Old Games: Encyclopedia Bombastica: Quake II

Keep this Bombastica train rolling! Now we just need another Old Games Show as well.

My childhood version of Quake II didn't have music or cutscenes. This changes everything.

I played this on my first sort of decent computer ((an I Buy Power, I think) I had just gotten into pc games some short years earlier. Loved this game, and it's 2 stand alones also. Went back as usual later and could not get past the graphics for replay. Things were changing fast...

I remember upgrading my AOL to 4.0 so I could download this demo.

Yo Brad! more of this pls, because you my friend, you are awesome!

I think the particle effects still look pretty great, sorry.

I'd love if games brought back the whole showers of colorful particles whenever you shoot or something sparks/explodes.

Yesss, killin' it with these Bombasticas, Brad.

Quake 2 doesn't get nearly the love it deserves. I'm replaying it right now and it feels just as good as I remember.

Quake 2 is a great game and I played the hell out of it, but I still wish they had made an actual sequel to Quake instead of a completely different game.

Goldeneye was baby's first FPS for me. Then Half Life, then Halo.

Edit: Oh God, I did play this. I could never get past the first or second level. This first level looks so familiar now.

id is a husk of its former self now with Abrash, Carmack, Hall, and Romero gone, but man, they care more about making an FPS feel realistic and visercal than any other dev I can think of besides maybe Starbreeze (now MachineGames).

Video is pretty dark, but actually looks better with my monitor's FPS mode.

If there's one person responsible for PC becoming"master race" in the 90s and 00s, it's Carmack. He would work 12 hour days or longer doing nothing but programming or brainstorming how to make something work that had never been done before. He would read textbooks and scholarly journals on CS in his spare time. That guy lives for creating immersion. I'm glad he's at Oculus and he's the main reason I'm going with Oculus over any other headset (plus nigh infinite Facebook funding).

@nishastra: But Romero wanted the game to have a story. And Hall wanted to do his military Mars story.

If only they had let Carmack do his thing ;)

@brad's cam proximity makes him look like a SC2 animted character portrait, by the way.

Man, that music though.

Good times.

When I was a kid I used to dial-up connect to the LAN network where my dad worked and play with him on his lunch break, good times. It was awesome hearing all the sound effects again, thanks @brad.

CSB-time;

I was lucky enough to have a college friend who had a friend who worked at a game dev company in Madison at this time. I tagged along and played in an epic 10 hour 10 person LAN party of Quake II. I remember getting owned for the first 3 or so hours (they were game developers after all) but after our midpoint break at the brewpub (underage drinking hooray!) I found my groove. Best MP experience I've had I think.

I'm almost positive the developer was Raven. One of the guys there showed us some early builds of some stuff they were working on, but it's all kinda fuzzy half a lifetime later. I'd like to think it was Raven anyway. /endcsb

Man, I need to load up Quake 2 again...

John McClane skin and sound pack for multiplayer. Ahh, the good old days.

Brad is on point with these Encyclopedia Bombasticas.

Man, that intro was godlike. When I was fourteen, I watched through it like 50 times.

It's always fun listening to Brad get all nostalgic about this era of First Person Shooters, which I was too young to really engage with. There's something about the early polygonal look of Quake and Quake 2 that appeals to me, though I don't think I would actually get a ton out of trying to play those games now.

on repeat all day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY6yBTYxLko

Pretty much everything Brad said was how I felt about Quake 2's campaign at the time. Colored Lighting, muzzle climb, etc. Not as disappointed with the multiplayer as he was. It was still fun, but yes, Quake 1 was much, much better to me.

And yes, Rocket Arena started as a Quake 1 mod, 1v1 with a lobby queue.

My first experience with this game was the PSX version. The PSX version cut out a lot of levels, textures like the skybox, and enemies. However, it did add lens flares, muzzle flashes, and two new enemies. Ended up getting the Quad Damage edition later on for PC, which I found notable because in addition to both expansion packs and the original game also came with a disc loaded with various mods like Action Quake 2, a CTF mod, the 3.20 patch and additional utilities. Played the hell out of this until the Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 demos showed up.

Sick cap Rudds

I remember the first time I saw this played with a 3dfx Voodoo2. It was mindblowing seeing that colored lighting reflect on your weapon.

