Opinions on Quake

[Devianteist]

After fulfilling it's initial goal, I am rerouting this thread so I can just get general, opinionated feedback on Quake as a series. This is mostly because I really like reading your guys' opinions on stuff.

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Just posting here to get some feedback and what-not from people on the Quake series. I've never played or even seen Quake before (aside from the logo and the Quakeguy in Samsara and a few other mods here on ZDoom), so I have no idea what to expect from the series (some heads-up would be nice).

More importantly, I would like to know which one to pick up first, and/or which one has an active community like this one?

I would also like to know what you guys think of Quake. I'm going to dive headfirst into it without any expectations, really, anyway, but it'll be nice to know what the community thinks of it.

[Big C]

Q1: Okay singleplayer but a landmark in both multiplayer and game modding in general.

Q2: Great singleplayer, okay-ish multiplayer, hasn't aged well partly due to a dearth of fully-featured source ports.

Q3: Demanding skill-based multiplayer. Quake Live's alright but I question whether it will have much pull in the long run---I find Unreal Tournament '99 to be both much more fully featured AND sophisticated, even if the graphics haven't aged the best. It's still pretty compatible with modern OSes and was at least as moddable as Quake III Arena was.

Q4: Amusing little side romp, better than Q2 (if not as deliciously heavy metal album-y), better use of the DooM 3 engine than DooM 3 was.

Enemy Territory Quake Wars: Haven't played it.

Overall I would recommend Quake III or Quake Live most---the gameplay is simple, smooth and solid, and well-balanced aside from the BFG10k. I'm a bit more skeptical on the Quake Live weapons added in recent months, though.

[Viscra Maelstrom]

Q1: Okay singleplayer but a landmark in both multiplayer and game modding in general.

Q2: Great singleplayer, okay-ish multiplayer, hasn't aged well partly due to a dearth of fully-featured source ports.

i disagree, honestly. Quake 1 had really fun and engaging single-player and kept me on my toes as i was jumping all around the place, while replaying Quake 2, honestly, it hasn't aged quite as well in that regard. the weapons are flunky, the enemies aren't really that fun to kill, and the physics is slippery and slow. Q1's weapons aren't that fun either, but the enemies are much more fun to dispatch due to the really tight physics. the only saving grace of Q2 nowadays is the soundtrack, honestly: it's a classic. otherwise, it's not a game that's too fun to come back to.

i don't have much of an opiniong of the other two games, as i haven't played them that much. or well, i've played Q3, and it's alright, but the learning-curve feels pretty steep. Q4 i barely remember anything from.

[Medicris]

The new QL weapon's pretty inefficient compared to a good player with other weapons, fyi. It impacts the game in no notable way, since anything it can do, others can do it better. The HMG does far less DPS than anything but a normal MG. What bugs me is that they removed the Team Arena weapons from the maps that had them in the update. Loadouts don't bother me much either since you only get a few shots of the two you spawn with before you need to find something, it's only enough ammo to protect yourself from being spawnkilled on your way to another gun.

Ontopic, Quake 1 without the mission packs basically plays like Doom, but with jumping and real 3D. The singleplayer's alright, but I feel that the weapon variety's less entertaining than Doom's. You only ever use 3 ammo types 95% of the time since the lightning gun and its ammo are obscenely rare, and three of the remaining six weapons almost completely obsolete the other three. In the end you pretty much only have 3 weapons, the expansion packs help with this. It's a moody game and it has its moments; make sure to have the cd tracks working to really get the experience. Worth a playthrough, for source ports to go-to imo is Quakespasm.

Q2's not much different, but is futuristic instead of lovecraftian and goes for blaring heavy rock instead of horror ambiance. Much better guns and fun enemies.

Q3's the ultimate for multiplayer. Simple as that.

Q4's a good singleplayer game with plenty of polish. Plays a lot like Quake 2. My only complaint about it is the vehicle sections, which are thankfully few.

[leileilol]

Q1 does have okay single player, though frankly it's evolutionary (just one less key to hunt per level). When you ask around though they'll not recognize it as a SP game but as some eurosport winfest. Ignore those folk.

Q2's different in taking the keyhunt into a hub-wide scale, in a like but less crypic Hexen kind of way. Still pretty brainless though, even if there's half-ass stealth imlpemented in there. Most of the hype was on the fact it had true color lightmap's!!!! the future of gaming!!! nevermind the crippled physics none of the fans bring up.

Q3's own scene is pretty ded of elites now. You'll find.......DeFraG, excessive or 'pro mode' servers with thier silly playtowin politics enforced to keep bigname egos in check. No one plays a fair VQ3 anymore. Punkbuster is garlic.

Q3TA is a rushed cash-in mod. It had so much potential and it underdelivered.

It's still pretty compatible with modern OSes and was at least as moddable as Quake III Arena was.

q3 1.11 works fine for me?

Also QL isn't moddable.

[Big C]

It's still pretty compatible with modern OSes and was at least as moddable as Quake III Arena was.

q3 1.11 works fine for me?

Also QL isn't moddable.

I wasn't comparing them in terms of compatibility, just saying that UT99 still ran well on modern OSes. And I meant that Q3 was moddable, not QL by association.

