Wow! What a pleasant surprise this was! After I hated Machine Games last Quake Expansion, I had no hope going in for this one. However, this turned out totally different than Dimension of the Past.
Unlike DotP, with it's bog standard been there done that approach to Quake, Dimension of the Machine takes Quake and pushes the engine to its breaking point, with a radically different art direction, puzzles and combat encounters.
My main problem with vanilla Quake is how most of the game feels samey. Every other level in Quake seems to be a brown castle or brown techbase. DotM has you trawling thru green sewers, upside down white cathedrals, fire-y red temples, and even platforming through asteroids with a lovely purple skybox! It's a breath of the fresh air!
The combat encounters are killer as well! Unlike in MG's last expansion, they don't carelessly throw hordes of Knights at you, rather every enemy is carefully and deliberately placed! I didn't even mind fighting the knights in this episode and I normally hate fighting them. That's how well they're used.
Unfortunately, DotM isn't perfect. The second level of the 3rd episode has a gauntlet filled with instadeath traps (my least favorite design trope in Quake at this point) which is pretty obnoxious.
The worst moment is, sadly, the final boss, which is absolutely miserable to play. The whole fight revolves around waiting for Thunderbolt ammo to respawn so you can actually fight the final boss as that's the only thing that hurts him. This means most of the fight is either waiting for ammo to respawn, or waiting at a loading screen because the boss killed you in one hit. (The boss does a ton of damage and I basically had to save and reload alot because I quickly ran out of health). There's just so much waiting around to actually play. The fight is truly a boring and tedious slog and an absolutely awful note to end on what was otherwise a top-tier quake expansion. What a shame.
Final battle aside, this is still the very best of official Quake 1 content.
Unlike DotP, with it's bog standard been there done that approach to Quake, Dimension of the Machine takes Quake and pushes the engine to its breaking point, with a radically different art direction, puzzles and combat encounters.
My main problem with vanilla Quake is how most of the game feels samey. Every other level in Quake seems to be a brown castle or brown techbase. DotM has you trawling thru green sewers, upside down white cathedrals, fire-y red temples, and even platforming through asteroids with a lovely purple skybox! It's a breath of the fresh air!
The combat encounters are killer as well! Unlike in MG's last expansion, they don't carelessly throw hordes of Knights at you, rather every enemy is carefully and deliberately placed! I didn't even mind fighting the knights in this episode and I normally hate fighting them. That's how well they're used.
Unfortunately, DotM isn't perfect. The second level of the 3rd episode has a gauntlet filled with instadeath traps (my least favorite design trope in Quake at this point) which is pretty obnoxious.
The worst moment is, sadly, the final boss, which is absolutely miserable to play. The whole fight revolves around waiting for Thunderbolt ammo to respawn so you can actually fight the final boss as that's the only thing that hurts him. This means most of the fight is either waiting for ammo to respawn, or waiting at a loading screen because the boss killed you in one hit. (The boss does a ton of damage and I basically had to save and reload alot because I quickly ran out of health). There's just so much waiting around to actually play. The fight is truly a boring and tedious slog and an absolutely awful note to end on what was otherwise a top-tier quake expansion. What a shame.
Final battle aside, this is still the very best of official Quake 1 content.