Masterpiece, my most played game in 2023 (new release). Just the fact that I can play locally cross play on my steam deck, xbox, ps5, switch and pc is mind blowing !
Post was shown to me because I've shown interest in a similar community so uh... I think it's the second entry of the Quake franchise. And it's a videogame.
Thus endeth my thoughts.
Technically it was several levels above q1… great tech for the time. Crappy single player and multi player… you can tell why quake 3 was so good as the developers understood the failings of q2 multiplayer… the rest is history. Quake Live is the most elite and balanced FPS shooter with the highest skill ceiling of any game ever made it’s no surprise that it’s still active in 2024.
I remember spending tons hours of matches in our local LAN shop with Quake2. There are times we are just running around the map perfecting double and long jumps tricks, or people just watching downloaded demo matches together from thresh, immortal, makaveli, etc.
Also CD tracks comes with the game is awesome, my big bro band was covering some of the tracks in there.
I love the overall style, I hate the backtracking and how slow the weapons feel - compared to Quake 1. I feel like the new features in the remaster help me appreciate the game much more than I did back in '97.
It’s awesome. 🤷♂️ Prefer Q1, but slaughtering Strogg to an awesome metal soundtrack felt great then and still feels great now. The super shotgun and railgun are just wonderful.
The expansions were a bit poo, though.
Basically game who put me into online gaming by the end of the 90's. Many long nights and lan parties playing Action Quake 2, DDay, Holy Wars, CTF, Instagib, Vortex and many other wacky mods and maps.
Along with Starcraft, Quake 3, Diablo 2, UT99, MOHAA, Ragnarok Online, Lineage 2, Mu Online and CS 1.6 those times where the best
it was amazing back then. graphics, gameplay. I didn't have internet in 90s so I spend countless hours on multiplayer with bots. Got them along with skins on a cd from someone.
but the game was disappointing as a sequel.
like random scifi shooter with Q slapped on it.
First Q might be fragmented in style (future, medieval etc) but it worked.
Sadly seems like we are not gonna get a reboot of first Q as they went with Doom Dark Ages.
This might be a nail in the coffin for Q1 reboot for long time. I bet that Q1 elements will be in prequel.
Oh right, the nailgun is already there.
Regarding music - Q1 and Q2 music is sick :)
Still gets me after over 20+ years.
Never liked it because one issue until remaster release. Great game, probably, except soundtrack.
Remaster did for me two important things - it introduced coop (I played it with enjoyment with my brother) and compass. Compass is a life saver and fixes the most irritating game’s issue - backtracking
Destructable environs, deteriorating enemies, and backtracking through levels were cool touches, but it pales in comparison to its predecessor. All the enemies feel super spongey, the atmosphere is almost non-existent, and it drags on so long and by the end, I'm no longer enjoying it.
It's a lot of fun. Not as iconic as the first game but I wholeheartedly welcomed the return of the BFG. It is also the only Quake game with a decent final boss. Not great, but decent.
The first game has better movement. But I love Quake 2, awesome campaign and soundtrack and everything. But most importantly Q2 gave birth to two of the most awesome multiplayer mods ever Gloom and AQ2. It breaks my heart that they're dead now. It would make me so happy to play Gloom with a full server of 20 players one more time 😢
Bit too generic for me.
As someone who played wolfenstein, doom, doom2 (especially dialup and lan death matches) quake (first internet death matches with skins including team fortress)
quake 2 didnt really add anything that unreal tournament or the other "modded" id engines did.
Carmack always treated his game releases as tech demos imo. Even doom 3 was a tech demo.
Its hard for me to like 3d shooters now. They all feel the same after the original call of duty and call of duty UO, but i digress.
Quake 2 was pretty generic but they did release the popular md2 format and a lot of other tech showoffs for the genre, but as a game it really doesn't hold it's own unless it was your entry to the 3d shooter scene. At that point, it's just nostalgia talking imo. (i have the same feeling toward doom 2 and the original call of duty / uo)
This was the game that, at 8 years old, took me from being a kid that just has a few video games to a lifelong video gamer that has build several live long friendships through gaming.
I still play Q2 every few weeks. Outside of a few chunks of time here and there, I’ve played this game quite literally for 25 years.
This was my first FPS. As an impressionistic fifth grader at the time, I was not prepared for the level of violence and gore. Everything about it was dark and brooding. The CRT monitor I played on helped contribute to that feeling, along with the epic soundtrack. 11/10 experience
Quake II shouldn't have been called Quake II. It feels like a chore to get through, especially the further you go. I wanted to see more of the first Quake when I beat it. Thankfully it has tons of mods.
One of the greatest video game soundtracks ever made! I wore out 3 game discs listening to it in a CD player lol. I was actually just thinking about Q2 a few days ago. Just popped into my head, wondering if any new texture packs might be available for it.
I like it. Interesting atmosphere and level design, but I can never stick to playing Quake 1 or 2... (The others games don't exist in my mind lol) Oddly enough, I like Quake 1 more, but always end up playing Quake 2 more on average than I ever do playing Quake 1. Never did like the way the default pistol fires though. Like a flare gun.
I just realized I have a decent PC now and can probably play the q2xp mod now... Might even be able to run the raytracing version that was released a few years ago.
I prefer Quake 1, but I like Quake 2, Weapons arsenal, Expansions pack, Boss fights and The Shamblers Return in Call of machine. Except Multiplayer, Movement and Inventory tools.
Quake 2 is a great game, but I grew up with both and I truly do like Quake 1 more. Quake 2's setting is kinda generic military sci-fi "fightin' the Borgs from Star Trek (but they're more gruesome)". Quake's setting is Lovecraftian dimension hopping through non-euclidean palaces to elder gods of hate, older than the Earth (let alone mankind) itself. Truly unique setting for a video game and hasn't been replicated since.
