Poll: Quake 3 is 20 years old (redux)

[BFG10K]

The legendary game turns 20. The best death match experience ever made. An awesome engine / game combo that holds up extremely well and stands the test of time.

Spoiler

I run it at a constant 140 FPS locked to gsync, 5120x2880 + 4xMSAA on my 1070. The stock renderer from 1999 is doing this in 2019, folks. Back in the day I played the game at 800x600 on a Voodoo 3. You can’t get more future-proof than that.

I’m also a huge fan of the original Quake, and its two expansions were good as well.

I thought the level design of Quake 2 was pretty weak but its two expansion packs were superb, and I still regularly replay both to this day.

I found Quake 4 had weak gunplay and boring levels, and I couldn’t get into Enemy Territory.

I never played the others and don’t plan on it.

 

[DigDog]

of the expansions, i only played Scourge and hated it - couldn't do anything, just kept dying.
i think Q1 is the best of the lot when it comes to single player, Q2 was ok, Q3 was decent fun single-player and a great multiplayer game, Q4 was - as you say - boring. I might give the Q2 expansions a shot.

QL and QC are pretty darn good.

 

[EXCellR8]

I don't think I've played the original game but Q2 was decent. Q3 just made me want to play UT though... which I tended to have more fun with.

As for Quake 4... this game came around right when I really started to get into PC building. I played it a few times and, even though there were some fairly good sequences, the overall experience felt like an extension of Doom 3. Other games from the time, like HL2 and FEAR just walked all over it. I don't think it was bad, just not that good either.

I remember being stoked for Enemy Territory but I don't think I actually ended up playing it at all.

 

[DigDog]

i can recommend Quake Darkplaces
shameless rip from a steam user:

To clear up some confusion:

The "ultimate quake patch" only contains DarkPlaces and the soundtrack music. No new textures.

"Quake HD" and "Quake Epsilon" include DarkPlaces, music, and new textures/sounds/etc. Also the version of DarkPlaces included in those packs is more up-to-date.

I took a look at "Quake HD Remastered" just now, to see what's up with that. It appears that someone copied an older version of "Quake HD" and changed it as follows:
- repacked (into one gigantic pk3 rather than multiple pk3s)
- credits/readmes stripped out
- documentation about how to configure things removed
- high frequencies chopped off of at least some of the music tracks
- some changes to the settings defaults (e.g. enabling a lot of things that are off-by-default in "Quake HD")

That rubs me the wrong way. Unless I'm misunderstanding something, I'd say that if you really want to try using new media in your Quake, you should stick to "Quake HD" and avoid "Quake HD Remastered".
Last edited by Johnny Law; 1 Jun, 2014 @ 7:13pm

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Played plenty of Q2 and even beat Q4 which was the narrative sequel. Both games were perfectly competent shooters. Voted for Q2 just cause it would run in potato software mode in our computer lab so a lot of low key lan gaming happened there.

As was mentioned, there was a big Q3/UT rivalry for the best arena shooter around and I fell pretty firmly in the UT camp.

Q3 always felt like it was taking itself a little too seriously, while UT had a lighter tone to it and was much more accessible from my perspective.

 

[clamum]

I absolutely love Quake 1/2/3. I think I might've played a bit of 4 but I don't remember.

It would be sweet if Carmack and Co. would come out with a new one. I've been meaning to watch him on Joe Rogan's podcast (recent episode).

 

[Zenoth]

Quake and Quake 2 are classics, it'd be tough to go wrong with either of them. I'd probably prefer the original over 2, but 2 is still pretty good. When it comes to multiplayer, I did play some Quake 3 Arena on the Dreamcast (didn't have my PC back then) and enjoyed it. I bought Quake 3 Arena again for the PS2, but it wasn't much better of a version anyway; still preferred it on the Dreamcast. Then I 'moved to' Unreal Tournament, first on PS2, then a few years later got UT '99 for PC (wasn't my custom built PC yet, couldn't run demanding games and UT '99 wasn't running at max settings either). Eventually, in 2004 precisely (not sure when though, maybe just before summer time) I had my first custom-built 'gaming PC' and the same year I believe got UT 2004, and never looked back to Quake for multiplayer since.

So for single player, yeah, I'd go with Quake 1, but I still liked 2 (I'd say they're overall equals, maybe Quake 1 had a better atmosphere from what I can recall). On a side note, I played Quake 1 for the first time I believe on the N64. I can't recall when exactly I got Quake 2 on PC but it was considerably later, maybe around 2005 or '06 (same with Quake 1, got the PC version probably around that time too). I didn't quite have the chance to experience those games on PC when they were freshly-released. I did see them running on demonstration PCs in electronics / gaming stores from time to time though, but that was it (that's how I first saw DOOM as well).

Now, Quake 4, I did play it once and finished it. But it wasn't anything spectacular, or anything bad either. I suppose it was "ok", overall. But it wasn't memorable. In fact, as I type this I'm trying to remember anything specific from it and genuinely can't. For me that's a sign that even though I didn't hate it that it was probably something simply very generic. That, or it's been way too long (it really has been way too long though).

That would be it with Quake. I voted for Quake 2 though, because even though I do remember preferring the atmosphere in the first game, I think I preferred the 'gunplay' in the sequel; from what I can remember it had a bit more action. It's comparable to the evolution between Ultimate DOOM and DOOM 2, one is an unbeatable Hall of Fame classic, the other is 'the same stuff and then some'. When it comes to map design to be honest I don't think I ever payed attention to that back in those days. I would probably now, though. But when I play those classic games today I go back in with the same mindset I had at the time. Just having fun blasting and fraggin' around my best games without too much of a critical mind.

 

[DigDog]

so, i guess you guys are all heavily into the QL/QC scene now, mmright?

 

[quakeworld]

been playing quake since qtest.still play quakeworld (ezquake) to this day against bots on my favorite 1 on 1 maps , dm4 and dm6. still have the original CD i bought in '96. didn't like Q2. found it too slow and hated the footstep sounds and no instant weapon switching. succeeding quakes just got slower in movement speed and had now had timers for quad/mega respawns. don't like QC because of different characters.

 

[JEDIYoda]

never liked Quake3.....played a lot of Quake 2 especially when it was on MSN Gaming Zone!!
Tried Quake3...way to many cheaters in Quake 3....