Quake

First game review...wooh.

So when it comes to first person shooters, I think the granddaddy of the genre is I.D Software's Doom. But it was the next game, Quake, released in 1996 (The year before I was born) that really shaped the Genre for the 90s and it still remains the hardcore ionic examples of old school first person Shooters. The story in alot of ways is a retelling of Doom and in alot of ways you can look at it as a Spiritual Sequel. Instead of a portal to hell we get slip gates to alternate dimensions with aliens. Terrifying, nightmare inducing realms are replaced with Creepy Gothic and Cult themed castles and fortresses with cleverly designed enemies. As you'd expect you play as the Lone Solider sent inside these dimensions to kill all the Bad guys.

The game is split up into Episodes and once the Episodes are complete you progress through the last episode to face the Final boss. The people at I.D software aren't known for their storylines but for the gameplay in general, even for it's time the weapons were the run of the mill, you had your standard rocket launchers and shotguns but this worked in with the overall design which made Quake unique. Playing Quake is like trying to solve a maze with a Pencil but imagine while you're solving the maze someone is repeatedly punching you in the stomach and the Pencil goes blunt 5 times faster. Quake is hard...F*CKING hard. In terms of shooters Quake is as brutal as it comes with the harsh difficulty it really does give your reflexes a workout and pushes you to the limit.

You'll find yourself fighting a dozen enemies at a time sometimes and they attack from pretty much anywhere, enemies vary in speed and method of attack and it'll really bust your balls trying to Kill them all, they all wanna kill you and they're all really good at it. Trying to figure out what weapons work best on what enemies are some important aspects of the game. More often than not you'll end up damaging yourself than you do the enemies.

The most common enemies I encounter are Ogres, these are the huge fuck sticks that have a grenade launcher in one arm and a chainsaw in the other. From a distance they chuck grenades at you with AMAZING accuracy (they will hit you 7 times out of 10), if you get too close they'll start swinging their chainsaw at you Leatherface style. A perfect example of how diverse Quake's combat can be, one minute you're dodging brutal melee attacks, next you're dodging a barrage of grenades. That's the true skill and mastery Quake requires, anyone can enter a room and kill Bad guys, but learning enemy types, attacks and how you take them out accordingly can have a huge impact on how you play games as a whole. It's a Far Cry from Modern shooters like Call of Duty when all you do is shoot the same grunt over and over.

Compared to modern shooters, it's obvious that the Quake engine has seen better days but the game does still show alot of Artistic Flare. Running at Modern Resolutions it still looks surprisingly good. Levels feature really Unique Architecture and all of the games episodes have their own designs and visual motifs. This game is basically the Crisis of it's day and I remember kids at school talking about how they can run it at a whopping 1024 by 768 Resolution.

There are 2 Expansion packs that make Day one DLC look like f*cking Garbage. Quake is one of those games that every gamer should play before they die, it's one of the most Fundamental shooting games of all time, it helped pave the way for the FPS genre throughout the late 90s and early 2000s. I'd recommend this game and it's expansion packs to anyone, it's also one of the first games people starting doing speed runs for with Dial up Internet. Even to this day it still has a Loyal and large fanbase with people who are addicted to it's multiplayer. It's definitely one of those must play games that every gamer should check out.