[Riffs] Quake Good.
Note: This Riff [article] was originally posted on our prior website, which died an untimely, unexpected sudden death on NYE 2024 (RIP). Check out wordsmith Hamza’s thoughts on one of the OG ‘Boomer-Shooter’ FPS classics in Quake below. it’s a great piece!
Much more video gaming and other hobby content coming to you very shortly. Both reposts from the defunct website and a LOT of new content! Stay tuned.
Peace, Love and Grindcore xoxo - Brady.
Credit: PC Gamer Magazine.
Author: Hamza Siddiqi.
After my recent foray (and subsequent settling) into the Doom community, it was only a matter of time before I gave Quake a shot. My experience with Quake is that it’s Doom, but different. As with Doom, I found myself playing bits of it, getting stuck, and then returning to it years later and becoming obsessed… except all to a lesser degree.
It wasn’t years so much as a month or two, and I’m not so much obsessed this time as I am intrigued… although so far, the first episode of Scourge of Armagon has dimmed that light a little bit with its seemingly endless tech bases and lack of Nine Inch Nails*
It seems like most people associate Quake with its multiplayer, which I have no experience with yet, so I'm purely talking about the campaign here. Like Doom, the meat of its appeal is in its gameplay loop; but also like Doom, it’s really all of the other stuff that makes it such an engaging experience, that has it living so very rent-free in my head.
The world of Quake is the narrative and thematic mess reflective of its trouble development, but there’s a lot of personality that shines through regardless. It’s almost subtle in comparison to Doom, the gothic medieval, pseudo-Lovecraftian horror-shooter aesthetic having a much more mysterious vibe than Doom's obsessive demon murder. I haven’t looked into it yet, but I’m sure this has had the same effect on the modding community as these same features had for Doom; ape the gameplay, change the ornamentation, and marvel at the creative ingenuity of gamers.
In a video called "Playing Quake for the Story" by Noah Caldwell-Gervais (which I can't embed here for probably stupid reasons, so here), there's *almost* some commentary about the narrative of Quake, but the Quake (1) section of the video it ends up being more about the game's development and level design. Something about id Software's old developer lineup is fascinating to so many people, myself included, to the point that playing through classic Doom and Quake feels weirdly makes you feel connected to the creators the same way people often are with musicians and filmmakers.
You start to notice and appreciate the quirks and habits of particular level designers; you pick up on the environmental storytelling and sadistic gameplay tendencies of John Romero's level design, or Sandy Petersen's very functional approach to gimmickry and level differentiation, and that feeling of connection with the designers is, well, new To me at least; I don't think I've ever really engaged with games in this way before. Thinking on it now, it makes sense that this would be a thing with indie games, but gaming as a huge industry with huge corporations and big money... yeah, I don't think so - I can connect to game studios at the very most.
There *might* be a Neil Druckman or Ken Levine, a Todd Howard at the helm, or at best an auteur type like Hidetaka Miyazaki or Hideo Kojima - but in all of these cases* the project still feels bigger than any one designer... but there's a smaller, more intimate vibe to these early id Software games. Doom and Quake levels are like little art projects that give you a glimpse into the designers creative mental space. It's just neat.
Anyway, I've mostly been playing Quake on my PS4, through Nightdive's remaster. As a package it's pretty hard to fault, coming with the base game, all of the expansion packs, a new expansion pack, and a range of curated mods (unfortunately accessed via Bethesda.net, which can be a bit painful but does work). I don't remember how much I paid for it, but I don't think it was a lot, and I did end up grabbing it again on GOG for just under $6 - boomer shooters are generally good value for your money, especially when you start getting into (free, community-made) mods.
In terms of non-commerical source ports I've tried out Ironwail, which seems to work pretty good, and by playing made me realise where some of the complaints about Nightdive's port come from, the movement definitely feeling different between the two versions. I myself have similar complaints about Doom 1 + 2, the recent re-release also developed by Nightdive, which I'll take a source port over any day of the week; for whatever reason Doomguy's movement on the KEX engine feels sluggish on both console and PC, no matter much I tinker with the controls.
Personally, I'm feeling it less with Quake. That might have something to do with playing the remaster first, which I didn't do with Doom, but it feels good enough on my PS4 I'm rarely thinking about it - and at the end of the day if I'm thinking more about playing the game than how the game is playing, then all's right in the world.
Quake 2 seems to be as much as its sequel as [insert sequel-completely-unrelated-to-original-thing here], so I can’t say I’m super excited to go through it right now. Also, having moved on to the second episode of Scourge of Armagon, I'm starting to see why this expansion is so well-regarded.
Yeah, Quake good. Quake very good.
*The band, not the ammo.