I had some good times with the Action Quake 2 mod. The best throwing knifes in any video game?

One of my all-time favorites, and I probably spent more time in Loki's Minions CTF than any shooter game mod since. Brad didn't remark on maybe the biggest deal with Quake 2, namely the graphics engine licensing. Several games came out using the Q2 engine, and then they released a GPL open version.

What was really mindblowing for me back in the 90's was what this did in the Q2 console:

bind v +hook

Game-changer.

Man, this game run so smoothly/quickly.

BROWN: The Video Game

Man, Quake 2 was really good. I was a freshman in high school when it came out. Great fun for LAN parties with friends. :)

A game of its time, but one that need not be remembered so reverentially. Give the game its due....okay, now let's move on.

You guys should move studios more often, need more Bombasticas!

Loving the Bombasticas this week! Brad is on fire!

I think we need a Soldier of Fortune 2 Bombastica from @danryckert and his girlfriend!

Just to clarify how the BFG worked in Doom. It was supposed to work how it works in Quake (except it would shoot out other orbs instead of lightning bolts) but they couldn't get it to work properly or it would tank the performance of the game. How it does work though is when the orb you fire explodes rays shoot out from your line of sight. You have to see the enemy for it to damage the enemy. The closer you are the more rays that will hit and do more damage. This leads to exploits where you can hug up on a boss and kill them in one shot. There also is a limiter on the number of enemies that can be hit in one shot.

I still love this game.... hook shot mods and all. One of the best FPS games ever imo

Brad seems pretty nonplussed in this video.

This is my jam.

Quake 2 was my first FPS, i revisited Quake, Doom, Wolfenstein and Blood later, but Quake 2 was the one that started it.

PS: you can hate the rocket launcher, but you've got to love the railgun and the supershotgun

The Bombastica I've been waiting for...

I love the cheezy metal soundtrack, the 2nd level one that Brad mentioned is called Quad Machine by Sonic Mayhem, I still play that dumb song.

Awwwww yeah

When I started learning guitar 13 years ago, I found the Quake II soundtrack and it was the best there ever will be. At the time, anyway.

I just wish I didn't get lost in that first level every single time I try to play it these days.

Seeing all you guys echo your Quake 2 nostalgia warms my heart. I was a freshman or sophomore in high school when this came out. I had all the time in the world and thus played a shitton of Quake 2. It was one of the earliest games I played with 3d acceleration as well. DAT COLORED LIGHTING YO.

Played a retarded amount of multiplayer, LMCTF, Action Quake, etc. Downloaded custom maps, installed bots to play against, etc. This was all on a modem too. Ah the old days.

I really like this feature, please continue making more of them.

Brad, pretty please buy a better microphone

I remember being really disappointed seeing the awful polygonal blob explosions in Quake 2 after seeing that screenshot on the back of the box with a high res sprite explosion like what Quake 1 and Duke Nukem 3D had. The colored lighting still gets me to this day though, and I'm still kinda impressed by it whenever I see modern games use that to a noticeable degree, which for some reason, most don't.

My absolute favorite mod for Quake 2, and kinda of all time, was D-Day: Normandy, which was a bit like the later Day of Defeat, but more directly objective based - where players had to cooperate to accomplish objectives like breaching a bunker door, destroying radio equipment and stuff like that, unlike the kinda game-y "stand close to this flag to capture the area" stuff that Day of Defeat did. It was also the first time I can recall seeing iron sights in a game.

There also was a weird wave of advertising mods and map packs for Quake II in the late 90's - I specifically remember the TV show Soldier of Fortune/Spec Ops Force paying one of the more well known community level creators to make them a map pack vaguely based on the show, and I think a couple of other shows around that time had similar stuff going on.

Aaaaaand.... now I'm gonna watch some more of Brad playing id games til The Game Awards start.

Thanks you two for doing these Bombtasticas, it's great to fill in videos for a quiet time of year and look fun for you to do.

@gkhan: an interesting comment. However your avatar is Academician Prokhor Zakharov and therefore we cannot trust anything you say.

Moving onto some blatant self-promotion Quake II makes one of my lists:

http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/oldskooldeano/lists/multiplayer-games-that-i-have-loved-down-the-years/66838/

You actually turned on godmode LOL

I forgot about the flies