The game touted its “six degrees of freedom” (it made less mention of how it could induce motion sickness). In Descent, you fly a spaceship through a series of mining tunnels. *Note: The 1994 game Descent is technically classified as the first 3D accelerated FPS game, but I’ve always thought calling Descent a first-person shooter was odd. PC gamers who own the title through Steam have already received upgrades to this version for free otherwise, the game is $9.99 on various platforms. It is playable on the PS5 and Xbox Series S|X via backward compatibility. Quake is available for the Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC. If you think the plot of Doom was a bit too wordy, you’ll like Quake just fine, and it’s a great game to pick up if you’re interested to see where first-person shooters began. The game is more of a grab bag of levels the id folks built, with a very loose story heavily influenced by Lovecraftian design elements. One thing to keep in mind if you pick up the game: Quake doesn’t have much in the way of a coherent story. ![]() I’d go so far as to argue that the reason FPS games have often been on the cutting edge of graphics technology is part of Quake’s legacy. Games that were previously only playable in 320×200 (64,000 pixels) could be plausibly played in 640×480 (307,200 pixels) if you had a Voodoo and 800×600 (480,000 pixels) if you had a Voodoo 2. There were multiple alternative x86 manufacturers at the time, including AMD, WinChip, and Cyrix, but of the three only AMD delivered a floating-point unit strong enough to make gaming possible, and the K6 wasn’t nearly as fast in FPU code as the Pentium MMX.ģD accelerators didn’t entirely remove that problem - GPUs of this era still performed transform and lighting calculations on the CPU instead of using dedicated GPU hardware - but they reduced the impact substantially. We daresay that every gamer who lived through the 3D revolution of the mid to late 1990s remembers their first 3D accelerator, especially if they were using non-Intel hardware. I did not play Quake Champions but if they decided to throw it in a collection that spans platforms like the Doom re-releases, I'd surely try it.Ī collection, even with a high price, is something I'd likely buy as I have fond memories of just about all games in the franchise.Quake wasn’t the first FPS game, but it was the first modern first-person shooter in which the ability to run, jump, and mouselook was combined with the first 3D accelerators to deliver a game that was faster and more fluid than anything before it.* ![]() Then there's a major twist in the storyline and the game turns around its head, becoming pretty damn great. It starts off as a more action-packed take on the (boring, to me) Doom 3 formula that plays well enough but isn't really on par with the other game that did it better (Prey). Quake 4 was a fun ride, albeit I recall I didn't finish the last level or so for some reason. Give me a current-gen version of it, even with the same graphics. ![]() I've always been on the Unreal Tournament side personally, but Quake's brutality and satisfying shooting to this day aged a lot better than nearly all other 3D shooters of the era. Quake 3: Arena and Team Arena are some of the best arena shooters out there, no questions about that. Those light effects at the start of the game when it came out, wow. But the complex level design is very nice, although it can be a bit backtracky, and it has tons of great enemies and weapons. Quake 2 is the "less Quake-y" game of the bunch, because it's a more generic (if pretty brutal in terms of lore) sci-fi FPS. Its verticality is also very cool, and while it isn't the best Quake mechanically, it's a special game that I'd gladly replay in a collection. Quake is a lovely shooter with a rare approach to dark fantasy that few other shooters did to this day.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |