It's not only fair but accurate to say that I know of the Quake brand far more than any individual piece of media that belongs to it. My knowledge of Quake II before playing it was tremendously limited and consisted mostly of the knowledge that it came after Quake.
But it's not a sequel, so beyond a first-person shooter, I don't really know what to expect. Slick gunplay in an otherworldly setting, with mouselook, I suppose. That's as good a starting guess as any.
Time to see what I've been missing for twenty years.
Fun Times
Quake II kicks off with some plot, and it's not set in some grim warped gothic something or other, but in a science-fiction future where humans are making a pre-emptive strike against the Strogg, a bunch of alien invaders that need to be dealt with.
Striking first sounded like a good plan to catch them off guard, but shit very quickly hits the fan as our invasion force is largely wiped out, with our character, Bitterman, only surviving because some other soldier bumped our landing pod off course.
That plot is explained through radio chatter, mostly, but we're soon into the game, and it all works without diving into the menus - WASD and Mouselook are here to stay.
One of the first things you notice is the lighting, often coming from the particle-covered projectiles you and your foes fire at each other. It's a dark game, but firefights lighten everything up. You can watch shots travelling down the corridors, work out where an enemy is from where they're firing from, and even get surprised by enemies hiding in the shadows, revealing themselves by firing at you first.
Teeny tiny bullets aren't the only things to brighten up your days, though - explosions are nice to look at too.
Lights aren't the only sparkly thing to see, as the previously mentioned particle effects are everywhere, especially if you're firing your weapon. Bullets and blood both splatter light of one colour or another across your view, giving Quake II a fair bit of character and style - the sheer amount of blood to spew out from a shotgun blast, for example, is already enough visual feedback to say that your job is done; being allowed to turn your foe into meaty chunks with the next shot is overkill.
I've always associated the strawberry jam-smeared screen with the Call of Duty series, but no, Quake II has us covered. The HUD displaying your health is small, but the screen filling up with blood to say you're in trouble and better do something about it? That's big.
Also big are the levels that Quake II sees you navigate. They're known as 'Units', or chunks of the landscape, in what has been described as a hub-like layout. You will weave in and out of familiar locations as you wrap around looking for keys to unlock doors or buttons to press and so on.
These hubs allow you to explore whichever route you want to, and you'll discover which routes are the routes you need soon enough - if progress stops, try another one. You might find yourself looping around to where you wanted to go eventually.
Environments come in many forms, but we're invading the invaders base, so there's a lot of blocky industrial buildings to run through, punctuated with a nice outdoor area here and there.
A variety of weapons spices your game up, with pistols, machine guns, shotguns and more. Eventually, I got my hands on a chain gun, which was used as intended - wildly.
Enemies come in many forms too, some absolutely tanking the amount of firepower you put into their faces, and some even getting their own back after you've wiped their face from their head, and taken their head off their body.
Various death animations take over these opponents once your shots have done their job, so you'll see foes drop to their butt and fire off a few last desperate rounds just as often as you'll see them explode into a shower of meat.
Quake II is all about the details then, you might say. Seeing a few set pieces, it's hard to argue with that. Pressing buttons usually open doors or raise lifts, but this one swung a piece of machinery into a door, unlocking it (handy), and crippling some of the enemies that were behind it.
Frustrations
It's a shame I wasn't looking at it when it happened, and it looks a bit too dark to make anything out. Sometimes it's a bit dark in general. I got a little lost in places too, but not terribly so. Didn't know what the power-ups I found did, either. There are power-ups, by the way. A little arcadey, perhaps, but they're not everywhere because that wouldn't do the story any favours. The story is meh, though, so the story itself doesn't do itself any favours.
Final Word
Damn, it's hard to find serious fault with Quake II. I can see why I knew nothing about it - it feels a bit generic, compared to the twenty years of gaming that came after it - but there's easily a great time to be had here, and that's coming from someone who hasn't touched the multiplayer.
 |
| Safe. |
 |
| Safe? |
 |
| Not Safe. |
In the end, my first run came to an end as a result of an instadeath spot, but that was almost a welcome relief - I'd been playing long enough that I needed to take a break and remind myself what human interaction was.
As I said at the start, I'd always known of Quake, but never of what went into Quake. I wouldn't have been able to identify any game from the series from a lineup unless by a process of elimination. That might have been because these two games so far have been quite different from each other, to the point where Quake II is a sequel in name only because the developers used that brand recognition as a last resort when all the other possible titles for this game didn't pan out for whatever reason. Maybe that's why I think of the series as 'lesser' to more unified series' of this genre like Doom or Unreal Tournament.
Or maybe that's what I thought because I'm glad to be able to say that's no longer the case. I intend to spend a lot longer with the Quake series, as though I've got some much needed catching up to do because they are that grand a milestone in video gaming history.
Sure, it's got a sci-fi plot that you don't need to care about, and does things differently to the first Quake, but it plays like that first Quake, and that's more than enough of a reason to try it out. If you haven't already, pick your version of choice (PC, preferably) and dive right in, mice at the ready.
Fun Facts
Alternative titles included 'Strogg', 'Lock and Load' and 'Load'. Now you know why they went with 'Quake II'.
Quake II, developed by id Software, first released in 1997.
Version played: PC, 1997/2007