I almost forgot this have existed. One of the purest examples that even strong foundations don't make a good game without enough content & creative vision. I never bought the idea. It of course had fun mechanics but the marketing strategy was off. Should have been free DLC to the DL1 or should have been priced a bit more generously at the release. It only got 10% off (18$) and after 1.5 years or so it went free. Is it ever too late for some things? Apparently it was for DL:Bad Blood. It never recovered and well, delisted soon after. RIP.

...did we all play the same game?

'cause generic soundtrack aside, i don't even need to hesitate - this is superior to quake ii in just about every way. sure, there's no rocket jumping, but that hardly matters in a corridor shooter; what's important is gunplay and Q2 wishes it had weapons half as good as these. the shotgun? nailgun? the fucking bfg that shoots black holes? get the hell out of town and don't let me see you here again

...that praise being said, i'll be damned if it doesn't put its shakiest leg first

unlike quake ii, the start here isn't slow because of its shooting - that feels fantastic from the get go - instead it's the aggressively invasive 'story' that's constantly trying to pull you from the action. let me shoot. the fucking. aliens! that's all i wanna do, man!!

"nah nah - i hear you", calls tim willits, newly appointed president of the Carmack Fan Club, "here, you can shoot again - in a turret section! and after that, ohoho, mission briefing!! and then - two more vehicle segments!!!"

with one swift motion i knock that shit out of his fucking hands. then i scream, "I JUST WANT TO SHOOT THE STROGG WITH MY SHOTGUN. THAT'S LITERALLY ALL I WANT TO DO. I DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOUR SET PIECES (besides the mech one - that was pretty cool) OR YOUR SPACE MARINE STORY - I DON'T EVEN CARE THAT I COULD PERSONALLY WALK FASTER THAN MY CHARACTER WITH WEIGHTS STRAPPED TO MY LEGS. THE GUNS FEEL GOOD, TIM. PLEASE JUST LET ME USE THE FUCKING GUNS!!!!"

i think he took that bit about space marines harshly given the events that transpired shortly after, but all of my prayers had been answered nonetheless! no longer was i walking back and forth through areas i'd already visited just to report to some dumbass military man that the elevator got unjammed or steve blum #3 successfully completed filing his tax returns; i was actually playing the game - uninterrupted

when quake 4 gets its shit fully together after the first 1/3 or so, it shifts from stop-and-go into maximum overdrive. there's zero bad weapons, enemy types continue to vary enough (not to mention there's actually a couple decent bosses - a rarity for shooters) and ironically even the mission objectives become significantly more engaging when they're things you're doing and not just details off sgt. pvt. blum's shopping list

environments start looking a lot cooler too. Q2 toyed with body horror in small doses, but ravensoft went all-in here. call me simple, edgy, whatever - i think giant entrails breaching through space corridors and limbless (but still alive and wiggling) bodies being used as power supplies are pretty fucking rad. say what you will about id tech 4 - doom 3 looks fantastic and this is no different. hands down the most underrated shooter engine

misguided start aside, this is the best fps (barring quake 1, obviously) that i've played in a considerably long time. can't wait to receive matthew kane's next orders in quake 5!

wait fuck

went into this completely blind; didn't even know it wasn't a quake sequel. also tried the original version first, which definitely made for rough initial impact

quake ii kicks off in a way that i can lightly describe as "complete dog shit". for some ungodly reason, Club Carmack decided it'd be a nice idea to start players off with the worst pistol and shotgun combo known to mankind (even complete without muzzle flash if the og release is your preference). the fun doesn't stop not starting there, though, because then you pick up the grenades and boy oh boy - my personal favorite aspect about them is how they take 35 years to throw, which makes them only remotely viable either around corners or as a tool to very slowly kill yourself with

it was during the entirety of this first level that i thought to myself, "why does this suck so much fucking dick? who enjoys this? can john carmack really be trusted to call steve jobs an idiot for designing a mouse with one button when he actually thinks quake ii is fun?" then i got the one-two punch: the super shotgun and the chaingun

suddenly - enemies died from being shot. i no longer needed to constantly pop from cover to reliably fight hitscan baddies spongier than those seen in 'chasm: the rift' (which, ironically, is a quake clone). things only went up from here - especially in level 3 where the 90 or so grenades i'd been eagerly not using were finally given purpose via a launcher that didn't have 600 frames of startup. i'd say this is when the game really begins

...and barring the last stage - which definitely gets to a point of feeling sluggish due to its over-eagerness in spamming the most aggravatingly tanky two-legged enemy in the game - it doesn't let up. every later earned weapon (that isn't the rocket launcher) continues to feel pretty fantastic. the BFG in particular took me by surprise with its insane splash and chain damaging. you can fire this thing at one enemy and it'll clear out an entire fucking room. it's awesome and thanks to it using the same ammo as the standard laser rifle, there's no shortage of opportunities to let it loose

i'm not much for movement tech in my fps, but the levels here were designed in ways where i was pretty eager to push myself even on that front. lotsa opportunity to master bunnyhopping and circle jumping. i even skipped some chunks of levels with a few well-placed rocket jumps. fun stuff and it made me just a little more interested in giving quake 3 another shot

sonically and atmospherically, everything's obviously downgraded from q1 due to the lack of trent reznor (note: "HUH" is still intact (phew)) but the sonic mayhem soundtrack isn't totally unwelcome. i'll certainly take a competent albeit standard metal ost over the mick gordon-branded djent slop that this genre is so overly saturated with now

i've yet to play any expansions, but i did try a smidge of the n64 stages and found them to be really charming. kinda surreal to see a take of this game with so much color in it. definitely gonna get back to that, but for now i think i'm just gonna go straight for quake 4

a word of advice: if you love psychological horror, especially silent hill, YOU NEED TO READ CRIME & PUNISHMENT. i understand how a 600 page book released 150 years ago in a format that doesn't exist anymore can seem off-putting or intimidating; i promise you it hasn't aged a day. crime & punishment can suffocate you with tension and anxiety comparable to any horror movie or game using words alone. the characters are oceans of beauty and flaws that will stick with you forever. without dostoevsky, there would be no shining, there would be no subahibi, and there would be no silent hill. read it and thank me later.

The prologue levels tripped me out. I was hopping around, hunting for items and figuring out the way forward like it was a 3D platformer. Then I realized the levels are basically structured exactly as such, and from that moment I don't even see the game as a shooter anymore. Eventually the game started to lean back to the shooter parts and it got less interesting by then, but it was fun being 50 Cent, boppin' 'round the hood.

Anyways, please play 50 Cent Blood in the Sand if you haven't, that game is a certified classic.

No va de pegging?????????

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