2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Long on Challenge, Short on Originality, October 19, 2000
This review is from: Quake (CD-ROM)
Quake is a fast-paced, first person combat game that combines an
improved Doom-style system and monsters with unimproved Doom-style
weapons and storyline.
Four "dimensions," or game
sections, each divided into five to eight levels, comprise the world
of Quake. These sections, "Dimension of the Doomed,"
"Realm of Black Magic," "Netherworld," and
"The Elder World," are dungeon-like settings infested with a
wide variety of monsters, traps, secret areas, and hazards. Players
must locate keys, typically two per level, in order to progress to the
finish. No "action" button(e.g., the space bar in most
Doom-style games) is required to open doors or push buttons; such
feature are automatically activated when the character is in
proximity. Looking and shooting in all directions, including up and
down, and swimming are some of the improvements upon the Doom-style
system.
A unique interface at the start of a new game allows a
player to select different hallways for "Easy,"
"Medium," "Hard," or "Nightmare"
difficulty levels (although the entrance to the latter is actually
hidden, so people don't wander into it accidentally). Once difficulty
level is selected, the player can enter any of the dimensions. While
it is recommended that the dimensions be played through in order, this
sort of interface essentially allows players to switch difficulty
level in between levels, if desired.
Characters start off with an
axe--decidely less dramatic than the Doom chainsaw--and a shotgun with
25 shells, and rapidly acquire an arsenal of progressively deadlier
weapons, including a double-barrelled shotgun, a "nailgun,"
a "perforator," a grenade launcher, a rocket launcher, and a
"thunderbolt," as well as ammunition, armor, and various
power-ups, such as health, protective suits, rings of invisibility,
pentagrams of protection, and a rune that temporarily quadruples your
damage, turning you into even more of a killing machine. When a new
dimension is entered, your character once again starts off with a
shotgun and 25 shells (and the stupid axe).
Monsters include
rottweilers, grunts and enforcers (basic soldier types), knights and
deathknights (heavily armored, sword-wielding fiends), rotfish (to
make the water hazards even more hazardous), zombies that won't stay
dead, scrags (sort of like flying worms), ogres (armed with chainsaws
and grenades), spawns (big ugly bouncing blobs), fiends (demonic
werewolves), vores (spidery monsters), and shamblers (huge beasts that
sling lightning). According to the manual, grunts are "goons with
probes inserted into their pleasure centers, wired up so that when
they kill someone, they get paroxysms of ecstasy." Gratefully, no
evidence for this is provided in the game.
Unfortunately, for all
that it has going for it, many aspects of Quake also suffer from a
marked unoriginality. "You get the phone call at 4 a.m. and by
5:30 you're in the secret installation," the introduction to the
game begins. Oh no, not 4 a.m.! Horrors! It then goes on to explain
how you are a top notch government agent that must keep some evil
being from opening the gates of hell and overrunning the world. Sound
familiar? It should, seeing as it is the plot for fully half the
Doom-style computer games on the market, including Doom. For a game
that clearly required many months of work to produce, it is a bit sad
that only about 20 minutes went into developing the background.
And
while the weapons are pretty neat, they are not overly
original. Essentially, you get two types of shotgun, two types of
machine gun, two types of grenade launcher, and an energy weapon. Oh,
and that damned axe, which does not even go "swish" or
"chunk." In short, a selection that does not measure up to
the weapons arrays of Doom or Strife. And some of the monsters, such
as the grunts and enforcers, seem repackaged from earlier
games.
Overall, however, Quake is a very worthwhile, challenging
game that is certain to be a hit with most people who like this style
of game. Its hackneyed elements do not really detract from play; a bit
more originality, however, might have made this game even more
enjoyable.
--Michael Varhola for Skirmisher Online Gaming Magazine
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It was the first game to enter my dreams, June 19, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Quake (CD-ROM)
(whenever I finally got around to sleeping, anyway)
It's the creepiest/scariest game of it's time. Amazing level of violence and brutality. A sureal landscape of mind-warping 3D architecture. Most fitting soundtrack for a game ever (Trent Reznor, you rule), it sets the mood beautifully. Super-intense multiplayer. Gripping and involving single-player environments.
For the thousands of hours I have put into this game, I see no loss.
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