Old Games: Encyclopedia Bombastica: Quake II

I put hundreds of hours into Quake 2 and I don't think I ever heard the soundtrack. Putting the CD in the drive was a pain.

I never really played Quake, but I loved Dark Forces. However where Dark Forces is still pretty cool and stylized, this just kinda looks like a reject of hardcore 90s. I get that there's revolutionary 3d tech with this, but still.

The lighting attached to the pistol shots is my most vivid memory. Stood there shooting down hallways for kicks. Also, I remember being TERRIFIED by every new enemy.

Good job once again Brad.

I had the PS1 version of this. For the standards iof a mid-late 90s console version of an FPS it was actually really good. I remember it being the first FPS I played to have something akin to modern dual stick controls.

Quake 1 has a special place as I and a bunch of friends would playit on LAN in the high school computer labs.

Especially when it first came out. The speed of the rocket was ridiculously slow. Coming from the dominance and velocity of Q1's RL it gave me a poor first impression of Q2.

The local LAN cafe I went to (neXGeN Gaming in Salem, OR) had a pretty big following around Q2--especially The Edge--so eventually I learned to enjoy their vanilla multiplayer modes.

Action Quake 2 was probably the mod I played the most which transitioned right into the beginnings of Counter-Strike and Firearms.

This game was so amazing when it was new. I played those first few levels so many times, even though I had the full game.

After playing Star Wars Dark Forces with a Quake II cap on, we all know there is only one road Brad can go down...

I remember watching a review back in the day. Talking about how this was one of the first games to have open GL and created amazing effect and lightning. He couldn't even give it a rating because their was no other shooter graphically that could touch it back then. He was blown away by the graphics but also gameplay too. When graphics... mattered... Oh wait!

Action Quake 2 is still my fondest online time of all time. Ah the memories. Also will never forget getting my shiny voodoo 3DFX and then being able to bask in the glory of coloured lighting and bilinear filtering. All the feels!

Remember Eraserbot? By Steven Poole I believe? Geez why are these things ingrained in my memory. Ha.

Where can I find that Quake hat? Wanna get it for my brother as a Christmas gift

What you mean like now...?


oh.

The first 3D fps I ever played. So good. The music is godly.

Brad, "kept you waiting, huh?"

Also gotta say - I would rarely call Brad a fanboy (even for DOTA or Destiny) but Brad is the ultimate Carmack fanboy. And that's Aaaaaaall right.

Oh damn, I'm ALSO suddenly reminded that I had some of those that are buried at my parent's place somewhere. Remember buying them at Toys R Us in the games section and kinda thinking they were pretty messed up action figures to be selling in TRU.

Quake 2 was so good.

Quake 2 is still my favourite of them all. It had an awesome campaign and one I recently went through again, holds up really well, tho some of the design can be a bit unintuitive... The soundtrack by Sonic Mayhem is totally the best and 100% why I ended up purchasing Q2 to begin with... Spent so so soooo much time with the multiplayer.. it's what got me into Deathmatch and I've been chasing that ever since, never to be matched again (for me) Glad to see this game show up here and get some props.

Ah Quake 2 I have so many fond memories of this game. I must have been 9 when this came out and my dad and I would take turns playing it. He's been gone for 2 years now and I couldn't help but shed a joyous tear remembering the good times we had playing this. For that thank you Brad.

Since this was banned in Germany, I never had an original copy of it.

I bet you were a Sister Miriam fan. Sister Miriam is the worst!

Finally. The hat means something! Great video, Brad.

Q2 was probably my first proper multiplayer fps. Got too used to infinite ammo, Q3 never click for me.

Enjoyed it to a certain extend back then, but I can't say I can go back to that kind of games.

i remember just not believing how good quake ii looked

Super Shotgun for life.

Also, look up STRAFE, capuring the very specific Quake II aesthetic pretty well.

Quake 2 was the first real showpiece of 3D graphics cards, but the special effects and animation were still very primitive compared to Duke Nukem 3D and GoldenEye 007.

Five months later, it was completely outclassed by Unreal.

And Half-Life killed the old-school first-person shooters.

The BFG isn't just visualized differently than in Doom, it also works differently. The Quake 2 BFG damages anything near the projectile while it travels (plus with the explosion at the end), the Doom one damages everything that has line of sight to both the player and the explosion when the projectile hits (probably limited to the player's FOV?). Doom's BFG is basically a screen clearing smart bomb.

Yet somehow the reverence for Q2 reigns supreme over almost all of those games apart from perhaps GoldenEye (mainly probably helped by the fact it was for console players - just like Halo) or HL, which is HL. It is a product of it's time, and did beat those others to market.

This was the game that really made me appreciate what graphics cards could do: smoothed particles are so much better than square ones.

dun dun dun dun dun dun dun

Good stuff Brad!

I have that hat.

COLORED LIGHTING

Yeah, Quad Machine!! Haha, I started trying to learn to play that track on guitar just a couple of weekends ago. Such a metal soundtrack. Such a metal game.

Oh how this video made me went "F***! I miss cheat codes."

I liked the multiplayer in Quake II, even though it was slower (which sucked). Played a ton of it until I went over to Quake III, which is still the best pure deathmatch shooter in my opinion.

Really enjoying these Brad Bombasticas.

That music is goddamned great.

brad always looks incredibly mischievous in his at-home content.

I always really wanted to replay Quake 2, not sure why I never did.

Still a better game than Half Life 1.

Loved Quake 2. Wish I had kept running Mr. Wolf's Quake Den until Quake 2 had come out. Loved the single and even the multiplayer. So many memories.

Any idea how he is getting the music? I thought the steam version didnt have it?

Yeah the backtracking killed it for me.

Time to Brad: 6:32

Quake 2 single player and story were serviceable, but multiplayer was were it was at. You had your DM, and CTF, but then you had mods like Action Quake 2, Rocket Arena, Instagib, and Railz! Great game. And I say Railgun in Quake 2 is way better than the railgun in Quake 3.

i still listen to sonicmayhem, not only is he an excellent producer of game soundtracks - he is still making music (this song will get your quake 2 nostalgia kicking when it hits at the end)