I have been thinking a lot about this game as I've played through it, and I have to say: I don't think this game encompasses anything I liked about Quake 1.
Quake was a messy, duct taped together thing that brought gaming into 3d and somehow it still feels unique and mostly really well designed to this day when it comes to enemy and weapon balance. It also mostly has really good level design outside of the elder world, which while a step down from the rest is never truly bad. Here, everything just feels like it took the wrong ideas from Quake. The cool atmosphere, constantly changing scenery, enemy variety, weapon balance, all just kinda gone for the bland future aesthetic that Quake 1 was quick to shuffle you out of to get to the weird and fantastical stuff that felt at odds with what games like DOOM had conditioned people to expect from FPS games. Quake 2, meanwhile feels like its just trying to be a 3d DOOM 2 with worse enemy types and weak weapons rather than something truly like Quake. This game just feels so much more bland than a game following up Quake 1 should in any capacity in my opinion and it felt really disappointing playing through it.
3/10
Quake was a messy, duct taped together thing that brought gaming into 3d and somehow it still feels unique and mostly really well designed to this day when it comes to enemy and weapon balance. It also mostly has really good level design outside of the elder world, which while a step down from the rest is never truly bad. Here, everything just feels like it took the wrong ideas from Quake. The cool atmosphere, constantly changing scenery, enemy variety, weapon balance, all just kinda gone for the bland future aesthetic that Quake 1 was quick to shuffle you out of to get to the weird and fantastical stuff that felt at odds with what games like DOOM had conditioned people to expect from FPS games. Quake 2, meanwhile feels like its just trying to be a 3d DOOM 2 with worse enemy types and weak weapons rather than something truly like Quake. This game just feels so much more bland than a game following up Quake 1 should in any capacity in my opinion and it felt really disappointing playing through it.
3/10