Quake 2

 

 

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Quake 2 is much more than a game; it's a gaming phenomenon. This game set the standards and provided the very engine of hordes of first-person shooters (as well as less kill-or-be-killed oriented games) that followed in its wake. It took online gaming to new heights with its plethora of multiplayer options. Gamers the world over designed their own maps and created their own online worlds in which to raise havoc against the Strogg hordes as well as their best buddies. Some seven years after its release (in 1997), Quake 2 is still more than capable of brazenly stealing one's entire day, weekend, week, and beyond. Quake was great fun, mind you, but there you were on defense, trying to defend your planet against these mechanistic aliens who decided that humans would make great raw material for new cyborgs (although some lucky individuals would of course find their ultimate fate in the form of exotic ingredients for certain Strogg gourmet delicacies). In Quake 2, you take the fight to the Stroggs, by gum; you smear their guts across their own walls; you add a little chaos to the uglified place they call a home planet, and you make those soldiers pay for having dared attack Earth; before you're done you bring Makron himself, the biggest and baddest Strogg of them all, to his knees before terminating him with extreme prejudice.

Those Strogg are wily, though. Oh, we all thought it was a good idea to secretly follow the brutes back to Stroggos through their black hole-generated gateway; they'll never see us coming, we said, and we'll be on them like white on rice before they even have time to blink a bio-mechanical eye. We were wrong. The Stroggs took out a majority of our pods before the invasion even got started, but you made it to the planet's surface – albeit way off target. You'll have a little help from HQ in terms of your missions, but it's pretty much up to you alone to somehow infiltrate and destroy the enemy. You'll see stuff here you never saw in Quake – new monsters, much smarter enemies (the Stroggs actually learned how to duck), more puzzles (albeit of the find button and push it variety), and – best of all – more carnage. When you get one of these guys down, you'd better make sure he's dead; a guy with no legs can still shoot a gun.

Some of these infernal puzzles can be frustrating at times, but just about any player can play this entire game in single-player mode and come out victorious (given enough time and saved games); then, once you start thinking you're all big and bad, you can play at a higher difficulty level. You'd better be good before challenging your friends to some multi-player mayhem; when you're ready to go online, though, you'll find countless multi-player options at your disposal. The world's pretty much your oyster when it comes to multi-player options, ensuring that Quake 2 will be played and played some more for a long time to come.

Dating a bit, but still quite good fun, 'Quake 2' is a much better bet nowadays than the original 'Quake'. The main problems with the first game - a drab look, a shift from the carnage of 'Doom' to a series of individual encounters with tough bad guys, and a lack of single-player involvement - have been fixed, and '2' is more of a sequel to 'Doom' than 'Quake'. It has carnage, futuristic weapons, and you can play it with Linux, which is nice. Released at a time when a P200mmx was still quite fast, it rode the first wave of 3D acceleration and with modern PCs you can run it at a stupidly high resolution. Whether it's worth twenty-two pounds is another matter, though. You can probably find it second-hand for much less, and although it hasn't dated all that badly, it's not a patch on 'Half-Life'. That said, despite there being thousands of first-person shooters out there, very few of them recapture the fine blend of ultra-violence and carnage of 'Quake 2'.

This was my first ever game purchase, and I have played it five times. The graphics may seem a bit dated now, but the music is incredibly atmospheric, the tension is high and there are some ferocious battles. I'd recommend it to anyone.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent old-skool gameplay
Great game, the game with the best online multiplayer experience.. at least for that time. You could pass on weapons and ammunition (why can't you do this in current FPS? Read more

Published on 30 Aug 2009 by Stijn Anthoni

3.0 out of 5 stars Quake is still the king of the FPS
Quake 2 is an atmospheric, intelligent, thrilling gaming experience. It offers a wide range of monsters, weapons, powerups etc. Read more

Published on 3 Jun 2001 by horrorflicker@hotmail.com

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy the game, you won't be disappointed
After playing this game at my friends house, on a LAN and on the internet, I can safely say that this is one of, if not the best shoot-em-up. Read more

Published on 26 Feb 2001 by Mr Peter James Veness

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good single-player game. Multiplayer's not bad either.
Overall, a brilliant game, especially single player, however...

ID tried to make the last boss as hard as possible by giving him a BFG10K and a Railgun, but if you're prepared... Read more

Published on 12 Aug 2000

1.0 out of 5 stars Quake Sucks
....This takes first person shooters too where no game has gone before - and lets hope never again. The game play is dire, yet another ID offering where wondering around doing... Read more

Published on 30 July 2000 by spc1976@hotmail.com

4.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous first-person action
I love Quake II, it's utterly great. Plenty of running around alien cities blasting holes in strange people - marvellous! Read more

Published on 18 July 2000

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