THE INTRODUCTION

My first experience with first person non-textbased games was DungeonMaster (released in 1987). It may be the first game of this type ever to appear, even though it counts as a RPG.
I think DM was the game that set the tone for the genre, both for the developers and for the gamers.

But it would take until the early 90's, May 1992 to be more precise, before the first 360(long-s) freemoving maze shooter appeared, namely Wolfenstein3D, developed by a previously unknown company called idSoftware.
Even though it wasn't real computer generated 3D, it used a 3d rendering technique called raycasting, which only allows one plane, and uses different angled 2D sprites as entities and objects like enemies etc.
So basically it was a 2D game that had a 3D first person perspective. But believe me, in those days people enjoyed shooting at pixelized nazis.

Wolfenstein3D won 8 RETAIL industry awards in 1992.

The first time I played Wolfenstein3D at a friend's, I was amazed. The fact that I could move freely in any direction I wanted felt awesome.
He then showed me a very early stage demo on a new game from idSoftware. It looked marvelous. I got more or less hypnotized by it.
idSoftwares' new game, which was one of the most ground breaking games ever, called Doom (Dec 1993), employed a more complex raycasting engine, allowing different light values and stairs. The step between Wolfenstein3D and Doom felt gigantic graphic-wise.

Doom was the game that brought the first person shooter-genre to where it is today with its amazing graphic, action and Netplay.

It took years before a sequel came out. Many first person shooters both came and disappeared in the 90's.
Doom2 was released in Aug 1994, but it used the very same engine, had one new weapon, some new monsters and some new textures, backgrounds and new levels. In my opinion they should have called it Doom version 1.9. But I've played it alot.
Doom has been converted to nearly every common platform.
Another type of raycasting game that drew some attention and is worth mentioning is DukeNukem3D by 3DRealms (Jan 1996).

The first real sequel with the same gory atmosphere was idSoftware's Quake (Jun 1996), which uses more realistic 3d, allowing more planes, dynamic lighting, 3d objects and entities using textured polygons.
The realism was fabulous.
Now you could start using your mouse to control the character's head to have a more flexible view of the world you encountered.
Quake is still perhaps the most played game over the Internet.
A very characteristic thing about this genre is that most people don't seem to care what story is buried deep down under all the blood and gore.

And then, in December 97, it was time for ID's next hit Quake2.

well... actually there is a story to that game too.

THE STORY

"Long shadows claw desperately away from your dusty combat boots, fueled by the relentless sun of a late Texas afternoon. Shading your eyes against the glare, you squint for the thousandth time at the line of soldiers ahead of you. It stretches on endlessly across the rubble, disappearing at last into the cool shadows of a troop carrier. Soon you'll walk up the ramp into the ship, climb into your one-man cocoon, tear through the interplanetary gateway, and smash down light-years away from the blowing sand and blasted ruins that surround the Dallas-Metro crater.

"What the hell is taking so long?!" you snarl, slamming the battered barrel of your side arm, the blaster, against your scarred palm. "I've waited long enough. Time to kick some Strogg ass!"

Slightly rocking back and forth under the sweltering August sun, you spit out of the side of your mouth, rub your eyes, and think back to the day when the wretched creatures first attacked. Like flaming meteors, their crafts pounded into the Earth and unbelievably, these bio-mechanical aliens; these hideous cyborgs; swarmed out while their ships still sizzled with reentry heat. They killed or captured anything that lived. We figured that the Strogg were after our planet's resources minerals, metals, and water things like that. But their onboard storage facilities did little to disguise what they considered to be resources fleshy limbs and organs for new cyborgs, and of course, food.

The line moves. And moves again. Into the cool shadows at last. The assembled armies branch off into new lines divided by corps and unit.

"I can't deal with this shit. What's the friggin' hold-up?"

"Cool your jets, marine," Tokay mutters and smiles over his shoulder. "We'll all get a few Strogg heads to take home as souvenirs. I promise you that."

