This is all well and good so far, but my problems with Quake Remastered are holdovers from its original release. It also looks how I remember Quake, with grotesque-looking enemies in large (usually brown) architecture, yet appearing sharper than ever in 4k and with subtle improvements. Slowdown only reared its ugly head when I moved onto the first expansion pack. Quake has these qualities in spades, now bolstered with a higher, more stable framerate. For me, this is what makes them timeless and enjoyable to this day. When I think about classic ID Software games, I think about fast, smooth and responsive first-person shooting. Nostalgia is a powerful thing and memories become distorted with age – I would say a successful remaster should offer an experience that emulates how someone thinks they remember an old game looking and playing, and Quake does a good job of achieving this. Remasters like this one can be tricky to review as they need to be faithful to the original release while having enough improvements to make them more palatable to modern audiences. It includes the original campaign, the two subsequent expansion packs, another that was developed as part of the 20th anniversary, and a brand-new one developed for this release. Players make their way through levels filled with enemies while avoiding traps and finding colored keys for locked doors, all in first-person. Originally developed by ID Software, this remaster is handled by Nightdive Studios. Its relevance is clear, and this omission from my playlist has always felt like a gap in my gaming CV, now rectified. However, Quake’s influence on gaming is not in doubt, particularly due to it pioneering fully 3D graphics and online multiplayer. In fact, I’ve always seen it as Doom’s less charismatic relation and the brown color palette hinted at a lack of a clear identity which the inconsistent sequels seemed to confirm. Unlike Doom, it hadn’t been released on every console in existence, and by the time I played it on PC around 2000, it felt archaic in a post Half-Life world. WTF Being unaware of motion controls and thinking my controller needed replacing. LOW Burying the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack in the audio mix. But if you want to see a seminal first-person shooter that?s aged surprisingly well, be sure to hunt this one out.īethesda provided us with a Quake Nintendo Switch code for review purposes.HIGH Fast, smooth shooting that feels timeless. Obviously, if you?ve played Quake at any point in the last 25 years, there?s probably not a pressing need for you to pick it up on current-gen systems - it?s basically the same game here that you could?ve played at any time in the last few decades. It?s a well-worn formula by now, but it?s not hard to see why it was so much fun at the time - I mean, it?s still so much fun. There?s a reason why FPSes have been imitating Quake (and Doom, and Wolfenstein) for the last few decades, and it?s because it makes it so fun and so easy to run into a room, guns blazing, and blast away armies of monsters. There?s something about the way the monsters lurch around, often rising from the dead, that creates a sense of tense dread.Īnd, of course, it helps that Quake?s action is still top-notch. In fact, while I wouldn?t say Quake looks realistic, it definitely feels gloomier and creepier than any of those games I mentioned above. Couple that with the fact it was scored by Trent Reznor, and it?s hard to think of how the game could be any more of its time.īut even if it looks dated, it still pulls off a creepy vibe better than any number of games that have come since then. The graphics are practically unchanged, and if you have a picture in your head of any of those ?90s FPSes, with their weirdly flat-looking monsters and blocky, blurry backgrounds, you?re basically picturing this game. To be sure, it looks and sounds very much like it came out in the mid-?90s. But you?d be wrong: even if it shows its age, this is still an exceptionally good shooter. Given my antipathy for gaming nostalgia, you might think that I?m not a fan of this Quake re-release 25 years later. I was vaguely aware of it back when it first came out, but it fell into the same big bucket of games that also included games like Doom, Wolfenstein, and Duke Nukem 3D - which is to say, first-person shooters that didn?t interest me all that much at the time. Unlike a lot of people of my generation, I don?t have any fond nostalgic feelings towards Quake. Also on: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X
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