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Quake offers a leap in gaming technology. Everything is real 3D - unlike in Marathon where 2D sprite-based characters exist in a "21/2 D" world. The environment has real height attributes, so you can have true bridges, rooms over rooms, and real-time shadows. Characters are polygonal models with texture-mapped "skins." Weapons follow real physical dynamics, so grenades hop, skip, and bounce around corners; rockets, if poorly aimed, come back down after they've gone up.
No doubt, this is the best first-person game engine out there. And it makes a difference in gameplay. At first, Marathon players may see the dull color palettes, the less-than-logical design, and the lack of plot, and shrug. But once they take a full 90-degree look up or down, or run through a twisting maze with real, flickering shadows, doubts will vanish.
Quake is immersive, if not as amusing or interactive as Duke Nukem 3D. The game runs at a smooth 30-plus frames per second (fps) on a 200MHz 604e Power Mac (at an acceptable 320-x-240-pixel resolution with pixel doubling), and 20-plus fps on a Mac with a 200MHz 603e PowerPC. Pushing the resolution to a nondoubled 640 x 480 pixels yields sharper images but slows things considerably. You can, however, turn down details, skip every other line, disable flickering flames, and lower resolution.
As for gameplay, Quake doesn't add much to the first-person, shoot-the-monsters, find-the-keys formula. It simply does it better than anyone else. Solo play, admittedly, lacks long-term appeal and replayability. However, for local network or even Net games (something Marathon could never do), Quake is king. Just ask the players here - oh no, you can't, because we're all busy fragging each other.
Next to network play, the best thing about Quake is its extensibility. You can use custom maps and with QuakeC, Quake's object-oriented programming language, you can create new weapons, creatures, physics models, and even behaviors. For example, not only can you make a Hell Knight faster or slower, you can make it fight on your side, ignore all but certain monsters, or just jump up and down. Scour the Web, and you'll find everything from grappling hook "mods" to Cujo, a giant dog that accompanies you on your adventure. Test carefully and have patience, though - many mods and Total Conversions (TCs) may not work with the Mac version.
Also note that in conjunction with a special patched version of Quake, the Power3D PCIcard from TechWorks (800-883-6495; http://www.techworks.com) lets you run Quake at a full-screen 640 x 480 pixels at more than 30 fps. It gives you smoother textures, fog and translucency effects, enhanced lighting effects (grenades don't just flash but light a dark corridor), and more. Be warned: Since this card accelerates full-screen 3D only, you can only use it with programs that take over the whole screen - in other words, games. Also, you'll need at least an extra 16MB of RAM when using the card.
Yes, Quake is still a first-person, dungeon-crawling, plot-free shoot-'em-up. But it offers up a whole new level of 3D realism that no other shooter-up does and the innumerable and clever mods and TCs for Quake are fascinating. Besides, sometimes it's just fun to run around, blowing the giblets out of your friends. - D. D. Turner
Good News: True 3D environment. Blazing network play. Extensible in interesting ways. Takes advantage of hardware acceleration.
Bad News: No plot means it's only a run-and-gun in solo play.
Rating:4/4
©1999 MacAddict
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Improved Doom system, unimproved Doom storyline,
By Skirmisher Online Gaming Magazine (Fairfax, Virginia) - See all my reviews
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
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Game!,
By an FPS gamer (Alabama) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Quake (CD-ROM)
Excellent Game! You get to use 8 different and unusual weapons, and kill monsters that can use those weapons against you, such as the ogre and his grenade launcher! I recommend this great game to anybody who likes FPS games, and everybody who doesn't!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
id does it again,
By Geoff Holtby (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Quake (CD-ROM)
Quake is dark, incredibly atmospheric and just palin cool. The graphics engine was revolutionary for its time, which is id Software's tradition. As usual, John Carmack and his minions blend astounding new technology with their trademark nightmarish art to create an incredible gaming experience. While the later single-player episodes are somewhat inferior to the first, the real fun is to be had 'fragging' your friends in multi-player mode.Another high point is the excellent ambient musical score by Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails)
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