forgot to start my timer, beat 1 level that was frustrating, died to a trap on the next, decided that was enough for the day.
you could argue that the game requiring you to take in your surroundings and look for traps is fine in games, but quake seems like its trying to be this fast paced first person shooter, so the fact that they want you to just walk into a room, stop moving, look all around the room, and then guess what is and isn't a trap because there's little actual tell, or at least consistent tell, of what is or isn't a trap.
So many of the traps in this game just seem like you don't see the one specific thing (or don't see anything in the case of it being invisible), and then "got you!! instant death!!!". it is extremely frustrating
Doom did this sometimes too, but it tended to actually not be too bad i think because there was no instant death (outside of voodoo dolls or softlocks), and floors and ceilings having set speeds which tended to be pretty slow. even the fast sectors in doom were a fraction of the speed of some of the ones in quake, and its honestly better.
I once again find myself asking "what does quake want itself to be", because I'm just not sure. Its still an extremely popular game, people love it to death, and I read positive reviews of it and just go "huh?". I guess its just not for me? even at its highest it just doesn't beat doom. Its a transitional game between engines, with a team that wasn't doing as well behind the scenes as they were with doom, and the result is a game which definitely feels dated, janky (but not really in a charming way that doom or source games could be), and overall annoying.
Worth noting that doom wasn't id's first FPS game either, while doom had more engine features than wolfenstein, it was still the kind of game that you could tell they took the experience of wolfenstein and used that to make doom. For Quake... I just don't see it. It makes mistakes that doom intentionally didn't, in level design, gameplay, sound, etc.
It is a fundamentally different game, I get that, but even as its own game, it fails in so many ways that its predecessor didn't, that should've transferred over REGARDLESS of what kind of game they wanted Quake to be.
Quake seems to reflect the company at the time: mean-spirited, depressing, confusing, tiring, etc.
Anyway this came off like a review of the game even tho its a play session note. Hopefully its just this episode of the machine games mission pack that sucks.
