Twenty-five years ago, Quake launched on PC, and oh how I remember those days with fondness. I still have my original Quake CD and my original CDs of the two expansion packs. Anyway, another aftershock hit almost two weeks ago when Bethesda surprised everyone by dropping Quake Remastered onto PC and consoles during Quakecon. Bethesda Softworks, id Software, and the remastering greats at Nightdive Studios all teamed up to create an incredible, must-have release to celebrate Quake’s 25th anniversary. For the ridiculously low price of $10, you can relive the original Quake, both official expansions, as well as two expansions made by MachineGames, including a brand new one called Dimensions of the Machine. As if that weren’t enough, you also get the Nintendo 64 version of Quake, ported by Midway Games — more on that later. Support for co-op campaign play for up to four players online, or two players in local splitscreen is included, and eight player online deathmatch or four player local splitscreen deathmatch. Wow!
Quake was revolutionary; you can see its influences in games to this day, especially ones that are trying to recapture that vibe that shooters from the late ’90s, like Quake, introduced. Quake plays a lot like DOOM, and though the two aren’t directly connected, you can see how Quake took the baton from DOOM and ran with it. With features like being able to look up and down, jump, swim, verticality in the level design, the Quake engine brought with it such a beautiful step-forward for the entire genre. Players familiar with DOOM’s pacing and action will feel right at home, but anyone at all looking for a frantic blast will enjoy Quake and all it has to offer.
I always thought Quake did such a great job of establishing an awesome dark, gothic, industrial atmosphere. Much of this is accomplished with the graphics engine, and the lighting that the devs used. All of this looks and plays brilliantly in the remaster, with 4K widescreen support, enhanced character models, dynamic and colored lighting, depth of field, anti-aliasing, and a host of other improvements. Many of these graphical options can be toggled from the Options menu, so players can fine tune as they desire. I always loved the Quake engine graphics, and they’ve never looked better.
And as great as the graphics are, the sound package with Quake has always been stellar as well. The grunts of the characters as they move about or take damage, the sounds of the weapons and item pickups, the reverberation of the Quad Damage — there are a lot of sounds in Quake that are unmistakable. Heck, to this day, there is a water droplet sound that I still hear in other media that I first heard in Quake. Further still, though, is the soundtrack — Trent Reznor / NIN did the soundtrack for the first game, and it’s as dark and industrial and moody as everything in the game was trying (and succeeding) in being. Sidenote, I used to loop NIN’s “Broken” song while playing Quake multiplayer over a dialup connection — great times! That said, as good as the original Quake’s soundtrack is, I adore the soundtracks of Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution of Eternity even more. I used to listen to these soundtracks outside of gaming time because they were that good. I wish I could get the music volume to crank up higher in-game, though — it sounds just a little bit quiet compared to the sound effects, perhaps something they can address in a patch.
Quake and its first two expansions remain legendary, and though I haven’t run through them again in time for this review, I have absolutely love revisiting them and playing them in splitscreen co-op, something I never did back when the games first came out (by the way, random note, you can toggle Friendly Fire for co-op gaming). MachineGames’ two expansions, including the new Dimension of the Machine are obviously professionally made and very well done. Fresh, professionally made Quake single-player content after all this time was really enjoyable to play through. Something else I’m still working on at this time is the free download of Quake 64 that you can obtain from the game’s menu. There are a surprising amount of differences with this port of Quake. Yes, the 320×240 res will make you do a double-take after playing in 4K, but still, it’s worth playing through for all of the little differences in the levels, including different secrets, enemy placements, pre-rendered colored lighting, different music, and other miscellaneous things (check out the Quake fandom page for more).
I’m just about beside myself with how cool and surprising of a release Quake Remastered is. I hope we’ll see the same treatment for Quake II down the road, but wow it’s really special to see this classic revitalized and given such good treatment in the process. Bravo to Bethesda, id, and Nightdive for doing such a great job with this release and offering it up to the masses at a price (just $10!) that you shouldn’t miss.
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