Quake 2 Retrospective Review

PlayStation Top 10

After the announcement of the PlayStation Classic I decided to look back at my personal Top 10 PlayStation games to see if they hold up. Each gets a minimum of 3 hours of game play before I compare how I remember the game and how it plays now.

The rest of my Top 10 games are:

• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
• Motoracer
• Grandia
• Crash Warped
• Resident Evil
• Metal Gear Solid
• Final Fantasy VII
• Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete
• Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete

Quake 2 – Then (1999)

Goldeneye dominated the shooter genre during the PlayStation era. Anybody suggesting otherwise is a fool. Maybe you liked Perfect Dark more, but it didn’t have the same Impact as Goldeneye. The PlayStation lacked a good shooter for most of its life. The only one that came close was Quake 2. Four player split screen, blood, and crazy fast gun play. This was the best Sony had to offer.

The controls were on par with Goldeneye. The graphics were darker, and more impressive. The music wasn’t as good, but what was next to the classic James Bond theme? Quake 2 had it going on. Hours beyond count were lost killing each other in Quake’s dark arenas.

For the sake of honesty, I will admit that despite playing Quake 2 countless times, I was never any good at it. I can’t recall a single match where I had the highest kill count. Third place was possible if luck was on my side. I sucked at First Person Shooters. This didn’t stop me from loving Quake and dumping hours into it with my friends. Being slaughtered mercilessly was enjoyable.

I can’t say whether the single player mode was any good. I never touched it. That’s how addictive the death matching was. This time around, I’ll be diving into the single player experience. Quake 2 was released before Halo:Combat Evolved, the game that popularized the dual stick control scheme found in all modern FPS titles. My friends and I picked up Quake 2 about 10 years ago and had a terrible experience with the controls.  The game didn’t live up to our memories. 10 years after that experience, I’m excited to try again. Will Quake 2 hold up? Let’s find out.

Quake 2 – Now (2018)

I watched YouTube videos of the PC version for comparison, and it blows the PS1 away visually, but that’s not surprising. Thankfully, the PlayStation port stands up well against its peers. The graphics in Quake 2 are great. Enemies have clear designs that stand out against the backgrounds. The environments use color and textures to signal the path through the levels. The visuals avoid the muddied and blurry 32-bit era look so many games have. Its always easy to tell exactly whats happening on screen.

The amount of color in Quake 2 is surprising. I expected nothing but grey, brown, and black, but found a lot of green, blue and yellow. The game has an edgy grim-dark design typical of the 90s, but with bursts of color that give the world a pulp sci-fi ting. It doesn’t have the classic designs of ID’s DOOM, but Quake 2 is still fun to look at.

The frame rate is another high point. Playing through the single player campaign, it felt like a rock solid 30 fps. The only pauses during game play were the occasional load points. Lasting a few seconds and infrequent enough to hardly interrupt the game play experience, each load point strategically placed at a doorway leading to an empty corridor. Loading as you leave a cleared area and enter an empty one avoids any problems with accidentally backing into a load point. This means the action always flows nicely. Not once did game play stop during a firefight…unless I died, which happened a lot.

Quake 2 controls are hot garbage. Dual stick controls are a blessing of design improvement born from experiments like Quake 2 and Goldeneye. In this game the d-pad moves you forward, back and turns left and right. L1 and R1 look up and down. L2 and R2 strafe side to side. There is no option to customize the buttons, and none of the set options allows the face buttons to mimic modern dual stick controls. Playing Quake 2 forces you to adopt a control scheme that’s the opposite of intuitive. Resident Evil’s tank controls are a blessing compared to Quake 2.

Beyond the button scheme, the controls of Quake 2 are not responsive enough for such an action packed game. Turning lacks sensitivity. Tapping left or right lurches your view just far enough to miss your target completely. Holding the directions spins you just a tad faster than the enemy movement, keeping you ahead of them at all time. The strafe is just as problematic, making aiming a pain. Trying to strafe and turn around a corner, allowing you to keep your sights aimed on an enemy is ultimately not with the effort. Most situations are best handled by standing still and blasting away then retreating before the AI reacts.

My kingdom for modern controls! Dualshock controls would make Quake 2 a hidden gem. Compensating for sluggish or sensitive controls would be easier. I could see people having tons of fun with the four player death matches. The frame rate takes a bit of a hit, but not enough to hurt game play. The arena designs are clever, funneling action through their sets to keep action flowing. It comes back to the damn controls keeping multiplayer from being fun. Killing your friends in combat isn’t fun when each of you wants to toss your controller across the room in frustration.

Quake 2 looks great for its age. It holds up far better than Goldeneye in the visual department. but like its Nintendo 64 counterpart, the controls let the rest of the game down. I can’t recommend going back and playing Quake 2 for the PS1. Spending $15 on eBay it a waste of your hard earned money. If you remember this game well, cherish those memories. Don’t tarnish them by trying to relive the past. This is the first game on my personal top 10 list that is coming off. It sits alongside Tenchu as a massive disappointment. Quake 2 does not hold up.