DOOMATHON entry #12/20
List: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Mariofan717/list/doom--quake-campaigns-ranked/
An interestingly oddity that's thankfully been preserved for a modern audience in Nightdive's remaster, even having the honor of being listed among Quake 2's other campaigns despite being a markedly different experience. This port sits somewhere between Doom 64 and my understanding of the PS1 port of Doom; all of the content here is exclusive to this version, but it's also a conversion at its core rather than an outright new game.
Due to hardware limitations, this campaign consists entirely of brief, disconnected levels that are much more linear than anything that's come before in this marathon and sometimes even feature distinctive gimmicks seen nowhere else in Quake 2, such as icy surfaces. The bite-sized nature of these levels prevents most of them from being as memorable as the mazes of Quake 2's predecessors despite keeping the pace brisk for the entirety of its mere two-hour duration.
The heavy use of colored lighting along with the N64's characteristic texture filtering give this port a much appreciated distinctly vibrant look, while Aubrey Hodges's dark ambient soundtrack frankly feels misplaced here. A new soundtrack certainly wasn't a bad call given that I so heavily associate Sonic Mayhem's rip-roaring metal tunes with the overwhelming brown industrial aesthetic of the original game; this version, however, simply doesn't have a strong enough identity to warrant such a radically different soundscape. Doom 64's aesthetic works because every aspect of the game works in tandem to instill a sense of dread, while Quake 2 64 is still ostensibly more Quake 2. Given the length, there's really no reason at all to pass this up as opposed to the overlong mission packs, even if I don't think it's as cohesive as it could have been.
Cross-posted on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mariofan717/status/1755533823021101231
List: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Mariofan717/list/doom--quake-campaigns-ranked/
An interestingly oddity that's thankfully been preserved for a modern audience in Nightdive's remaster, even having the honor of being listed among Quake 2's other campaigns despite being a markedly different experience. This port sits somewhere between Doom 64 and my understanding of the PS1 port of Doom; all of the content here is exclusive to this version, but it's also a conversion at its core rather than an outright new game.
Due to hardware limitations, this campaign consists entirely of brief, disconnected levels that are much more linear than anything that's come before in this marathon and sometimes even feature distinctive gimmicks seen nowhere else in Quake 2, such as icy surfaces. The bite-sized nature of these levels prevents most of them from being as memorable as the mazes of Quake 2's predecessors despite keeping the pace brisk for the entirety of its mere two-hour duration.
The heavy use of colored lighting along with the N64's characteristic texture filtering give this port a much appreciated distinctly vibrant look, while Aubrey Hodges's dark ambient soundtrack frankly feels misplaced here. A new soundtrack certainly wasn't a bad call given that I so heavily associate Sonic Mayhem's rip-roaring metal tunes with the overwhelming brown industrial aesthetic of the original game; this version, however, simply doesn't have a strong enough identity to warrant such a radically different soundscape. Doom 64's aesthetic works because every aspect of the game works in tandem to instill a sense of dread, while Quake 2 64 is still ostensibly more Quake 2. Given the length, there's really no reason at all to pass this up as opposed to the overlong mission packs, even if I don't think it's as cohesive as it could have been.
Cross-posted on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mariofan717/status/1755533823021101231