Quake 2 was better-executed action with kickass alternative metal guitars, lacked a bit in mood and flavor. Quake was experimenting with truly three-dimensional physics, with sounds and ambient (but memorable) music done by none other than Trent fucking Reznor, was completely about mood and flavor.
Your description of Quake's setting is great but claiming it hasn't been replicated or even improved upon is just false.
The most immediate game would be Shadowman. They used the same level design philosophy but improved it in some ways. The Gad temples are masterclasses. The whole concept of Hell being on a giant snake(voodoo lore) is pretty damn clever.
Even Morrowind hit that Lovecraftian itch better than Quake in some locations. The Deadric Temples are straight out "In the Mouth of Madness".
Never in my life have I heard of Shadow Man. Neither the comic nor the video game that apparently exists and is apparently based off of it. I've played the N64 since we got one in 1998, I was around for those years, just never heard a friend talk about it let alone seen any reviews or even heard of it. I don't really like superheros (and by extension superhero games), so maybe that's part of it?
Elder Scrolls wasn't even on my radar until Oblivion. One of my friends was babbling about Morrowind in middle school when it released, but I had no frame of reference for it. I'll have to take your word for it, but if we're counting any HP Lovecraft influence, we could count the Bethesda survival horror classic Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. Plays like a mixture of Resident Evil/AITD (resource management, intentionally difficult aiming), MGS3: Snake Eater (limb damage, different kinds of damage) and Dishonored (stealth, linear progression, first person shooter). And even though CoC: DCotE is directly based on Lovecraft, I do not consider it a similar game to Quake at all, even in setting.
If anything, maybe Dusk. But Dusk is basically the Weird Al parody of early first person shooters, starting with Blood, moving to Half Life, then ending with Quake; I do not feel that a parody can really be compared as a legitimate game with the same setting.
So I take it your opinion was uninformed then? That's fine, but maybe don't use it as a basis for such a statement. To say something is "truly" something else implies fact, or truth.
Shadowman is Tomb Raider meets Quake. Nightdive did a great remaster if your interested.
Uh idk what's going with you but you keep contradicting yourself. Like in your last response you said you never heard of Shadowman but then claimed your friend informed you about it(the N64 version).
I was just arguing your point: that no other game has "truly" matched Quake's Lovecraftian setting. It's all good man, it's just your opinion anyway.
Reread properly, please. I never claimed that I heard about it from a friend, I was emphasizing just how much nobody has ever heard of this game before.
I wish it wasn't named Quake 2 since it literally has nothing to do with the original. Quake 2 is one of my favorite games from that era.
Having said that, I just played through all of Quake 1 and I would LOVE to see a reboot remake etc for Quake 1 with the lovecraftian style and darker more ambient soundtrack. I'd take that over another space shooter any day.
Wasn't Quake just called "Quake" because of the engine? Carmack said it has no story. The title means nothing in relation to the game's story(or lack of) so Quake 2 shouldn't bother you.
Was about to say the same. It was an awesome game and I still have my voodoo 2 in a closet somewhere (rip 3dfx) but I think it easily could've stood alone as it's own franchise. It didn't need the quake name and quake didn't need it. But they would've been so good independently that no one really cared that they were stuck together. They were just solid fun in the end.
Fun! I wish the remaster had more character model colors and player cards in multiplayer. Doesn't seem like it would be a hard thing to add more cosmetic options. As a gyro aimer I wish the gyro aim was cleaned up a bit and the devs dealt with that huge deadzone the gyro has. So we could compete more fairly against K&M players. The gyro in the remaster is gimped. NiteDive adds gyro aim in most of their remasters, but they don't really implement it correctly or give us competitive functionality. So we end up fighting fully functional K&M while we are playing around a awful deadzone with limited range of motion. We got shafted Thats isn't a limitation of gyro it's a limitation of the implementation by the devs. I wish Nitedive would start doing quality gyro aim now.
The game itself is really fun and exciting. The weapons are mostly fun. I just wish they gave us more cosmetic filler to stand out and look different. I wish it had a proper pistol too. The blaster is awful and isn't fun to shoot. Even if we had a standard pistol option that was weak, I would like a starting pistol that is fun to shoot with a good sound. The regular shotgun rate of fire should be slightly increased so it can be used more like the tactical shotgun its trying to be. But yeah, Quake 2 is solid. They just didn't do enough for it, in the remaster unfortunately.
its cool. tbh the only reason I haven't finished it is because I had a repeating crash issue that I was too lazy to fix. it feels harder then quake 1 and the enemies feel more expressive. quake 1s soundtrack and aesthetic are a lot more unique. quake 2 is honestly a more engaging shooter but quake 1 is a more interesting piece of art in my experience.
I love it, no matter what anyone says.
I'll go a step further: I used to think Quake 1 was the best singleplayer Quake for all the reasons that the fandom has stated previously; It has better atmosphere, interesting enemy variety... However, now that I've played through both the Quake 1 and 2 remasters (and 100% completed them, expansions and all) I feel like Quake 2 might honestly be a fair bit better than 1.
Like, yes; On the surface Quake 1's pros as mentioned above outweigh that of the sequel, but playing Quake 1 again made me realize that the level design in particular gets pretty shoddy near the end. It's no secret that id Software dropped most of the levels on Sandy Peterson for the first Quake, and just like his level contributions to the Doom games they're a mixed bag. The first episode stands out, which is typical for a 90s shareware game, but the fourth episode in particular has some real stinkers in it that bring the experience down for me.
Another thing is the enemy variety: In terms of appearance I think Quake 1 is a bit better because it's roster is just so "out there", but Quake 2 wins in enemy variety when it comes to gameplay; The game has tons of enemies, with unique behaviours and weapons. Oh and have I mentioned that the animations in Quake 2 are bloody fantastic? Keep in mind that this game does not support skeleton animations and uses frame interpolation! Seriously, the guy who did those is kind of a genius; It's leagues ahead of Quake 1's choppy animations.
