To be upfront here, Quake II has been one of my favourite games for decades. While I often see people dismissive of it (including Dusk dev, David Szymanski) or lamenting how it just isn’t as good as id Software’s other games, I never saw it that way. To me, its 10 large, interconnected maps and rusty world represent the direction that I personally wished first-person shooters had gone instead of focusing on narrative-focused corridor crawls. The version we’ve had for years was always wonderful, but Nightdive’s new remaster not only drowns players in content but adds impressive quality-of-life changes.
As for what’s included here, the classic Quake II campaign is obviously front and center. But its two expansion packs, The Reckoning and Ground Zero are present and accounted for. Nightdive probably could have called it a day with that, but astoundingly, Quake II 64 is here. While the console version can’t quite hold a candle to its inspiration due to having (mostly) completely different levels set in a linear fashion, much like Doom, it’s still well worth playing in its own right. But the most shocking surprise is an all-new campaign featuring 28 levels by MachineGames of modern Wolfenstein fame.
On one hand, this campaign doesn’t feature the same interconnected level presentation as the main one. It’s a tightly focused linear sequence where levels have exits that directly lead to the next. But this campaign, appropriately named Call of the Machine, takes the action of Quake II and dials it up to 1000. If anything, it’s Quake II by way of Serious Sam. Levels are wall-to-wall enemy encounters where, instead of throwing a few foes at you at once, you’re swarmed with the buggers. The campaign makes this clear early on when you’re immediately given a BFG and confronted with a room full of enemies.
“…This campaign, appropriately named Call of the Machine, takes the action of Quake II and dials it up to 1000.”
It doesn’t let up, either. It uses the building blocks of one of my favourite games to construct one of the most intense FPS experiences I’ve seen in some time. It’s honestly worth the price of admission alone despite being alongside a ton of already fantastic content. On top of that are the little adjustments that make playing the overall game that much nicer. Both weapons and items are now on wheels that slow down time, making swapping between whatever you want a cinch. One thing that always irked me about the original was how item usage was set up.
Of course, the improvements don’t stop there. The item wheel has a compass feature that draws a line to your next objective. This is such a fantastic addition due to how easy it is to get lost or confused in the main campaign. Guns now have muzzle flashes too. While the game always had some of the flashiest rapid-fire weapons in the genre, the machine gun and chaingun now don’t feature rapidly flashing lights as you fire them, which makes them so much better to use. Instead, a light stays on as long as they’re fired. When enemies use them, the lights still flash, but that’s not a big deal since the guns aren’t right in your face.
Speaking of enemies, enemy AI has been overhauled to be tougher and significantly less stupid. Flying enemies have also seen their pathing improved. New enemies have also been added and some existing ones even have new attacks. The only issue I have with this remaster of Quake II is simply that the new models, textures, and ray tracing from the RTX version are all sadly absent. Regardless of that, though, this is the best the game has ever been, and I’m very happy that one of my old favourites has gotten even better all these years later.
