Quake II

The Good
For a mindless shooter, it's excellent; good graphics, weapons and enemies. But other games like Half-Life and Deus Ex are way ahead of it, and it's about time id grew up and made a complex one player game with mission objectives or something, besides find-the-key gameplay. Still, Q2 is a classic, though not as good as lets say, Half-Life. BUT, Q2 has awesome multiplay, and it adds some much-needed replay value.

The Bad
Mindless gameplay that makes you always Shoot and don't ask any questions.

The Bottom Line
First person shooter in a sci-fi setting.

The Good
An actual game? You mean with a halfway decent singleplayer and multiplayer portion designed BESIDES the techy wow-wow?? Surely you jest! Nope. Quake 2 is (get this) a real GAME!!!

I must admit that this caught me completely off-guard at the time, and when the game came out I planned to shrug it off and wait for the first real game that used the Q2 engine. Eventually I did get my hands on it, and though it's not the best game ever it's still a pretty good classic-styled shooter.

There is an actual attempt at a plot here, what with some alien threat and you being a space marine (hmm were have I heard that before?) shot into the Strogg's (bad aliens) planet to kick ass and take names. However everything goes to the crapper and you get separated from your team, thus your mission is to survive and make contact with HQ and eventually (once you find per standard shooter requirements that you are the last hope of all the universe) go for the Strogg leader.

Paper-thin? Sure, but it's something! They even threw in some pre-rendered cutscenes, and they incorporated the story in the gameplay to a certain extent, ie. you have mission objectives which often involve going back & forth between some levels, briefings, inventory, etc. and you also get a small modicum of immersion a la C&C Renegade, for instance: you see ships fighting around, explosions, heck, you'll even be rejoined with your marine buddies, now helpless and completely traumated p.o.w.s. Cool, huh? That last bit also points out another area were Q2 improves over the original: detail. You are now surrounded by more or less credible settings. You no longer have the rocket launcher floating in the middle of a hallway, instead you find it in a place that makes sense, like an armory or cabinet. Furthermore, the levels become much more alive than on Q1, with working machinery, decorating details (a console there, a dead body here, a bio-mechanical station there, a dismembering machine over there, etc.) and a much more cohesive gameworld (gone is the medieval/techno/chtulu mix of the original) and you instead get a more concentrated bio-mechanical world.

The weapons are both complete ripoffs, and sheer genius. You see, for the most part Id recycled everything, but this time they actually bothered to dress everything up as shiny and new, and even did some nice modifications. Your standard weapon is ranged (a wimpy laser pistol), then you have the standard and double-barreled shotguns but overworked to feel like the pulse rifles from the Alien films; then you have the nailgun and the slicer, now dubbed the machine gun and mini-gun, both well known but now with actual thought put into them (the machine gun has a mean recoil that makes it's use a complicated affair, and the mini-gun is pure rock-&roll-screen-shaking genius); then you have the grenade and rocket launcher (graphically reworked so as to be actually interesting, with pretty complex models were you see the ammo loading and all); a pulse-rifle like gun; Eraser's Rail-gun (stolen with the cool smoky trail and all); aaaaaand... THE BFG! Yes!! Completely stolen and unoriginal??? Yup. Absolutely cool?? That too!! The BFG charges up for an eternity, and then lets out with the first big texture lightning-heavy effect of any weapon in any fps. Kudos to id for updating a classic with full-polygon bliss.

Speaking of which, with 3D acceleration now a reality, Q2's graphics really shine. I remember firing this baby up after just installing my Diamond Monster 2 and just grinning while thinking "yeah, this is what I'm talking about" Hehehe.... The 3D graphics are much sharper and cleaner than those of Q1, and the use of colored lightning is a major plus. Furthermore, id really put some thought when it came to designing monsters, and the end result was a collection of greatly animated and superbly detailed baddies to shoot at (like the Iron Maiden, the Parasite, the all-mighty Tank, etc.). And this detail shows in the multiplayer area too. The player models have now a decided quota of variation and much more realism (gone is the steroid-ladden, blocky fella from Q1) Not to mention now standard features like right/left handedness, gender selection, skins, mods, etc...

The Bad
It took no new strides. Q2 merely attempted to deliver the same amount of braindead action Q1 did, while righting all of said game's faults. This gives us in essence what Quake REALLY should have been, however some time after Q2, the world would face Half-Life, and simple shooters like Q2 would become way too braindead for the uptight masses of "nü shooters". Q2 was the last of a now dying breed. And it's probably best that it died.

Other than that the only bad things you can point to Q2 are the usual "id palette disorder" and the fact that the engine, for as good as it was, didn't incorporate detail textures. Unreal beat it to that.

The Bottom Line
Quake done right! That is what this game really is. Of course, it's still Quake... But hey, that still spells braindead fun for me. Quake 2 is a real classic in the world of fps, a game good enough to be actually memorable as exactly that, and not a technical showcase like most other id games.

The Good
The original Quake, is, in my opinion, thoroughly overrated and disappointing. So, not surprisingly, I was expecting the same with Quake 2...but don't worry, Quake 2 is a great FPS, and the other games in the Quake series don't even compare! Truthfully, this game is so different and better than the other Quakes, it shouldn't be in the same series.

Unlike the first game's boring brown demonic setting, Quake 2 takes place in a MUCH better sci-fi world where an alien race of cyborgs called the Strogg have attacked Earth...searching for humans to convert into their own. Every time Earth loses one man, the Strogg gain one. It's a losing battle, but Earth gears up and attacks Stroggos, but the Strogg have a surprise, which I'm not saying...hold it...is that...YES, Quake 2 is actually a first person shooter with a real plot! While it isn't as great a plot as Half-Life, or many adventure games or RPG's, it is definitely something!

In Quake 2, the single player AND multiplayer are both fun...in fact, as a single player fan, I think that side of the game is better. While there are no really innovative weapons, ANYTHING is better than the first games stupid looking rocket launcher...and here you also get a BFG10K!...Many of the enemies are memorable and different from each other.

The game balances perfectly being an action game and eventually slipping into horror when you find the gruesome results of what happened to your fellow space marine's that weren't turned into Strogg, but this horror isn't overdone as it could easily have been...

The Bad
Why the hell do almost any developers making an FPS take the "it's you" and personality-less approach with your main character? It's boring! Admittedly, it would have spoiled the atmosphere in a game like this to have your character be a "Duke Nukem" or "Bruce Campbell", but it would have only made the game better if you hard-edged marine talked...and don't give me the famous "Half-Life" excuse of you "become" the character...I just end up feeling like I'm playing as some boring and shy moron with a gun...okay, rant over. Also worth mentioning, is with the near lack of colored keycard puzzles here, the ones that do show up stand out in a bad way.

On a final bad note, after the spectacular for-its-time opening cut-scene, the final boss of the game is too easy and the ending sequence a letdown and cop-out.

The Bottom Line
Quake 2 is a great FPS, and far better than the other Quake games. It is no wonder that Quake 4 will base itself off of it...