Quake is a first-person shooter video game, developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive in 1996 and featured music composed by Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails. It is the first game in the popular Quake series. In the game, players must find their way through various maze-like, medieval environments while battling a variety of monsters using a wide array of weapons.
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Quake's N64 port remains a technical marvel that's held back by some frustrating compromises. The core gameplay – frantic shooting, gothic levels, and that awesome soundtrack – is all there. But the choppy framerate, murky visuals, and lack of multiplayer are serious bummers. Still, if you're an old-school FPS fan and have always wondered what Quake on consoles was like, it's worth checking out for the novelty alone.
It’s honestly kind of insane how good this game is. Quake is one of the literal first ever fully 3D first-person shooters, and in spite of its age, it’s still significantly more fun than 90% of the genre today. This is due to an excellent core design philosophy, strong level and enemy design, a solid offensive toolkit, and a surprisingly thorough grasp of atmosphere.
Quake is different to most modern shooters in that, rather than emphasizing cover mechanics and hitscan aiming, it instead emphasizes complex movement, positioning, pattern reading, and projectile mechanics. This means that you’re constantly moving and applying skills beyond “aim and shoot”, and the way the game layers its mechanics together and explores them through its level and enemy design is nothing short of brilliant.
Outside the first level of each of its four “episodes”, Quake very rarely employs hitscan enemies, meaning nearly every enemy’s attacks can be reliably dodged with the right movement. However, this doesn’t mean that avoiding damage is easy - flying enemies like Scrags can shoot pretty fast-moving projectiles, Fiends are tanky and will aggressively leap at you repeatedly, Death Knights chase you down relentlessly and are a constant threat, and Ogres force you to move sideways relative to them and to keep track of their grenades as they bounce around.
Those Ogres are one of my favorite enemies in the whole genre - the way their grenades bounce is chaotic but deterministic, and as a result, predicting their trajectory becomes a worthwhile skill. It’s especially worthwhile in encounters with multiple Ogres, which can quickly become a serious threat as they flood the arena with bouncing grenades.
Of course, not every enemy can be a winner. The Shambler is pretty boring to fight - whenever you’re not in melee range of it, it can start up a fully hitscan lightning bolt attack, meaning you either need to repeatedly bait its melee attacks or repeatedly duck behind cover and take potshots intermittently. It’s a pretty straightforward and repetitive strategy, but these guys have so much health (especially on the higher difficulties) that fighting them can really start to drag. Fortunately, they don’t show up more than once or twice per level until episode 4.
Sadly, the game takes a bit of a nosedive in quality a couple levels into episode 4. In addition to more Shamblers, it more or less stops using Ogres, the best enemy in the game, and it introduces two new enemy types called the Spawn and the Vore. Spawns are okay in small numbers, but they’ll incessantly jump at you and explode when killed, and in large numbers, which you’ll often encounter in the later levels of episode 4, you’re pretty much guaranteed to take a huge chunk of damage if you don’t kill them on sight. This means if you don’t memorize their placement, you’re going to die a lot, and if you do, they stop being a threat. I don’t find them very interesting to fight.
The Vore is a weirder case. These things can be fine in the right arena; they fire a homing projectile that can curve somewhat around walls to continue pursuing you. This more or less forces a specific movement pattern in order to dodge it in arenas that don’t have terrain that’s safe to hide behind. Unfortunately, most of the time they’re encountered down a long hallway or in an open room, which means that avoiding their projectiles becomes a matter of running in a circle or repeatedly running back down the hallway to block it using a larger wall.
Despite these issues, episode 4 still has a lot of really interesting level layouts. Quake and its contemporaries are different to most modern shooters in that their levels are often labyrinthine, highly vertical mazes with keys, doors, and secrets to discover. In addition to being interesting to explore and navigate, the excellent level design on display enhances the combat, because it enables you to utilize your quick movement to reposition quickly and take advantage of terrain structures which are often fairly complex. Good tactics and level knowledge can allow you to block line of sight with dangerous enemies, lure more aggressive enemies into another room, force multiple enemies into a chokepoint before destroying them all with an explosive, and much, much more. This excellent level design goes hand in hand with the great weapon roster.
Quake’s weapons include a shotgun, a nailgun, enhanced versions of those two which deal additional damage at the cost of more ammo, a rocket launcher, a grenade launcher, a lightning gun, and a shitty axe that’s almost useless and which can safely be disregarded. The shotguns and lightning gun are the only hitscan weapons in the game, and the shotguns deal fairly little damage while the lightning gun has heavily limited ammo and range. The nailgun, rocket launcher, and grenade launcher all require not only aim but assessment of projectile travel time. The rocket and grenade launcher deal heavy damage in an area but can damage you as well if you’re too close to the explosion, and have the longest travel time; this means that they’re difficult to use, but highly rewarding in the hands of a skilled player. The limited ammo and the fact that most episodes don’t give you the stronger weapons immediately help keep all of the weapons relevant, and I found myself switching between them regularly even towards the end of the game.