"Yo, soldier, 3585." The medtech's voice startles you. "You in or out?" Competent hands guide you into the coffin-like opening of your Mark 9A drop pod sleek, dark, and invisible to the Stroggos defense systems. One of the techs begins to drop the reinforced pod door. "Sleep tight, soldier. You'll see sunlight in less than six and a half hours. Not our sun, mind you!"

Pitch black except for the mild glow of your video readout system in front of you. You've done this a dozen times in the sim classes. No sweat. Just a few short hours to sleep, recharge, and then; the moment of glory. But this time it's for real.

It's also time to think. You recall your first official day of training, your unit commander discussing how these damn parasites made it to Earth and other nearby colonies in the first place. By employing our best satellites and long-range scanners, we learned how they traveled light years so quickly & the Strogg used these black hole-like gateways as their highway to heaven. We still don't know if they created these rips in the fabric of space and time, or if they simply discovered them by accident. Either way, it's just like opening the door to an all-you-can-eat restaurant for these bastards. In about two hours, we'll be entering the same interstellar portals, to hit 'em where it hurts, on their own turf.

You close your eyes and relish this thought. Eventually, you nod off to the low hypnotic hum of the troop carrier.

*Crackle* ... *fzzzz* ... "Greetings to the people of the Coalition. This is Flag Admiral Crockett, speaking to you from the bridge deck of Phobos. We are entering the outer orbits of Stroggos, the alien's home system. As we had postulated, Stroggos' atmosphere is harsh but breathable. We expect to make planetfall soon. Now is the time to switch on your debriefing panel if ya need it."

"Boomer?" the voice crackles through every soldier's headset. "Drop X-ray squad in 30 on my mark. You copy?"

"Roger that!" In another pod, your sergeant snaps back. "OK boys and girls, you see the clock on your heads-up. Two demerits for anyone who up-chucks during bounce and roll!"

*Shthunk!!* Your drop pod is shot from the side of the carrier and hurtles downward. *Wheee-oooooo!* Incendiary atmosphere howls past the pod's rapidly heating shell. *Ka-WHUMP! * The pod wall suddenly buckles to your right, but stays intact. Another pod must have clipped yours on its way in. ECM didn't indicate enemy fire. Shit. Thrusters and stabilizing gyros are fading. Based on the pings, the other pods are pulling away. Below you, the large alien city roars into focus on the screen. But where are the other pods? They were there a minute ago.

Suddenly, distorted radio chatter lights up, "Mayday! Mayday! Lost all power... shielding failed... missed dz... some kind of EMP is... kzzzt... us out. We're dropping like fli... zzzzkkkzzzt". Silence. Damn! If the Strogg have electromagnetic pulse defenses and we failed to detect them, all of us are in the shitter.

That HUGE blip has to be the Big Gun. You do a slow dogleg left as your navcomp finds a place to land when all of a sudden retros kick in and propel you south.

"What the...?" Before you know it you skip across the lip of a crater and slam into a structure, a good distance away from your target. Dazed and bleeding from a head cut you toggle open the labeled arsenal bins and reach for where your gear ought to be stowed. Damn. Nothing but your sidearm. Damn again.

You leap out the crushed pod door, alone, with blaster in hand, and tear off into the room with the bittersweet stench of vengeance coursing through your veins."

THE FIRST IMPRESSION

The first thing I did after the installation was to configure the controls, assigning the actions to the same buttons as I'm used to in Quake.
The next settings I did was the video modes. OpenGL 3dfx, yes! ...640x480... Then I chose easy and entered the Stroggos system.

Now it's time for the intro that takes place in the last part of the story above.
The intro doesn't add anything that you didn't already know if you've read the story, besides adding a visual experience to it.

The feeling I got after about 4 hours of blood-spraying and joint cracking masturbation of fun was that Quake 2 is a mix between Doom and Quake.
The atmosphere in Q2 has very much in common with its sequel Q1, but Q2 is more "CyberFutureSpaceWorld" emphasized. Q1 had a more stony tombs and castle feel.