[Zanieon]

Q3's own scene is pretty ded of elites now. You'll find.......DeFraG, excessive or 'pro mode' servers with thier silly playtowin politics enforced to keep bigname egos in check. No one plays a fair VQ3 anymore. Punkbuster is garlic.

i disagree, actually i still play Quake 3 on 1.32 and there are many servers that is pure Quake 3 yet, mainly the CTF ones which is the most played for this version.

Enemy Territory Quake Wars: Haven't played it.

I just downloaded it to rip the Cyclops from there because besides this very nice vehicle, it's a Battlefield/Call of Duty with Stroggs, nothing special, really.

On the subject: Dude, play all Quakes really, none of them (with exception of Quake Wars) will fail to you.

[grouchbag]

In my humble opinion,all of them were pretty good.

[Devianteist]

So far I've gotten so pretty great responses, though I have another question.

When it comes to Quake's story, are the games linked together, as in is Quake 2 a sequel to Quake? I ask because I've heard that they seem disconnected and not truly related to one-another other than by name and gameplay.

[ChronoSeth]

When it comes to Quake's story, are the games linked together, as in is Quake 2 a sequel to Quake?

Quake 4 is set in the same world as Quake 2, but Quake 1 is unrelated. Quake 3's "story" is pretty much irrelevant.

[YukiHerz]

Just play all of them, including Quake Wars.

And to be honest i prefer the Stroggs over the slipgatewhatevers.

[Devianteist]

The Strogg do seem more interesting than the other hostile characters. I guess I'll just pick them all up once I have the money. Thanks everyone who replied!

I think I'll leave this open so people can debate and talk about Quake itself.

[Enjay]

It always feels a bit odd to me to discuss Quake games as a series when some of the games clearly have very little, if anything, to do with each other. That being said...

Q1: A remake of Doom in brown; rushed out the door with almost everything that was promised missing. Horrible-looking ultra-low poly models that, to this day, I'm still not sure what they are all meant to look like. Dark, gloomy and pretty cool but I remember being disappointed with it. Final boss was a giant tentacled blob of jelly with a [censored word] way of killing it - shit enough to rival the Icon of sin in shittiness. Two thumbs up for the soundtrack though. Not a bad game, just not what I hoped it would be.

Q2: A big improvement IMO [unpopular opinion?]. Essentially new IP and nothing to do with the first game. It had a good enough story and a believable visual realisation of an alien planet and its inhabitants. Good range of weapons and better AI than had appeared in many games up to that point. It was also the first game that I played after getting an accelerated graphics card and I remember being blown away by that.

Q3: Did very little for me. The games that used its engine were more fun than Q3 because multi-player is pretty irrelevant to me and I thought UT was far more fun anyway. The bloody Gothic imagery of the game came across as clichéd, predictable and a parody of id's style.

Q4: IMO it was better than other big games of its time. I had far more fun with Q4 than I did with Doom3 or HL2. The redesigning of the look and enemies was generally done in an acceptable "we've updated the style and taken advantage of new technology" kind of way (though the big gorilla-Strogg look too comical to me) and it had a pretty reasonable story. I thought, however, that the results of the player being Stroggified were thrown away. The advantages of your augmentation were minimal, there was no customisation or further advancement and although there were some nice touches to it, so much more could have been done; a wasted opportunity IMO. After the Stroggification, the plot became pretty dull, predictable and tedious too. Not a bad game and better than most at the time but earlier games (Quake games and many others) were better and less rail-like.

[Infirnex]

Yeah, each Quake game is it's own experience, besides Quake 4, which is a direct sequel to Quake 2. Quake 1 is still my favorite of the bunch, mainly due to atmosphere. It's dark, strange, and a bit brooding. Also the Thunderbolt is amazing.
Quake 2 is interesting. It goes a more Doom 2 route as far as atmosphere and gameplay is concerned. It's not bad, and it's quite some good fun. But it does get bland at times.
Quake 3 has no real single player. It's all multiplayer here, and it's great. Quake Live I, personally, think is better. I'm more of a UT fan, though.
Quake 4 is the first game to be directly related to another Quake game. It is makes far better use of the Doom 3 engine than Doom 3 itself. Single player is great and worth going through, but the multiplayer is just a reskinned Quake 3.
Enemy Territory Quake Wars I only played a tiny bit. Never found many people online. It's a prequel to Quake 2.

[SamVision]

Q1: Amazing singleplayer experience, I still play it now and again. It feels raw, unadulterated, pure and oh so deliciously dark; almost a horror game. Excellent soundtrack and the like with some of the best use of 3D level structure and room over room I've ever seen. The multiplayer is also what started pretty much everything, though it has not aged as well as the singlepalyer.

Q2: Tolerable singleplayer, Okay level design and good soundtrack but just way too easy all the way through even on the hardest difficulty. The idea of the hubs was an interesting one but the issue is that most if not all of the levels are pretty bland except maybe for the last two hubs. Multiplayer fared much better thanks to good level design and fluid movement.

Q3: Multiplayer only fragfest, pretty good on its own but I'd rather player Unreal Tournament.

Q4: Actually not that bad, decent singleplayer, okay level design if a bit too linear, a lot of fun on its own. The music was also good and good boss fights too. Multiplayer was just Q3 again.

Quake Wars: The most underrated game in the series, played this when it was still being played. Like Battlefield but 10x faster paced.