The level design often feels built around making it as difficult as possible to safely use explosives, which makes it all the more satisfying to use them effectively. I played on Hard, and my playstyle in the later parts of each episode often consisted of finding the safest way to use the rocket launcher, which was made far more challenging by the often claustrophobic levels and the dangerous and aggressive melee enemies. The explosives also enable advanced techniques like grenade and rocket jumping, which open up a huge number of routing and traversal possibilities for skilled players at the cost of some health.
The atmosphere of the game is also excellent - the soundtrack written by Trent Reznor and performed by Nine Inch Nails, combined with some great sound design, lend a suitably unsettling tone to each level. The Lovecraft-inspired story is fairly thin but mostly effective, and serves as a solid backdrop for the game, which mostly thrives on its gameplay and delightfully creepy aesthetics.
I do have a few stray complaints - for a start, I think the game could really use a proper checkpoint system. The quicksave system as it exists is a bit too freeform and can easily lead to save-scumming, but ignoring it entirely can make some of the longer levels extremely frustrating on a blind playthrough. Some kind of autosave would go a long way towards alleviating this irritation. Moreover, the game features a couple bosses, but they’re really nothing to write home about, and mostly consist of making your way to a specific part of their arena, which is kind of underwhelming in its failure to test your shooting skills. The Nightmare difficulty in the original version is actually considered by many experienced players to be easier than the Hard difficulty due to its enemies’ tendency to stand in one spot and fire constantly, making them more predictable. Fortunately, this is remedied in the enhanced remaster.
Despite my few complaints, Quake is a very solid game overall. The first three episodes more than make up for the disappointment of the fourth, and even if you stop before E4M4 (which is where I found the game to start getting really unenjoyable) the game still provides plenty of excellent levels to sink your teeth into. If you couldn’t tell already, I strongly recommend playing this game, not only to experience a seminal piece of first-person shooter history, but also on its own merits as one of the genre’s best entries to this day
Quake is different to most modern shooters in that, rather than emphasizing cover mechanics and hitscan aiming, it instead emphasizes complex movement, positioning, pattern reading, and projectile mechanics. This means that you’re constantly moving and applying skills beyond “aim and shoot”, and the way the game layers its mechanics together and explores them through its level and enemy design is nothing short of brilliant.
Outside the first level of each of its four “episodes”, Quake very rarely employs hitscan enemies, meaning nearly every enemy’s attacks can be reliably dodged with the right movement. However, this doesn’t mean that avoiding damage is easy - flying enemies like Scrags can shoot pretty fast-moving projectiles, Fiends are tanky and will aggressively leap at you repeatedly, Death Knights chase you down relentlessly and are a constant threat, and Ogres force you to move sideways relative to them and to keep track of their grenades as they bounce around.
Those Ogres are one of my favorite enemies in the whole genre - the way their grenades bounce is chaotic but deterministic, and as a result, predicting their trajectory becomes a worthwhile skill. It’s especially worthwhile in encounters with multiple Ogres, which can quickly become a serious threat as they flood the arena with bouncing grenades.
Of course, not every enemy can be a winner. The Shambler is pretty boring to fight - whenever you’re not in melee range of it, it can start up a fully hitscan lightning bolt attack, meaning you either need to repeatedly bait its melee attacks or repeatedly duck behind cover and take potshots intermittently. It’s a pretty straightforward and repetitive strategy, but these guys have so much health (especially on the higher difficulties) that fighting them can really start to drag. Fortunately, they don’t show up more than once or twice per level until episode 4.
Sadly, the game takes a bit of a nosedive in quality a couple levels into episode 4. In addition to more Shamblers, it more or less stops using Ogres, the best enemy in the game, and it introduces two new enemy types called the Spawn and the Vore. Spawns are okay in small numbers, but they’ll incessantly jump at you and explode when killed, and in large numbers, which you’ll often encounter in the later levels of episode 4, you’re pretty much guaranteed to take a huge chunk of damage if you don’t kill them on sight. This means if you don’t memorize their placement, you’re going to die a lot, and if you do, they stop being a threat. I don’t find them very interesting to fight.
The Vore is a weirder case. These things can be fine in the right arena; they fire a homing projectile that can curve somewhat around walls to continue pursuing you. This more or less forces a specific movement pattern in order to dodge it in arenas that don’t have terrain that’s safe to hide behind. Unfortunately, most of the time they’re encountered down a long hallway or in an open room, which means that avoiding their projectiles becomes a matter of running in a circle or repeatedly running back down the hallway to block it using a larger wall.
Despite these issues, episode 4 still has a lot of really interesting level layouts. Quake and its contemporaries are different to most modern shooters in that their levels are often labyrinthine, highly vertical mazes with keys, doors, and secrets to discover. In addition to being interesting to explore and navigate, the excellent level design on display enhances the combat, because it enables you to utilize your quick movement to reposition quickly and take advantage of terrain structures which are often fairly complex. Good tactics and level knowledge can allow you to block line of sight with dangerous enemies, lure more aggressive enemies into another room, force multiple enemies into a chokepoint before destroying them all with an explosive, and much, much more. This excellent level design goes hand in hand with the great weapon roster.
