Quake

Developer: ID
Publisher: GT Interactive
released: 22-06-1996
First Played: 23-07-2025
Last Played: 23-07-2025
Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2310/Quake/

I started playing this after watching the Bloodthief dev logs from Blargis. I had never played the game until 2025 but my dad had always said it was good and it looked well made. It holds up incredibly well for a 30 year old game, although I have been playing the updated version.

The movement is incredibly smooth, the enemy placement keeps you moving and keeps things reasonably fast paced, weapon and enemy variety is great, levels wrap around on themselves and are consistently well designed. All in all a great game. I only really got into it after playing the first episode of the base game though. I think it took a little time to get into the flow of things.

The thing that has surprised me most, is that, as one of the first fully 3d shooter games it is way better than a lot of shooters that came out after it and plays as well as many modern shooters. I think this is mostly down to hit having a relatively modern control scheme and having some great level design and movement.

Each episode gradually introduces more enemies, concepts, and weapons. These each fit incredibly well into the game as a whole. The rocket launcher is probably the most fun but they all have their uses. Weapons without AOE damage are much better in close corridors while AOE weapons are great for clearing rooms with lots of enemies. My main problem is your weapon list gets cluttered with a few weapons that are just straight upgrades of weapons you already have. This isn't a major problem just a minor annoyance when trying to find the weapon you want.

The game encourages movement by having a lot of back spawns or enemy swarms. At first this can feel a little annoying especially for someone who has come from games where slowly and methodically working your way through enemies is the best strategy. However, when you get used to this, I think it really encourages you to play the game in the most fun way. This is to keep moving all the time. By doing this you dodge enemy attacks, keep an eye on everything and don't get caught out. This keeps the action up and just makes for a fun game. The DOOM games new and old do this, which makes sense since this is by the same developers, as well as a few indie devs and Titanfall 2. Other than these this sort of movement isn't that common so I found it quite refreshing.

Level design is also fun a varied. Despite having no map markers and very few glaring indicators of where to go I rarely felt lost, and when I did it was more of a puzzle than an annoyance. There are lots of secrets to find, hidden exits and unique level features. My favourite was the wind tunnels where you jump into pipes and they fire you around but there are lots of great levels and they don't really feel repetitive anywhere. It does iterate on the level design of the DOOM games that came before it but used its new mechanics to really add to the formula.

Overall a great game that I would recommend to any fan of shooters young or old. It has aged very well and is a lot of fun. I will likely be back to try some fan made maps or replay on harder difficulties. For someone who has played some shooters hard felt like a good starting point which is what I played on.