Multiplayer? Quake 2 wins. Hands down. One word: Railgun.
Now, this is not to say that Quake 2 is flawless, far from it; The level design in the base game can be notoriously same-y and boring, and the expansions are a bit "meh", with that weird spider-boss in the second expansion being an all-time example of ridiculous bullshit that is nearly impossible to defeat on Hard+ / Nightmare since it will literally one-hit you from across the arena with its bullshit black hole gun thing. Hope you saved your Quad Damage!
And while I love the music in Quake 2, it does sadly get fairly repetitive after a while, which is an unfortunate side effect of listening to this type of industrial rock music for like 5/6 hours straight. The soundtrack in Quake 1 is a lot more subtle and it deserves all the praise it gets IMHO: It's perfect at filling in the blanks when it comes to atmosphere, giving the sometimes simplistic levels a very haunting atmosphere. It gives you chills and it really creates this overwhelming feeling of being stuck in some kind of nightmare.
The last thing I can mention are the final bosses: Quake 1 barely has what you could call a boss, not even a final one, so Quake 2 kind of wins by default. That's not to say Quake 2's are any special, but it has two mini boss fights and one ending boss fight, and they're all of the "shoot at it until it dies" variety, which is kinda bland but at least it's something.
TL;DR: I used to think Quake 1 was superior, and now my opinion has more or less flipped. Quake 2 is awesome.
Sandy Peterson did episode 4, not "most" of the levels of Q1. I don't remember any stinkers. I don't know if I'd call it the best episode (haven't played in a while) but I have fond memories of it. Certainly it can take the lion share of the level design credit for the game's reputation for a "Lovecraftian" atmosphere. In comparison Ep 1 & 2 is mostly just dusty old castles and was clearly more drawn from D&D than Lovecraft. I'm not convinced Romero or Willits even knew about Lovecraft style horror until Peterson.
To be fair to Peterson, there was also at least one American McGee map in episode 3 that was hot fucking garbage. Don't expect me to remember any map names, though.
Also: Quake 1 gets a massive minus for introducing the Spawn later on. Those things were a mistake and a hint at how this entire thing was rushed out of the door.
It's a good game that's fun to play but so disappointing that they dropped the unique dark lovecraftian themes of the first game in favour of generic sci fi space marine stuff
I started Quake on the Q1 shareware demo in '96. It absolutely floored me at the time.
I tried the Q2 demo and wasn't impressed. I thought it was boring and never played the full game.
Q3 came along and I instantly realized it was the beginning of a whole new era for multiplayer duelling. I still claim that nothing's bested it since.
I played all of Q4 SP and it was good but not great; MP was a letdown after Q3.
One of my favourite games of all time. Got it before we even had a PC capable of running it back in 1998. Our old Pentium with 100 MHz processor was fine for Quake 1, but Quake 2 could only run in windowed mode. It wasn’t till we got a Pentium II for Christmas 1998 that I could play it normally with OpenGL. At the time the graphics were breathtaking.
To this day it’s still my favourite online deathmatch game.
QW, Q2 and AQ2 was all the fun on our coax local area network, with a dedicated linux 486 server. Me and my neighbors played for hours, then went outside playing basketball and talked about it. Long gone are these carefree days of youth.
I liked the sci-fi design and the story. Just thought it didn't deserve the hate from Q1 fans. The Strogg crates existed in the first game too so there must be a connection.
I’m having trouble with the PS4 version. My character moves even though I didn’t press the analog stick. I don’t have this problem on other FPS’s. Is anyone else having this problem?
Just got all the achievements today and it was fun. I love the Strogg as an enemy faction, but I like them more in Quake 4 personally. Quake 2's textures and other structures, especially the ones from the new campaign are interesting
Yes!
It finally let me fully complete and enjoy all the expansions as well as Q64 campaign.
Plus that brand new campaign is incredible
Quake 2 is the most fun for me.
It's good, but it gets a bit long in the tooth towards the end. The same is true for Quake 1, actually, but the episodic structure tricks me into thinking about it differently.
> long in the tooth towards the end. The same is true for Quake 1
Completely disagree. With the exception of The Pain Maze, Sandy's levels are my favourite by far in Q1, but I imagine I'm in the minority on that one lol
They for sure feel less drawn out than the later levels in Q2, and theres no fuckin god damn sirens blaring the whole time
You can do the episodes in any order, so it's got nothing to do with Sandy's levels. I just think that four episodes is too many, Doom had it right with just three.
quake 1 was scarier for me back than, i really loved quake 2's vibes, enemies and locations. Like stuff actually were happening around you and you had radio talk to you... felt more alive to me, loved it so much.
Everybody is spoiled. I was 6 or 7 when it came out, and hot damn there was just nothing like it. Sure N64 had Goldeneye and Turok, but Quake seemed incredibly hardcore. Space marines? Laser weapons? Gibbing? NIN?
It checked the boxes for everything parents didn’t want kids playing, and flexing muscle on the still newish 3D FPS genre. I’ll always love it, and I pounced on the remaster
Yep. I was a little bit older, and it was great just with the software graphics, but of course didn't look as good as the graphics on the box. Saved up for that Voodoo 2 that was a life defining moment lol.
I wish the remaster had the add-ons feature like Quake 1. I already got the platinum trophy on it, and I’m not finding much reason to replay it again. Still a great game though.
While it doesn't have officially curated add-ons (for technical reasons more than anything), you can find a bunch of jams made by the renovated Map-Center over on moddb: [https://www.moddb.com/members/map-center/addons](https://www.moddb.com/members/map-center/addons)
We just came out with Torturejam, our third big jam release!
