were missing out.
]]>'Played' isn't quite the right word for Hardly Workin' [archived official site]. You may need Quake II for it but Hardly Workin' is machinima - a movie made in a video game, before that term was yoinked by a site which became a #contentnetwork. What made Hardly Workin' stand out to me was that you could hardly see it was Quake II. While most early machinima drafted existing in-game characters and assets for action figure pantomimes (and heck, Red vs. Blue still does this - no disrespect), Hardly Workin' is built from scratch for a silly cartoon tale about two lumberjacks getting jobs in a diner.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
I played Quake sometime around its release, though I don't remember being enamored by it or spending much time with it. Instead Quake 2 was the first Id Software game I ever really loved, and even then it was mainly thanks to mods.
]]>In 1998, mod team Akimbo Team Productions released Action Quake 2, a Quake II multiplayer mod created in their spare time. The landscape of first-person shooters has changed vastly since then, but one group of dedicated fans have never moved on.
Seventeen years later, the game's Finnish community are still dedicated to the lightning-paced, bullet-showering, Hong Kong movie-style spectacle. I spoke to some of the most dedicated players about why they still play, meet and reminisce regularly about a game where you're as likely to perish courtesy of an airborne throwing dagger as you are to be tossed from a rooftop, plunging three stories to your doom.
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