Quake’s weapons include a shotgun, a nailgun, enhanced versions of those two which deal additional damage at the cost of more ammo, a rocket launcher, a grenade launcher, a lightning gun, and a shitty axe that’s almost useless and which can safely be disregarded. The shotguns and lightning gun are the only hitscan weapons in the game, and the shotguns deal fairly little damage while the lightning gun has heavily limited ammo and range. The nailgun, rocket launcher, and grenade launcher all require not only aim but assessment of projectile travel time. The rocket and grenade launcher deal heavy damage in an area but can damage you as well if you’re too close to the explosion, and have the longest travel time; this means that they’re difficult to use, but highly rewarding in the hands of a skilled player. The limited ammo and the fact that most episodes don’t give you the stronger weapons immediately help keep all of the weapons relevant, and I found myself switching between them regularly even towards the end of the game.
The level design often feels built around making it as difficult as possible to safely use explosives, which makes it all the more satisfying to use them effectively. I played on Hard, and my playstyle in the later parts of each episode often consisted of finding the safest way to use the rocket launcher, which was made far more challenging by the often claustrophobic levels and the dangerous and aggressive melee enemies. The explosives also enable advanced techniques like grenade and rocket jumping, which open up a huge number of routing and traversal possibilities for skilled players at the cost of some health.
The atmosphere of the game is also excellent - the soundtrack written by Trent Reznor and performed by Nine Inch Nails, combined with some great sound design, lend a suitably unsettling tone to each level. The Lovecraft-inspired story is fairly thin but mostly effective, and serves as a solid backdrop for the game, which mostly thrives on its gameplay and delightfully creepy aesthetics.
I do have a few stray complaints - for a start, I think the game could really use a proper checkpoint system. The quicksave system as it exists is a bit too freeform and can easily lead to save-scumming, but ignoring it entirely can make some of the longer levels extremely frustrating on a blind playthrough. Some kind of autosave would go a long way towards alleviating this irritation. Moreover, the game features a couple bosses, but they’re really nothing to write home about, and mostly consist of making your way to a specific part of their arena, which is kind of underwhelming in its failure to test your shooting skills. The Nightmare difficulty in the original version is actually considered by many experienced players to be easier than the Hard difficulty due to its enemies’ tendency to stand in one spot and fire constantly, making them more predictable. Fortunately, this is remedied in the enhanced remaster.
Despite my few complaints, Quake is a very solid game overall. The first three episodes more than make up for the disappointment of the fourth, and even if you stop before E4M4 (which is where I found the game to start getting really unenjoyable) the game still provides plenty of excellent levels to sink your teeth into. If you couldn’t tell already, I strongly recommend playing this game, not only to experience a seminal piece of first-person shooter history, but also on its own merits as one of the genre’s best entries to this day
Pure-breed FPS.
Assim como Quake 2, gameplay é bem fluido e a dança no meio da luta é bem legal, e o design das fases é bem melhor que Quake 2, porque não nem de perto tão confuso. Sendo mais linear acaba sendo um benefício muito grande. Terminei em dois dias, não tive vontade de parar.
Porém o design dos inimigos é extremamente fraco. O inimigo lançador de granadas é o mais comum no jogo, o que é em si ruim, mas há dois inimigos que só pulam em vc de forma extremamente rápida, um deles explodindo quando morre, e todos tendo MUITO hp. Para compensar o caos, o jogo te dá muito medkit, mas isso não torna o combate melhor. Assim como no Quake 2, joguei no modo difícil, e novamente acredito que se eu jogasse no "normal" seria mais divertido.
Além disso, se eu reclamava que no Quake 2 inimigos apareciam atrás de você o tempo todo abrindo portas falsas, nesse eles simplesmente se materializam na sua frente, é bem tosco e fraco. O último chefe também é extremamente ruim.
Porém o design dos inimigos é extremamente fraco. O inimigo lançador de granadas é o mais comum no jogo, o que é em si ruim, mas há dois inimigos que só pulam em vc de forma extremamente rápida, um deles explodindo quando morre, e todos tendo MUITO hp. Para compensar o caos, o jogo te dá muito medkit, mas isso não torna o combate melhor. Assim como no Quake 2, joguei no modo difícil, e novamente acredito que se eu jogasse no "normal" seria mais divertido.
Além disso, se eu reclamava que no Quake 2 inimigos apareciam atrás de você o tempo todo abrindo portas falsas, nesse eles simplesmente se materializam na sua frente, é bem tosco e fraco. O último chefe também é extremamente ruim.
I haven't completed the game yet, but so far it's a masterpiece. Loved the gameplay, atmosphere, soundtrack, weapons, monsters, EVERYTHING.
segundo melhor fps do mundo