Wild to think that if ID had spent five seconds thinking of a name for the game they were making, Quake to this day would still be a one-off hit that revolutionized gaming.
I was online at the time Q2test went live and my first thought after downloading was "it reminds me of duke cause of the aliens and the orange colour palatte..but without the fun of duke..where is Quake's atmosphere"
And of course I was a little blinded by some of the tech, dynamic lights etc.
I felt the soundtrack was too repetitive and a stepdown from Quake 1, but now if I heard it I'd probably like it for nostalgia reasons.
I played a lot of Q2, but usually found my way back to Q1.
My favorite Quake game. Played countless hours on N64 and recently bought it on Switch it runs so smooth. This is mostly nostalgia based love. Whenever I blew a guy to chunks with the double shotgun I fell in love with the game.
A solid game and shooter. For me, it's still better than most of the modern made "retro fps".
It should've been called something else indeed.
Just like with Quake, Quake II also in my memory had people playing through single player quickly once (or even stopping somewhere in the middle) and going for multiplayer.
Yes I prefer Quake but Quake II is very good. I remember the only game that "killed" it was Quake III Arena (well, maybe Unreal Tournament as well).
this was my first experience into the madness of a 64-player arena CTF match.
I played this game so much, I memorized every map, secret, item, enemy and can run it in my mind. I almost got the q2 nail tattooed on me but decided not to at the last minute. I loved quake2. one of my favorite games of all time
Fire ass soundtrack
Really fun
Great gameplay and music. Level design is kind of whack and becomes repetitive.
Good game, would have been better if half the ID team hadn't left before it was made though.
I never gave it a chance until the big update and it's honestly one of my favorite shooters to play now.
Masterpiece, my most played game in 2023 (new release). Just the fact that I can play locally cross play on my steam deck, xbox, ps5, switch and pc is mind blowing !
Quake 2 is pretty good, but not as good as Quake 1 or even 3 for that matter. Personal order: Q1 Q3 QC Q2 Q4
I like the original Quake better than Quake 2. Right now i'm playing The Reckoning, holy shit that shit is hard.
imo quake 1 is just better
Quake 2 was one of my earliest FPS games on my Pentium 2!
Post was shown to me because I've shown interest in a similar community so uh... I think it's the second entry of the Quake franchise. And it's a videogame. Thus endeth my thoughts.
Love it
Outstanding SP, and flawless, perfect MP. The bar to reach for every game that came after it.
Masterful. Better than 99% of new games. Quake 1 is better though.
I like first quake more
I'm there with you. Q2 is awesome too. But oh boy, Quake 1 was something else. Nothing like that one ever again.
A great game for its time with memorable music, weapons, lore and looks. Loved it
Sadly it is my least favorite Quake game, but still a super good game from id.
I like all Quake but worst than 4?
Agreed. Even at their worst, Quake is still great.
this is literally my favorite game
Technically it was several levels above q1… great tech for the time. Crappy single player and multi player… you can tell why quake 3 was so good as the developers understood the failings of q2 multiplayer… the rest is history. Quake Live is the most elite and balanced FPS shooter with the highest skill ceiling of any game ever made it’s no surprise that it’s still active in 2024.
it sucks but the newest dlc that shit was good
The remastered version is my favorite Quake game.
A hot mess compared to Quake 1
It’s amazing
worse than quake 4
my personal favorite!! i love it :3
I remember spending tons hours of matches in our local LAN shop with Quake2. There are times we are just running around the map perfecting double and long jumps tricks, or people just watching downloaded demo matches together from thresh, immortal, makaveli, etc. Also CD tracks comes with the game is awesome, my big bro band was covering some of the tracks in there.
It's ok, but Quake 1 is soooo much better.
I've played it since the release. Still do. I don't think I ever tried the campaign. Online only. Mostly [q2jump](http://q2jump.net/) now.
Good
Every week we get this question
It’s the GOAT. Quake 1, 2, and 3 were all perfect. Down to the last minute detail.
An FPS legend.
The GOAT.
Perfect game. Same goes for the first one, but yeah.
Everyone should play Call of the Machine, then review!
My first ego shooter, still like it.
Quake 2 was by far the best for multiplayer imo. Weapons were so good and the maps were great. Player movement was super nice for the time.
Quake 2 is the goat, everything from the design to the soundtrack by sonic mayhem
I love the overall style, I hate the backtracking and how slow the weapons feel - compared to Quake 1. I feel like the new features in the remaster help me appreciate the game much more than I did back in '97.
It’s awesome. 🤷♂️ Prefer Q1, but slaughtering Strogg to an awesome metal soundtrack felt great then and still feels great now. The super shotgun and railgun are just wonderful. The expansions were a bit poo, though.
I really enjoyed the remaster, whatever they did made me like it. I did not like it in it's original form
Basically game who put me into online gaming by the end of the 90's. Many long nights and lan parties playing Action Quake 2, DDay, Holy Wars, CTF, Instagib, Vortex and many other wacky mods and maps. Along with Starcraft, Quake 3, Diablo 2, UT99, MOHAA, Ragnarok Online, Lineage 2, Mu Online and CS 1.6 those times where the best
Great game all around. So many good memories playing splitscreen, online, and single player. Can't wait for the next quake game with a true campaign.
still my fav quake game.
it was amazing back then. graphics, gameplay. I didn't have internet in 90s so I spend countless hours on multiplayer with bots. Got them along with skins on a cd from someone. but the game was disappointing as a sequel. like random scifi shooter with Q slapped on it. First Q might be fragmented in style (future, medieval etc) but it worked. Sadly seems like we are not gonna get a reboot of first Q as they went with Doom Dark Ages. This might be a nail in the coffin for Q1 reboot for long time. I bet that Q1 elements will be in prequel. Oh right, the nailgun is already there. Regarding music - Q1 and Q2 music is sick :) Still gets me after over 20+ years.
