Sunday, March 27, 2011

Quake Gameplay Notes

I'm coming close to the end of what must be my first full Quake playthrough in almost 10 years. This was initially done to test out my new code in a real life situation, but after a while turned into something I did just for fun.

I'm taking the episodes in order, and trying to spend at least 20 minutes on each map, just savouring the experience. Taking one or two maps per day, with the occasional day when there are none, adds to it all.

Right now I'm on the Pain Maze. I was initially sceptical about whether or not I'd even do e4, but as I moved from testing to fun I really started getting into it, and - to my surprise - it's turning into what's probably been the most enjoyable episode.

It's true that Sandy Petersen didn't have the same aesthetic sensibilities as a Romero or a Willits, but by damn his maps are fun. You just cannot fault the gameplay here - absolutely top notch stuff. Some interesting observations about the style.

Each weapon only appears once in the episode, with - I think - the exception of the Lightning Gun, which makes a second showing in the Nameless City. Miss it and it's gone, but Sandy did think enough of this to pop up a message saying "are you sure you want to exit now? you left something important behind". Sheer class.

Jump into a map and almost immediately you get access to a Megahealth. OK, either you've just taken a pounding and you need it right now, or you're about to take a pounding. This happens in every single one of Sandy's maps.

You commonly see a monster - with it's back to you - walking off. An easy first kill, and it helps to create the sense that this is an inhabited world in which the monsters do stuff other than just wait around for you to kill them.

Architecturally it's all weird angular stuff with a crazy hodge-podge of texturing styles and lots of huge gloomy shadows. e4 must be the most minimally lit episode in all of Quake. It just feels truly alien, like something for which there is just no real-world counterpart. Weird. Eldritch. Elsewhere.

Structurally there are lots of weird slightly out of place elevators, and you commonly have to make two or three passes over most of the map in order to complete it. It's packed full of weird little pits full of monsters, crazy walls that open out in odd ways, interesting battle arenas with plenty of scope for using the environment, and curious tucked-away nooks and crannies which are always packed full of goodies but also often full of baddies to make you earn your loot.

So have I just found a new favourite episode? Quite probably; for all it's flaws e4 must be the most quintessentially Quake-like of all the episodes. Who woulda ever thought?

3 comments:

Poindexter said...

I love Quake, but i haven't played through Quake 1 proper for probably about a decade either. Reading your detailed dissection of episode 4, makes me think it's about time I play through the whole thing again.
I think I'm well overdue!

Episode 1 will always be my favourite. It might not be the best episode, but it's got nostalgiac attachment for me. I remember getting the quake demo off of a pc magazine back in, i guess about, 1996, and playing it over and over on my 486 pc, probably getting about 15 - 20 fps(if that lol), but still I remember how the game blew my mind. It was such a leap over the fps's that had come before it.

Tbh it still blows my mind how active and imaginative the Quake community still is. I would never have imagined back in '96, that I'd still be downloading new content for Quake 15 years later.

Let's hope we're still downloading new content 15 years from now!

Keep up the good work MH.

Nyarlathotep said...

There's not much finer than playing through episode 4 on Nightmare difficulty with some good dark ambient music [think Lustmord, Sunn O))), or Tribes of Neurot]. Having the patience to let the ambience of the levels get under your skin is entirely worth it.

A lot of people complain that the loss of John Romero negatively impacted id's ability to make compelling games. They aren't wrong, but Petersen may have been the bigger loss in the long run.

gb said...

Nice observations.

I do like the moving walls and stuff you mentioned. E4M4 is probably my favourite Episode 4 map, although I also like E4M6 because of the sheer rule-less fun and the complete blissful ignorance of the things a level designer does and doesn't do, like rooms chock-full of tarbabies and vores (exploding mayhem!), and the total disregard for what you call aesthetic sensibilities. Like simply using some brick texture for the entire map and instead having (primitive, as Sandy wasn't the greatest brushworker) weirdly shaped corridors and mazes and just plain DOOMish stuff and angled walls and so forth.

I see where you're coming from and sometimes I wish I could simply ignore my own aesthetic sensibilities and throw huge angular wedges together and put 400 tarbabies in.

I should do that more. I might, in my Ziggurat Vertigo remake, when I finally get to it.

Please post your analysis of the other three episodes? Pretty please?