Quake 2
I may have enjoyed Quake, with it's demonic and brutal stone castles, pits of fire and demons; but Quake 2 hit me right in the pants. Dark Forces aside, I hadn't played any good sci-fi first-person-shooter games at the time. Unless you count Doom, which was sci-fi, but sided more on the supernatural horror aspect of things; especially when you arrive in Hell. Quake 2 however is specifically focused on being a science fiction story, right from the very beginning when you drop in on an alien homeworld as part of a strike force in an entry capsule.
Not that story was ever a big part of the Quake series, but as it goes in this installment, you play as Bitterman, the only surviving marine from a Earth strikeforce. Attempting to counter-attack an alien invasion under the radar by dropping individuals in pods, the plan was thwarted when the cybernetic civilization the Strogg fought back by firing an EMP weapon. Disabling the incoming pods and leaving only one yourself as a fluke survivor. Also leaving you as the one marine who will have to single-handedly take down the Strogg empire. In classic video game fashion.
Quake 2 had the advantage of being the second generation of id Games' fully 3D rendering game engine. Resolution was higher, as was polygon count and the quality of particle effects. It still had that punch of being fully 3D that put it above games like Dark Forces and Doom. Your weapons reacted to the changing lighting and were fully animated. Weapons like rocket launchers fired (albeit blocky) particle trails down hallways, lighting up everything as they pass by. Everything felt so tangible and so much more virtually real than the rasterized elements of older FPS games. I enjoyed it immensely, even if I never made it much past the first level and really just played that one over and over and over again.
Quake 2 is another one of those games that simply ushered in an era of properly imagined 3D worlds. If only released as an experiment, or show of what is possible on a PC at the time, it still had a huge impact on the gaming community. It was rock solid all around, it simply didn't try to do anything the engine wasn't designed for; the engine was built and the game around that.
I may have enjoyed Quake, with it's demonic and brutal stone castles, pits of fire and demons; but Quake 2 hit me right in the pants. Dark Forces aside, I hadn't played any good sci-fi first-person-shooter games at the time. Unless you count Doom, which was sci-fi, but sided more on the supernatural horror aspect of things; especially when you arrive in Hell. Quake 2 however is specifically focused on being a science fiction story, right from the very beginning when you drop in on an alien homeworld as part of a strike force in an entry capsule.Not that story was ever a big part of the Quake series, but as it goes in this installment, you play as Bitterman, the only surviving marine from a Earth strikeforce. Attempting to counter-attack an alien invasion under the radar by dropping individuals in pods, the plan was thwarted when the cybernetic civilization the Strogg fought back by firing an EMP weapon. Disabling the incoming pods and leaving only one yourself as a fluke survivor. Also leaving you as the one marine who will have to single-handedly take down the Strogg empire. In classic video game fashion.
Quake 2 had the advantage of being the second generation of id Games' fully 3D rendering game engine. Resolution was higher, as was polygon count and the quality of particle effects. It still had that punch of being fully 3D that put it above games like Dark Forces and Doom. Your weapons reacted to the changing lighting and were fully animated. Weapons like rocket launchers fired (albeit blocky) particle trails down hallways, lighting up everything as they pass by. Everything felt so tangible and so much more virtually real than the rasterized elements of older FPS games. I enjoyed it immensely, even if I never made it much past the first level and really just played that one over and over and over again.
Quake 2 is another one of those games that simply ushered in an era of properly imagined 3D worlds. If only released as an experiment, or show of what is possible on a PC at the time, it still had a huge impact on the gaming community. It was rock solid all around, it simply didn't try to do anything the engine wasn't designed for; the engine was built and the game around that.
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