THE WEAPONS

Weapons are very important in these types of games (oh really?, ed.). I found the weapons in Q2 more realistic in their behaviour than in Quake. And whether that's good or bad is a very personal thing to decide. I think I like it this way. And for those of you who dislike it, you'll get used to them.

Here is a list of the weapons bundled with the original version.

Blaster
The standard issue rechargeable energy side-arm. It's the substitute weapon for the axe in q1. It does not require ammunition.

Shotgun
Uses shells for ammunition. The spread of the shotgun blast makes close combat more damaging, but long range attacks easier. Perfect for the less than proficient marksman.

Super Shotgun
The uncompromising big brother to the shotgun. This is my personal favorite. Very health reducing in close range combat. It eats two shells per shot, but trust me - those two shells are not wasted for nothing.

Machine Gun
Although this weapon is easy to use, its light weight allows for considerable kickback that will push your gun up. A cool feature that makes it feel more realistic. Fire in short burst until you can effectively steady your aim.

Chain Gun
This baby makes minced meat out of your enemy, but it requires an insane amount of ammunition. The long spin up and spin down time makes the chaingun most efficient for sustained attacks.

Hand Grenade
Twist the grenade to activate the fuse timer. The longer you hold an active grenade, the farther you'll throw it. Just remember to throw it at some point. Have you ever held a firecracker for too long? Well , this is worse. Throwing the hand grenade does not make a sound. Therefore the aliens can't trace it back to you.

Grenade Launcher
The grenade launcher is useful for delivering firepower into hard-to-reach areas, or clearing out potential ambushes. I do not recommend using the grenade launcher in close range combat.

Rocket Launcher
The rocket launcher delivers heavy fire power to your target. It comes in handy in long range deathmatches.

Hyper Blaster
A hyperblaster is an energy chain gun with no spin up delay. Its high rate of fire is incredibly efficient at destroying the enemy and depleting your energy cells.

Rail Gun
The rail gun fires depleted uranium slugs at super high velocities. Take note of the distinctive corkscrew trail of smoke caused by the projectile- or better yet, see how many scumbag stroggs it goes through before it hits concrete. It needs a fair bit of precalculations in net-deathmatches depending on the ping time.

BFG
Big Fucking Gun. It's a nostalgic doom revival. This weapon redefines the word "wallpaper". Simply fire the BFG into a small room of unsuspecting Stroggs and observe the new red paint job.

THE LEVELS

Q2 is divided in 9 sectors that contain from 2 up to 7 levels each. You can travel forwards and backwards through a unit's levels whenever you like to. Here you got missions to complete instead of just finding the key to the next door. You sometimes have a very helpful head up display that tells you how many goals there are on the level, plus primary and secondary objectives.

For instance, your primary objective in the first unit is to establish communication link to command ship and your secondary objective is to locate base installation elevator.

If you (like me) feel that the levels are not innovative enough, you can always create your own levels in programs like worldcraft or qoole. And don't forget to check out rust for tutorials and examples on how the editing works. Why not model your own house and make it a decent deathmatch level for you and your friends? Creating your own levels is great fun, even though it can be very frustrating when things don't work the way you want them to.
Take the time to read tutorials and check out sample maps.

In my humble opinion, the layout of the different levels could have been more varied.
But I like them. They feel very solid.

THE MULTIPLAYER

This is the really fun part of this game in which you're given three general options to define. First we have the multiplayer setup. Here you can choose name, character model, skin and handedness.

Name speaks for itself. Input your name to have other players recognize you on the net for rankings etc.

Model. This is a very cool feature in quake II which enables you to change the actual model of your character.

Download new finished models here.

Or why not make your own model, if you are handy enough with 3d modelling applications and programs.

Find tutorials on how to make your own model here.

The difference between model and skin (for those of you who don't know) is that the model is the form etc. (e.g. if you want a more alien-shaped head than a humanoid) of the player, and the skin is the graphical texture (eg. if you want the player to have a red jacket or a blue vest etc.) From the pointrelease and upwards you've got three standard "out of the box" models to choose from

1.Male
2.Female
3.Cyborg

Believe me, the grapple really enhances your playing experience.

