Quake

"Mmm, mmm, blur!"

Quake64 6\10

You walk into the corridor. The moan of some mutated beast echoes down the hall. You hear the revving of a chainsaw, and spin around. Directly behind you lumbers a giant ogre, pale, moaning, twice your height. You back up, its chainsaw barely missing your flesh. It motions to fire grenades at you, but before it can pull off a shot you pummel two rockets into its chest. Moaning, it collapses into a heap upon the ground, blood flying everywhere. A panel suddenly opens on your left, and a horde of zombie-knights, pale in the red light, advance toward you, swords drawn. You retreat around the corner and draw your grenade launcher. The grenade ricochets off the wall and into the advancing battalion of swordsmen. In a loud explosion they become arms, legs, and blood, staining the walls and lying in corners.

Unfortunately, moments like this, where the true atmosphere (or the intended one) of the game is shown, are rare. The biggest, tensest moments are spread apart by boring cliched ones. The gameplay consists almost fully of key-collecting and switch-pressing. There's secret areas, but little reason to find them. The problem with the gameplay is that it's the same thing every time. The hardest enemies and strongest weapons are introduced early in the game, taking any surprise out of the next bend, or down the long, seemingly empty corridor. You can almost always deal with whatever comes your way. This is not to say that Quake is easy. At times, and especially in the higher difficulty settings, it is quite challenging. Sometimes it's easy, too, but it's fairly well-balanced overall. The problem is, there's no (follow me here, read this slowly) 'Oh my God, what is that thing?!' aspect. It consists of 'Oh, a brute *blamblam* Hmm, an Ogre *Blamblam* Freaky flying thing *dootdootdootdoot*'. Cheesy sound effects may or may not be included, depending on if you're playing with your little, hyperactive brother.

The weapons aren't much better. There's single and double-barreled shotguns, nailguns (but no boards to nail), rocket and grenade launchers, an ax, and a weird electrical shocky-thingy (not a cattle-prod, but a gun - the LIGHTNING GUN!). All are horribly cliched, andthey're introduced early. There's not much to say about them. There are no alt-fires, no interesting statements I can make about them. They shoot. That's about it.

The ambient background music is creepy, setting a mood and making the player tense. It's probably safe to say that the music is the eeriest element. In fact, the game is a lot worse without the background tunes (really more like ambient horror-stuff) playing.

It may seem odd that a game hinges so heavily on music, but is perfectly natural for Quake. The music is one of the few above-average elements in the cartridge. Without the background music the game becomes hardly worth playing - the gothic, ambient themes set the stage and mood for the horror and desperation of the game.

As well as the soundtrack portrays the mood, the graphics don't. They're blurry, and, well, bland. The models, while in 3d, are blockier than a bucket of LEGOs poured on the original Gameboy playing Tetris. You have the option of turning the anti-aliasing off, which removes the blur. Oh, yeah, did I mention the blur? You haven't seen blurry graphics until you've played Quakes64. Everything kind of blurs into each other, which doesn't look good, hurts the eyes, and just doesn't add to the atmosphere. Well, if you turn the anti-aliasing off, you can see why the graphics are blurred. Everything shows its blockiness. Watch out, those polys might poke your eye out if you're not careful. Whether on or off, either way you lose.

The game is dark, with brown being the dominant texture. However, you can actually see the screen, compared to other games *coughHereticcough*. Usually you can see rather well, but everything's just monotonous. There's no beautiful Unreal landscapes here. Most levels are inside, and the outside ones are blocked off, making them more like courtyards. The palatte never really changes, with everything looking the color of poo, which I suppose was the desired effect, because the enemies are white, red, etc., so I suppose, had they intended to, they could have added life to the levels. Sometimes the architecture is well done, but usually everything's composed of squares stuck next to each other, or archs, but no beautiful pillars, and most interesting architecture has been removed from the PC-N64 conversion. Which brings up a point. Did they really run out of space on the cartridge? The world will never know. I'll give ID credit, though, the torches look nice, but the addition of colored lighting seems overused. I don't believe that water actually casts blue light on walls in real life, but it does in the game.

The biggest issue is that the graphics only detract from the game, and they do so heavily. It's hard to feel excited or scared when your attention is focused on trying to decipher the difference between a wall and a brute. The gray and brown, combined with a low TV resolution and the aforementioned anti-aliasing, simply blur together. Deathmatch was included, but it lacks the online fun and mods of the PC version. Finding each other is a feat in itself, since the levels are large and spotting each other is nigh impossible. Goldeneye and Perfect Dark offer better multiplayer modes with a varied weapon selection and well-designed levels, not to mention a better singleplayer modes.

There isn't much of a story, and the game rarely touches it. In fact, you only learn what the story is after the first part (there's three). It updates it after each part, but if you're playing Quake, you're probably not the type that would care, anyhow.

Quake is only a mediocre experience. It waxes boring after a while, with repetitive gameplay and enemies. If you haven't played the PC version, or want four-player deathmatch without the internet, then it's worth looking into Quake64, if only for the nostalgia factor and if you can't find the PC version. The PC Quakers will probably want to stay away or just give the thing a rental. The graphics are horribly sub-par, as is the gameplay, and the only part that really excels is the music. This isn't to say that Quake is bad, it's just not the best FPS experience you can get on the N64. Its flaws mainly exist in its lack of decent, clear graphics and an unoriginality that permeates the entire experience. There are no interesting secrets (the secret areas contain extra health, ammo or armor), and there's no real reason to play it past the first episode. So long, and happy fraggin'.

Quake64 Technical Breakdown:
Story: NA/10
Graphics: 3/10
Music: 9/10
Sound: 7/10
Gameplay: 6/10
Multiplayer: 4/10
Replayability: 2/10
Technical Average: 5.167
Reviewer's Score: 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/18/03, Updated 01/26/05