Quake returns

Now that's a name I've not heard since...

When you address the grandparents of the shooter genre, who is it that you see in your mind's eye? There will be those who see Call of Duty and see her as the grand scion of that most venerated eye, and to those I laugh at their untested and unmatured naivete. There will be those who look at the original Wolfenstein 3D and bow before that liege lord- and to them I say... easy off, we're not looking to go back to the stone ages with this one, split the difference! Which would bring us to the original first person shooter which defined the arcade style of this genre in a manner so intrinsic that modern FPS' have reverted back to try and capture some spark of it's original primordial effluence. Quake. Also DOOM, I guess. But today we're talking about Quake.

 

There are those who credit Goldeneye with the birth of competitive shooter games, but lacking the game myself I was introduced to that world through Quake. More specifically; through Quake 2. A rough and ruddy else world deathmatch game with all the legendary hallmarks of the boomer shooter. Bunny-level movement speed letting players dash around the level like a rodent on coke, loud and high impact firearms designed to be efficient, brutal and singular in their function, powerup laden battlefields with your typical spread of quad-damage multipliers, invincibility shields and various health and armour pickups. It's all the hallmarks of the party game you would enjoy with a room full of friends as you slowly turn each and every one against you with focused and victimising fragging.

It's one of those memories that I never really pondered until recently, but those styles of games really are dead in the modern world. Not just arena style power-up shooters, because their niche audience still exists for those that search hard enough, but rather those games that encouraged a room to sit next to one another. Couch co-op is so rare it's considered an 'on the box' feature in the modern age, because the very prospect of denying an extra full game purchase is so overwhelming abhorrent to the mercantile executive decision makers that the practise is just a total dead art. And there's certain some aspect of personability lost of the ethernet lines and underwater cables when resorting to offline play. For one your opponent can't turn around and blame you for screen cheating. (Because, come on... everyone screen cheated. It just made sense.)

Perhaps it's the very nature of arcade shooters as an 'niche relic of yesteryear' which has saved them from the cutting claws of 'genre reorganisers' who rule the industry today. Else you'd be looking at Quake 5 with it's shiny new battle pass and seasonal live-service content drops and skin marketplace and all the other five million things that the developers beg us to put up with so they can make their investors happy with the engagement figures. Keep it in it's niche and smaller developments within the genre space can be lavished upon by the devoted and the faithful, Unreal Tournament can maintain it's comfy little community and now a fresh re-release of Quake 2 can stoke the nostalgic fires of the arcade shooter playing crowd for one more little skirmish event.

In this current age of constant remakes it's no surprise that we'd end up seeing some gems of yesteryear resurface, and so the Quake 2 announcement was not so much of a 'shock' to see. However what I did find pleasantly surprising was the fact that this game was not, in fact, another remake but rather a remaster of the original keeping all the charm of the block character models and  late 90's gaming palette and instead introducing additional content onto that package to justify it's resuscitation. This means it looks how you remember but plays in a silky smooth framerate with loving full screen support and all the content of the original game alongside a brand new expansion for those that want a little something new. There's something for everyone, it would seem!

And would-you-look at that! Local multiplayer and co-op support to go alongside the online stuff! Seems when you dip your hands back into the sands of time you bring back some of the gems along with the whole treasure! Who could have guessed we'd be blessed with such resplendent bounties for the otherwise long defunct Quake franchise who's pop culture light had been largely overshadowed by DOOM. Honestly, my initial sparking fear for Quake was that it was getting the DOOM (Remake) treatment when I first heard word of this announcement. But to explain why that is a 'fear' and not a 'hope' like it is with so many others, I need to get granular.

DOOM doesn't really adopt the same gameplay design principals of it's original, which is fine because it allows the game to stand up with new modern design ideals and distinguish itself as a different face of the formula. I'll still attest that 2016 is a masterpiece, but I feel like these remake franchises can start to unravel that founding essence of the franchise the longer they go on. DOOM Eternal stuffs itself so full it can feel overwhelming, and that DLC was just tedium incarnate- I don't want that fate to befall Quake. I don't even think the world needs a resurgence for Quake. Just allowing us the opportunity to play the game we loved is satisfaction enough. And for the price it's seriously a steal. Nintendo would have a heart attack if they offered any re-release of their old titles for anything less than 30 bucks- I doubt they could even conceive of an 8 bucks release.

It's nice to see that even with the deluge of new games and mega-brand series that spawn the gaming space like vast intergalactic empires of terrible and stupendous power: the rough and tumble sloops of yesteryear still have their fans and diehards. Sometimes you don't need some explosive heavy rendered loud super-edgy modern military fiction shooter to kill the time. Sometime you just want to throw on your similarly-edge dark fantasy FPS shooter from 26 years ago as you embark on the journey of trying to figure out how in the hell you used to play games that moved this fast all the way back then. Seriously, movement speed back then was insane- how did we ever get to anything as subdued as Battlefield?