THE WEB

Every day things happen on the q2 frontline. There's a great q2 page for news, patches, links etc. at quake2.com .

For all you cheaters out there, I've got the page for you.
Cheats, mapnames and everything a real cheater could only dream of.

A page you absolutely should visit is
id software's own homepage.

If you know what you want and just want to download files and stuff you have a huge q2 ftp library to visit at cdrom.com.

By searching altavista for "quake2", you'll get 50000+ hits.

THE 3DFX

For you who are not familiar with 3DFX, it's a standard of 3Dacceleration cards which allows all games with 3dfx-support to run much smoother and look nicer. Quake2 supports 3DFX through OpenGL API, an option you can select in the video modes option-screen. And if you ask me, its worth getting a 3dfx-card just to have Quake2 using it.

One very noticable feature when you run Q2 through a 3DFX card is that you get colored lightning. If you can read swedish and want to know more about 3DFX-specifications, I've created a 3dfx glossary which explains 3dfx features and shows pictures comparing the game with or without the card. If not, you can always visit the 3dfx homepage or my favourite page, Operation3DFX.

Check out the differences in Q2 on my own computer with and without 3DFX OpenGL enabled.

THE FACTS

Well, this is the review's 9th unit.
In the long run I love this game though it isn't perfect. But in my honest opinion, it is the best first person shooter available today.
Quake 2 is definitely a high-quality game, and with all the network-play and editing options available, the lasting of this game is as close to 100% as it possibly can get.

The only thing that will make me put away this game is when a better sequel arrives. It can be tomorrow or in two years.
It all depends on the developers out there to fill in the gaps and improve the graphics.
The only game I currently think is able to fulfil what Q2 doesn't is Unreal.
But until I've played the final release [of Unreal], I can't be sure.

There's alot more to be said about Quake2, but it would probably take me three decades to write all I know about the game.

For those of you with internet-access, it's a must-buy.
And for you who don't have access, get access.
And for you who don't want to read this whole review, at least read my next sentence

Quake2 - buy it, play it, enjoy it, adore it.

g r a p h i c s / e n g i n e
I give the graphics and engine 95/100 because they give Q2 its profile, containing very polished textures, and great low polygon 3D modelling and animations.
The game's 3D-engine is one of the best around, and I think that we are going to see more of it in future games.

s o u n d - f x
Q2's sound-effects fulfil their mission. I have nothing to complain about here.
I give the sound-effects 85 because there's really nothing special about it, neither bad nor godblessed great. Just plain good.

m u s i c
The music is hardrock-grunge-techno style. The "Quake2 theme song" is created by Rob Zombie from the not-too-unknown metal band WhiteZombie.
I think idSoftware should have made NIN soundtrack such a good game.
It's not that the soundtrack is bad in any way. It's actually much better than many other game soundtracks out there, but in my opinion I felt that Q1's soundtrack fit perfectly for this type of game.
But lets not be fastidious.
I give the music 80.
The Q2 CD contains 10 audio-tracks.

p l a y a b i l i t y
Well... as with nearly any game out there I could raise the playability rating from day to day depending on the fact that you get more and more used to it.
For me, most of the playability felt completely right from the start, even though the weapon changing system felt too slow. But then I had something to blame if some enemy showed up and shot me in the middle of a weapon change. Now I'm used to it.
Im quakeing with the keyboard and mouse on freelook. Just take your time and configure your own personal key setup, and nothing can go wrong.
96/100.

l a s t i n g
Lasting is the tricky part of this game to rate. I'll give it the high rating of 98 very much because of the net play. Even though the oneplayer game gives you many hours of entertainment, the deathmatch and ctf opportunities are what really keep me going.
New levels, patches and mission packs are released nearly every day, so even if you think netgaming is boring, there is as much a challenge as you can possiby get.

o v e r a l l
Overall 90. id have done it again. And to repeat my self a bit
Quake2 - buy it, play it, enjoy it, adore it, play ctf, adore it even more.

May the stroggs be against you!

// Andreas Lewitzki, hardcore gamer