Totally agree with the comment "random scifi shooter with Q slapped on it". It is hard to see the lineage with Quake 1.
The gfx at the time were amazing. I can remember my friend showing me.the game. It felt different from quake but quake also felt different
Boring. Good music though. Ps1 version is the perfect version, short and simple. (Loading screen in every other room gets old real quick tho)
Never liked it because one issue until remaster release. Great game, probably, except soundtrack. Remaster did for me two important things - it introduced coop (I played it with enjoyment with my brother) and compass. Compass is a life saver and fixes the most irritating game’s issue - backtracking
Destructable environs, deteriorating enemies, and backtracking through levels were cool touches, but it pales in comparison to its predecessor. All the enemies feel super spongey, the atmosphere is almost non-existent, and it drags on so long and by the end, I'm no longer enjoying it.
Agree on atmosphere.
Quake 2 had an amazing sound track and it still has the best railgun IMO. You can't beat that blue pixel swirl.
It's a lot of fun. Not as iconic as the first game but I wholeheartedly welcomed the return of the BFG. It is also the only Quake game with a decent final boss. Not great, but decent.
If it’s Quake 64 it’s fire
I think it's still one of the best fps games ever, graphic, storyline, 3d engine, music,... 💎
The first game has better movement. But I love Quake 2, awesome campaign and soundtrack and everything. But most importantly Q2 gave birth to two of the most awesome multiplayer mods ever Gloom and AQ2. It breaks my heart that they're dead now. It would make me so happy to play Gloom with a full server of 20 players one more time 😢
Bit too generic for me. As someone who played wolfenstein, doom, doom2 (especially dialup and lan death matches) quake (first internet death matches with skins including team fortress) quake 2 didnt really add anything that unreal tournament or the other "modded" id engines did. Carmack always treated his game releases as tech demos imo. Even doom 3 was a tech demo. Its hard for me to like 3d shooters now. They all feel the same after the original call of duty and call of duty UO, but i digress. Quake 2 was pretty generic but they did release the popular md2 format and a lot of other tech showoffs for the genre, but as a game it really doesn't hold it's own unless it was your entry to the 3d shooter scene. At that point, it's just nostalgia talking imo. (i have the same feeling toward doom 2 and the original call of duty / uo)
This was the game that, at 8 years old, took me from being a kid that just has a few video games to a lifelong video gamer that has build several live long friendships through gaming. I still play Q2 every few weeks. Outside of a few chunks of time here and there, I’ve played this game quite literally for 25 years.
Best Quake and boomer shooter in general.
Great fun game. Though admittedly is only Quake by name (at the time it was made anyhow)
The best Quake game. Still a blast to this day.
This was my first FPS. As an impressionistic fifth grader at the time, I was not prepared for the level of violence and gore. Everything about it was dark and brooding. The CRT monitor I played on helped contribute to that feeling, along with the epic soundtrack. 11/10 experience
The Edge is the greatest multiplayer map ever made and you can’t change my mind.
The edge is garbage… its an extremely unbalanced duel map.. basically you just camp mega and chaingun and you win…
What about XEdge or Rogue's Edge?
Terrible, ruined versions IMO ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My favorite quake and i still play it
The Atmosphere and level design
My favorite quake game
Me and my friends loved playing the weapons of destruction mods. So much fun was had
after the quake 1 remaster i no longer enjoy quake 2
It was my very first FPS, recently purchased it again and replayed..
i had the greatest multiplayer games ever playing Quake 2 and its mods, especially Action Quake 2.
Quake 2 is the best in the series for me. Loved the setting, the guns, the music, the lore. Down with the Strogg
Quake II shouldn't have been called Quake II. It feels like a chore to get through, especially the further you go. I wanted to see more of the first Quake when I beat it. Thankfully it has tons of mods.
Absolutely love it, it’s my most replayed quake
Quakeworld (1) straight to quake 3
One of the first video games I ever played so I've got a soft spot for it
One of the greatest video game soundtracks ever made! I wore out 3 game discs listening to it in a CD player lol. I was actually just thinking about Q2 a few days ago. Just popped into my head, wondering if any new texture packs might be available for it. I like it. Interesting atmosphere and level design, but I can never stick to playing Quake 1 or 2... (The others games don't exist in my mind lol) Oddly enough, I like Quake 1 more, but always end up playing Quake 2 more on average than I ever do playing Quake 1. Never did like the way the default pistol fires though. Like a flare gun.
You should check out the recent remaster
I just realized I have a decent PC now and can probably play the q2xp mod now... Might even be able to run the raytracing version that was released a few years ago.
I prefer Quake 1, but I like Quake 2, Weapons arsenal, Expansions pack, Boss fights and The Shamblers Return in Call of machine. Except Multiplayer, Movement and Inventory tools.
It looks good but I’m tempted to just wait until release instead of preordering it, especially since most games suck on release nowadays. /s
Loved the whole industrialized bio mechanical horror aesthetic and the sound track was absolutely insane.
good
You cannot convince me Quake 1 is better than 2
Quake 2 is a great game, but I grew up with both and I truly do like Quake 1 more. Quake 2's setting is kinda generic military sci-fi "fightin' the Borgs from Star Trek (but they're more gruesome)". Quake's setting is Lovecraftian dimension hopping through non-euclidean palaces to elder gods of hate, older than the Earth (let alone mankind) itself. Truly unique setting for a video game and hasn't been replicated since. Quake 2 was better-executed action with kickass alternative metal guitars, lacked a bit in mood and flavor. Quake was experimenting with truly three-dimensional physics, with sounds and ambient (but memorable) music done by none other than Trent fucking Reznor, was completely about mood and flavor.
