After Quake Enhanced, Nightdive studios nailed another cool remaster! Having a new episode AND porting Quake 2 64 is a wonderful bonus, kudos for handing it out for free to Quake 2 owners. I'd gladly pay for this, though, it's a wonderful remaster. I mean, the guns finally even have muzzle flashes!
It's got music, its got visuals, its got a compass. The helpful compass points the way so you won't get lost hopefully. That was in my opinion the biggest problem with this game, which might be why it took me 20 years to finally finish it.
It's fun, challenging, and gets better the further in to it you get.
Finally Quake 2 is remastered for modern PCs. I'm actually playing it on an M1 Mac using Crossover. It runs flawlessly. But the remaster does come with a few annoying problems that I think the dev need to address.
First off most of the elevators are semi-broken in the game. They just don't trigger when you stand on it, and they immediately trigger as soon as you step off, if you don't run back to it fast enough, a fall damage is ensured (for elevators that go down).
Than the player shadow. It's quite annoying cause you don't see your own body in old FPS games, so seeing a dynamic shadow of yourself is quite jarring. I tried turning off dynamic shadow in the menu. It had absolutely zero effect.
Then comes the problem with the berserker enemy. It's always been the scariest enemy for me, now it even has a jump move which is impossible to predict and to dodge. I mean, why?
The last problem comes with its CRT mode. While it's definitely a welcomed feature, there is no way to adjust the CRT'ed resolution. I'm playing it on the Studio display which has 5k resolution, and the pixels of the CRT mode are so big they are laughable. I know the 5k monitor is capable of much higher CRT resolution but there is no way to change it.
I played ‘Quake II’ when it first came out and loved it. It was one of the games that converted me from adventure games to first-person shooters. Although its predecessor, ‘Quake’, is generally held in higher esteem by many people, it never appealed to me since I’m not a fan of gothic horror. On the other hand, the sci-fi theme of ‘Quake II’ was just up my alley.
There was no subtlety in ‘Quake II’, or many FPS of that era for that matter. Stealth? Silent kills? Regenerating health? No such things! Shadows were your enemy, not your friend. It was all about in-your-face action, blowing up your enemies with all the firepower you can unleash. All those shades of brown, gray and red/orange showed this game was gritty and meant business!
Single player campaign story hardly mattered in ‘Quake II’ despite the developers intending to make a more story-driven game. It was simply going from A to B, and completing objectives, with no real drama to keep you engaged. No, ‘Quake II’ was all about the multiplayer matches. This game was the last game that I dedicated my time to playing multiplayer online.
Some of my fondest memories of the late 1990s was playing ‘Quake II’ Deathmatch and CTF at LAN parties. In between, I’d log into a couple of trusted dedicated servers over the phone line to play with strangers. If the phone line was busy, I’d play with (third-party) bots, which were a real innovation back then. I still remember playing the game with no 3D accelerated graphics, which actually gave me an edge in multiplayer. Since my PC couldn’t render any lighting, I could see and kill all my enemies who were hiding in “shadows”. Good times.
‘Quake II: Quad Damage’ is a loaded package, containing all 3 official expansion packs, Eraser Bots, and the CD soundtrack. While it may seem simple by today’s standards, it’s really worth checking out this influential multiplayer FPS. For older players like me, it’s great game package to add to your online/digital game collection.
I purchased Q2 on GOG a long time ago and just heard about the update. After watching a YouTube video about the update I was ready to buy the game again. Lo and behold GOG is letting owners of Q2 have the updated version without paying anything extra.
I played the N64 version of Doom when it was made available for the PC and I really enjoyed that. I was looking forward to playing the N64 version of Q2 and I'm very happy with it. I like the smaller levels in that version. The PS2 port of Q2 was good but the levels were really big. The N64 port has short levels and brutal gameplay.
The only drawback is the bigger download.
Pick this game up if you don't own it already, whether you have played Q2 or you're new to the game.