giwake

game developer, I think?

  • they/them

i make games and music, sometimes.

profile picture by @thewaether!!!

moving to https://bsky.app/profile/giwake.bsky.social


egggohan
@egggohan

I fired up the OG after binging literally every single piece of commercially available Quake 2 expansion content and I'm actually quite surprised by the feels I'm walking away from that A/B comparison with.

I bought the Quake 1 remaster when it came out in 2021 and binged both of the Machinegames episodes but never actually went back to the main campaign. Seeing that those cheevies were never checked off in my Steam library, I decided that would be a constructive place to channel my obsessive urge to keep playing this week.

I have been learning the Quake 2 gun and movement feel at such an intense rate that it is in my muscle memory over these last two weeks or so. I expected Quake 1 to be the same but it actually very isn't. It's a lot... floatier and more primitive. I always thought Quake 2 was such a bad game, but now that it's been tuned up into one that feels really good, I'm actually surprised that Quake 1 feels much worse.

One thing it doesn't have going for it is the lighting. I haven't A/Bed how the original campaign looks on another edition vs the remaster, but it's not flattering. It feels like it was tweaked for the Machinegames campaigns at the expense of the original campaign? Maybe there are settings that I did in 2021 that flattened it out to a degree that just doesn't serve it. But when you turn all the lights on, man these levels are very coarse and chunky and easy to breeze through in just like 5 minutes a piece. It looks a lot more like an N64 game - in terms of environment coarseness - than I ever remember it looking. I have to try to keep in mind that literally no 3D game tools existed AT ALL before this game though, they were literally created for this game.

I also don't remember the Quake 1 campaign being so short? It seemed like it took no time at all to be halfway into the fourth realm without batting an eye.

Very obvious observation to be making here, but man the Trent Reznor soundtrack is just as much an integral part of the whole package as the rest of the whole thing is. I love it and it's something I've just listened to on its own for years, really a masterpiece of dark ambient music, but coming back to it after the fatiguing butt metal of Quake 2 really brings it into sharp relief. You can turn the music of Quake 2 OFF and the tone of the game might even improve. Trent's soundtrack and the abstract mashing together of world elements are a symbiotic combo, they support each other and make each other better. There just aren't enough tracks.

I also don't remember the sound design being so lacking? The core gun sounds are awesome, but why such bunk sounds for picking up health? And why doesn't he make any sounds at all when taking pain??? What's up with that???

idk man, it just feels chunky and floating on icey and simplistic and kind of boring now. I was turning off Quake 2 after a few levels just cause I needed to take a break, I'm finding myself getting through 3-4 levels of Quake 1 and turning it off just cause I'm kinda bored. The atmosphere is impeccable and oppressive and intense, but id's games are so spartan as it is... it runs thin.

If we were running a competition based on vibe alone, Quake 2 doesn't stand a chance. But, and I can't believe I'm writing this, it wins as the better game now. I need to tweak my display settings a bit before I say this definitively, but the Quake 2 remaster makes it better and the Quake 1 remaster makes it worse. I have been just prejudicially siding with Quake 1 for decades, but the tables have turned.


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