"Lets make some giblets."

There are some things that all humans crave in life. Food, Water, Love, and the need to blow up other people into small pieces of smoldering flesh. Luckily the human desire to do this has been withheld...until now. In 1996 ID software released Quake. Although they didnt know it, it would spawn 2 sequels, 2 add-on packs and countless mods off the internet. You could think of Quake as the follow up to Doom. They are both First Person Shooters and both made by the company. Quake however was much much better than Quake. Firstly Quake gave us the option to look up and down. Ok so it doenst sound like the latest thing but it did add a new dimension to gameplay rather than just getting a monster in your horizontal line of site. It also marked the first serious first person shooter to be widley playable online. So much were people hooked on this great game that they created clans and started to fight it out with each other.

Graphics
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The goodness of Quakes graphics rely on one thing only. Your computer. If youve got a really old pentium 100 with no graphics card you will be able to run it but it will be at its lowest resolution and look rather grim. If on the other hand you have the latest P3 1000 with 256 meg of ram and a Voodoo 3 then you will easily be able to make it look better than such games a Half Life or Soldier of Fortune. The monsters themselves are rather good. If a bit crappy looking on the lowest resolution they still do the job of making you jump out of your seat when you turn the corner and see a ogre pointing a chainsaw in your face. The landscapes however get more than a little repetitive after the 3rd level as its mostly the same Military Base style backdrops but it can be forgiven because beleive me you wont be focuing on the walls but instead the colour of your underwear.

Sound
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Grrrr said the ogre around the corner. I could hear his chainsaw humming away and the clink of his grenades banging against each other. I held my shotgun close to my chest as i heard the ogres footsteps coming closer. I suddenly jamp round the corner, the ogre screamed a hellish curse on my sould as he saw me and charged forward his chainsaw aimed at my jugual. One blast with my shotgun, the sound nearly bursting my eardrums and the evil creature was no more its scream slowly dying as blood leaked from its head.

The best way i can describe the sound in Quake is hot dang. Like any part horror game (resident evil, silent hill) the sound can be a very enchating and plot leading part of the story. And it is in Quake. You hear the music speed up a few beats so without being able to stop it you start walking more slowly in case a creature jumps out at you. The sound is great.

Gameplay
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Not much to say here. You see a monster and you shoot it. You see a switch and you run into it. You see some health and you pick it up. Repeat to fade but for some reason you still cant stop.

Overall
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A very very good purchase considering i picked up the 2 add on packs and the original for about £7 (about $4). One thing that you can become very engrossed in is the multiplayer mode which is the best thing since sliced bread. The problem is that there are people out there who have been playing quake online since 1996 and are as such very very good at it. So buy it for a couple of months of fun both multiplayer and single.

9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/12/00, Updated 11/12/00