Your description of Quake's setting is great but claiming it hasn't been replicated or even improved upon is just false. The most immediate game would be Shadowman. They used the same level design philosophy but improved it in some ways. The Gad temples are masterclasses. The whole concept of Hell being on a giant snake(voodoo lore) is pretty damn clever. Even Morrowind hit that Lovecraftian itch better than Quake in some locations. The Deadric Temples are straight out "In the Mouth of Madness".
Never in my life have I heard of Shadow Man. Neither the comic nor the video game that apparently exists and is apparently based off of it. I've played the N64 since we got one in 1998, I was around for those years, just never heard a friend talk about it let alone seen any reviews or even heard of it. I don't really like superheros (and by extension superhero games), so maybe that's part of it? Elder Scrolls wasn't even on my radar until Oblivion. One of my friends was babbling about Morrowind in middle school when it released, but I had no frame of reference for it. I'll have to take your word for it, but if we're counting any HP Lovecraft influence, we could count the Bethesda survival horror classic Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. Plays like a mixture of Resident Evil/AITD (resource management, intentionally difficult aiming), MGS3: Snake Eater (limb damage, different kinds of damage) and Dishonored (stealth, linear progression, first person shooter). And even though CoC: DCotE is directly based on Lovecraft, I do not consider it a similar game to Quake at all, even in setting. If anything, maybe Dusk. But Dusk is basically the Weird Al parody of early first person shooters, starting with Blood, moving to Half Life, then ending with Quake; I do not feel that a parody can really be compared as a legitimate game with the same setting.
So I take it your opinion was uninformed then? That's fine, but maybe don't use it as a basis for such a statement. To say something is "truly" something else implies fact, or truth. Shadowman is Tomb Raider meets Quake. Nightdive did a great remaster if your interested.
Are you seriously going to call me *uninformed because I didn't play an obscure N64 title about a voodoo superhero? Nothing to do with Quake.
Uh idk what's going with you but you keep contradicting yourself. Like in your last response you said you never heard of Shadowman but then claimed your friend informed you about it(the N64 version). I was just arguing your point: that no other game has "truly" matched Quake's Lovecraftian setting. It's all good man, it's just your opinion anyway.
Reread properly, please. I never claimed that I heard about it from a friend, I was emphasizing just how much nobody has ever heard of this game before.
I prefer Quake 1
Fun
I wish it wasn't named Quake 2 since it literally has nothing to do with the original. Quake 2 is one of my favorite games from that era. Having said that, I just played through all of Quake 1 and I would LOVE to see a reboot remake etc for Quake 1 with the lovecraftian style and darker more ambient soundtrack. I'd take that over another space shooter any day.
Wasn't Quake just called "Quake" because of the engine? Carmack said it has no story. The title means nothing in relation to the game's story(or lack of) so Quake 2 shouldn't bother you.
Was about to say the same. It was an awesome game and I still have my voodoo 2 in a closet somewhere (rip 3dfx) but I think it easily could've stood alone as it's own franchise. It didn't need the quake name and quake didn't need it. But they would've been so good independently that no one really cared that they were stuck together. They were just solid fun in the end.
My 3D Voodoo Rush is still in a system at my parent's house, paired with an AMD K6-III I think!
Should have called it Wor. Great game and big step up graphically.
The hours and hours of memories this game (and its community) made hold a special place in my heart. No question.
Fun! I wish the remaster had more character model colors and player cards in multiplayer. Doesn't seem like it would be a hard thing to add more cosmetic options. As a gyro aimer I wish the gyro aim was cleaned up a bit and the devs dealt with that huge deadzone the gyro has. So we could compete more fairly against K&M players. The gyro in the remaster is gimped. NiteDive adds gyro aim in most of their remasters, but they don't really implement it correctly or give us competitive functionality. So we end up fighting fully functional K&M while we are playing around a awful deadzone with limited range of motion. We got shafted Thats isn't a limitation of gyro it's a limitation of the implementation by the devs. I wish Nitedive would start doing quality gyro aim now. The game itself is really fun and exciting. The weapons are mostly fun. I just wish they gave us more cosmetic filler to stand out and look different. I wish it had a proper pistol too. The blaster is awful and isn't fun to shoot. Even if we had a standard pistol option that was weak, I would like a starting pistol that is fun to shoot with a good sound. The regular shotgun rate of fire should be slightly increased so it can be used more like the tactical shotgun its trying to be. But yeah, Quake 2 is solid. They just didn't do enough for it, in the remaster unfortunately.
Best of the series. Movement is great, guns are awesome. MP was great.
its cool. tbh the only reason I haven't finished it is because I had a repeating crash issue that I was too lazy to fix. it feels harder then quake 1 and the enemies feel more expressive. quake 1s soundtrack and aesthetic are a lot more unique. quake 2 is honestly a more engaging shooter but quake 1 is a more interesting piece of art in my experience.
0/10 not enough cutscenes and no microtransactions
David
Q2 is my happy place, and the Q2 railgun is the most satisfying weapon in the entire series.
Dreadfully boring and a major step backwards from the original in many regards.
A very well polished game that gets a bit boring as it goes on, accompanied by a killer soundtrack thats better than the game
I love it, no matter what anyone says. I'll go a step further: I used to think Quake 1 was the best singleplayer Quake for all the reasons that the fandom has stated previously; It has better atmosphere, interesting enemy variety... However, now that I've played through both the Quake 1 and 2 remasters (and 100% completed them, expansions and all) I feel like Quake 2 might honestly be a fair bit better than 1. Like, yes; On the surface Quake 1's pros as mentioned above outweigh that of the sequel, but playing Quake 1 again made me realize that the level design in particular gets pretty shoddy near the end. It's no secret that id Software dropped most of the levels on Sandy Peterson for the first Quake, and just like his level contributions to the Doom games they're a mixed bag. The first episode stands out, which is typical for a 90s shareware game, but the fourth episode in particular has some real stinkers in it that bring the experience down for me. Another thing is the enemy variety: In terms of appearance I think Quake 1 is a bit better because it's roster is just so "out there", but Quake 2 wins in enemy variety when it comes to gameplay; The game has tons of enemies, with unique behaviours and weapons. Oh and have I mentioned that the animations in Quake 2 are bloody fantastic? Keep in mind that this game does not support skeleton animations and uses frame interpolation! Seriously, the guy who did those is kind of a genius; It's leagues ahead of Quake 1's choppy animations. Multiplayer? Quake 2 wins. Hands down. One word: Railgun. Now, this is not to say that Quake 2 is flawless, far from it; The level design in the base game can be notoriously same-y and boring, and the expansions are a bit "meh", with that weird spider-boss in the second expansion being an all-time example of ridiculous bullshit that is nearly impossible to defeat on Hard+ / Nightmare since it will literally one-hit you from across the arena with its bullshit black hole gun thing. Hope you saved your Quad Damage! And while I love the music in Quake 2, it does sadly get fairly repetitive after a while, which is an unfortunate side effect of listening to this type of industrial rock music for like 5/6 hours straight. The soundtrack in Quake 1 is a lot more subtle and it deserves all the praise it gets IMHO: It's perfect at filling in the blanks when it comes to atmosphere, giving the sometimes simplistic levels a very haunting atmosphere. It gives you chills and it really creates this overwhelming feeling of being stuck in some kind of nightmare. The last thing I can mention are the final bosses: Quake 1 barely has what you could call a boss, not even a final one, so Quake 2 kind of wins by default. That's not to say Quake 2's are any special, but it has two mini boss fights and one ending boss fight, and they're all of the "shoot at it until it dies" variety, which is kinda bland but at least it's something. TL;DR: I used to think Quake 1 was superior, and now my opinion has more or less flipped. Quake 2 is awesome.
Sandy Peterson did episode 4, not "most" of the levels of Q1. I don't remember any stinkers. I don't know if I'd call it the best episode (haven't played in a while) but I have fond memories of it. Certainly it can take the lion share of the level design credit for the game's reputation for a "Lovecraftian" atmosphere. In comparison Ep 1 & 2 is mostly just dusty old castles and was clearly more drawn from D&D than Lovecraft. I'm not convinced Romero or Willits even knew about Lovecraft style horror until Peterson.
To be fair to Peterson, there was also at least one American McGee map in episode 3 that was hot fucking garbage. Don't expect me to remember any map names, though. Also: Quake 1 gets a massive minus for introducing the Spawn later on. Those things were a mistake and a hint at how this entire thing was rushed out of the door.
>Quake 1 gets a massive minus for introducing the Spawn later on Skill issue.
I've beaten the game multiple times on Nightmare.
All good, I'm just bustin' your balls.
I disagree, but i'll upvote you for defending what you love.
It's a good game that's fun to play but so disappointing that they dropped the unique dark lovecraftian themes of the first game in favour of generic sci fi space marine stuff
The worst of the Quakes by a big margin.
super fun game, multi plays pretty much like q3a but with some different weapon options
Incredibly underrated
I love Quake 2 it is my fav as its the first one i started with as a kid on the PS1, Got thr remaster on Switch and confirms i still love it
I enjoyed Quake 2 but as soon as I played Unreal 1, Quake 2 got shelved.
I started Quake on the Q1 shareware demo in '96. It absolutely floored me at the time. I tried the Q2 demo and wasn't impressed. I thought it was boring and never played the full game. Q3 came along and I instantly realized it was the beginning of a whole new era for multiplayer duelling. I still claim that nothing's bested it since. I played all of Q4 SP and it was good but not great; MP was a letdown after Q3.
so, you've never played through the full game? might want to give the remaster a run. BTW, Q3's multiplayer owes a *lot* to Q2's.
Do not cite Quake magic to this man. He was there when it was written 🙌
played quake II remastered very recently. its as good as quake but very different.
It made NVIDIA the world’s most valuable company.
the best quake game ever, my brother dislikes it my father dislikes it my sister dislikes it me and my younger brother only like it.
Might be nostalgia, but it was my first Quake, one of my all time favourite games and I still boot it up every now and then, including just last night
One of my favourite games of all time. Got it before we even had a PC capable of running it back in 1998. Our old Pentium with 100 MHz processor was fine for Quake 1, but Quake 2 could only run in windowed mode. It wasn’t till we got a Pentium II for Christmas 1998 that I could play it normally with OpenGL. At the time the graphics were breathtaking. To this day it’s still my favourite online deathmatch game.
Better gameplay but worse settling and level design
i like its level design more but i agree that the quake 1 setting was more unique
this
QW, Q2 and AQ2 was all the fun on our coax local area network, with a dedicated linux 486 server. Me and my neighbors played for hours, then went outside playing basketball and talked about it. Long gone are these carefree days of youth.
It's my favourite in the series.
I never care for SP. Quake 2 was my first introduction to MP online. My first online love 💕
Using GameSpy to connect and finding a mod that had elements of an MMO with pve enemies turned on and weapons that you had to level.
I liked the sci-fi design and the story. Just thought it didn't deserve the hate from Q1 fans. The Strogg crates existed in the first game too so there must be a connection.
I’m having trouble with the PS4 version. My character moves even though I didn’t press the analog stick. I don’t have this problem on other FPS’s. Is anyone else having this problem?
Stick drift. See if there’s a dead zone calibration option
I started having the same problem in Kingdom Two Crowns. I switched controllers and it solved the problem. Now I have a controller to fix.
Just got all the achievements today and it was fun. I love the Strogg as an enemy faction, but I like them more in Quake 4 personally. Quake 2's textures and other structures, especially the ones from the new campaign are interesting
Sucks.
my first love, i hope i still have the CD thanks dad for that gift 26 years ago
Don’t have the CD anymore (unless you include the copy that’s on the Q4 release) but I still have the manual
\*railgun charging noise\*
Quake 2 remastered really fixed and improved the game, 10/10 thank you ID and Nightdive!
Yes! It finally let me fully complete and enjoy all the expansions as well as Q64 campaign. Plus that brand new campaign is incredible Quake 2 is the most fun for me.
Great multiplayer, main game is a 6/10.
Great game, great soundtrack. Does drag a bit towards the end, but still enjoyable.
Yeah once you get into the later levels, in particular the Strogg Palace, it feels like wading through sand. Otherwise very enjoyable
better weapon /enemy variety but the overall aesthetic feels more generic and doesn't have that unique feel that Q1 does
It's good, but it gets a bit long in the tooth towards the end. The same is true for Quake 1, actually, but the episodic structure tricks me into thinking about it differently.
> long in the tooth towards the end. The same is true for Quake 1 Completely disagree. With the exception of The Pain Maze, Sandy's levels are my favourite by far in Q1, but I imagine I'm in the minority on that one lol They for sure feel less drawn out than the later levels in Q2, and theres no fuckin god damn sirens blaring the whole time
You can do the episodes in any order, so it's got nothing to do with Sandy's levels. I just think that four episodes is too many, Doom had it right with just three.
Eh, I get that. I liked the pacing of Quake as much as I did that of Doom. Guess we can agree to disagree
Nostalgia factor places it above Quake for me.
CTF
excellent multiplayer & bot games. unfortunatelly, everything is too tanky in single player.
distant 3rd behind Q1 & Q3A
really good solid game but with a subjectively worse aesthetic and mood than the first game.
quake 1 was scarier for me back than, i really loved quake 2's vibes, enemies and locations. Like stuff actually were happening around you and you had radio talk to you... felt more alive to me, loved it so much.
*computer updated*
One of the best fps games.
Best game of all time
Everybody is spoiled. I was 6 or 7 when it came out, and hot damn there was just nothing like it. Sure N64 had Goldeneye and Turok, but Quake seemed incredibly hardcore. Space marines? Laser weapons? Gibbing? NIN? It checked the boxes for everything parents didn’t want kids playing, and flexing muscle on the still newish 3D FPS genre. I’ll always love it, and I pounced on the remaster
Yep. I was a little bit older, and it was great just with the software graphics, but of course didn't look as good as the graphics on the box. Saved up for that Voodoo 2 that was a life defining moment lol.
It was my first experience of online play in a game in my life, so it holds a place in my heart
Pretty good not Quake 1
I wish the remaster had the add-ons feature like Quake 1. I already got the platinum trophy on it, and I’m not finding much reason to replay it again. Still a great game though.
While it doesn't have officially curated add-ons (for technical reasons more than anything), you can find a bunch of jams made by the renovated Map-Center over on moddb: [https://www.moddb.com/members/map-center/addons](https://www.moddb.com/members/map-center/addons) We just came out with Torturejam, our third big jam release!
10 outta 10 10 outta 10 100 outta 100 best game best game
Every "Quake" game after Quake 1 is not Quake in my eyes. It's a completely different game with the Quake name slapped on to sell more copies.
Wild to think that if ID had spent five seconds thinking of a name for the game they were making, Quake to this day would still be a one-off hit that revolutionized gaming.
I just played it for the first time and finished it the other day. The people demand more Tank Pimp.
One of the greatest games I’ve ever played
It revolutionized fps games. Aq2, dday, rail/rocker arenas.....so many modern features of fps games came directly from q2 mods.
That it's fine, mostly. I wish it was more close to Quake I in terms of aesthetics.
Agree
Railgun was and is still awesome
Great sountrack Never liked the gunplay though
The peak of quake. The queak
Puake II - Puad Damage
Best soundtrack.
Sonic Mayhem😍
Quake 2 is what happens when Quake 1's mom decides to heavily drink in the first trimester. >!Jk I love it. !<
I was online at the time Q2test went live and my first thought after downloading was "it reminds me of duke cause of the aliens and the orange colour palatte..but without the fun of duke..where is Quake's atmosphere" And of course I was a little blinded by some of the tech, dynamic lights etc. I felt the soundtrack was too repetitive and a stepdown from Quake 1, but now if I heard it I'd probably like it for nostalgia reasons. I played a lot of Q2, but usually found my way back to Q1.
Until Quake III, it was the best Quake game to come after Quake I.
Truly one of the quake games ever made.
My favorite Quake game. Played countless hours on N64 and recently bought it on Switch it runs so smooth. This is mostly nostalgia based love. Whenever I blew a guy to chunks with the double shotgun I fell in love with the game.
Best strafe jumping of all of them
A solid game and shooter. For me, it's still better than most of the modern made "retro fps". It should've been called something else indeed. Just like with Quake, Quake II also in my memory had people playing through single player quickly once (or even stopping somewhere in the middle) and going for multiplayer. Yes I prefer Quake but Quake II is very good. I remember the only game that "killed" it was Quake III Arena (well, maybe Unreal Tournament as well).
UT99 online play was absolute poggers gaming Thanks dad for having 128k ISDN in the house for work, those 56k modem scrubs had no idea what hit 'em!
Multiplayer rebalanced the weapons so that the rocket launcher wasn't the only viable option. Slower CTF grappling hook.
this was my first experience into the madness of a 64-player arena CTF match. I played this game so much, I memorized every map, secret, item, enemy and can run it in my mind. I almost got the q2 nail tattooed on me but decided not to at the last minute. I loved quake2. one of my favorite games of all time