Review by: Brian Clair

Well gang, you’ve been waiting for it for many months but finally Quake is here. Enter the world where evil becomes reality and horror is life and suddenly you’ve become one with the nightmarish world of Quake. You start the game in medium sized chamber with 3 paths before you, each with a glimmering portal at the end. Depending on which one you take, the difficulty of the game is decided between easy, normal, and difficult (the difference being how many monsters there are). Now, since I know this is the first question on many of your minds, let me just ask and answer it. “How are the graphics in Quake? Are they better than Duke Nukem 3D?” To answer let me just say, “You will spooge as advertised.”

Graphics in Quake range from low resolution VGA graphics to high resolution SVGA resolution. This and many other of the games higher functions can be changed via the console which made it’s first appearance in the Quake Test (it’s much more refined and responsive now though). In fact, at maximum resolution, my computer slowed down noticably (not enough to make the game unplayable, but you get better performance at slightly lower resolution with no degradation of graphics). Please note here, you must have a Pentium processor (or Pentium Pro) to run Quake (according to id). However, others have told me that they got the game to run fairly well under high speed 486 systems in VGA mode. There may be no exceptions for SVGA mode though as idSoftware built Quake around the Pentium processor and it’s floating point processor (32-bit action at its finest). Oh, I almost forgot to answer that second question above, yes, Quake does make Duke Nukem 3D a 2nd place finisher in the way of graphics (sorry DN3D guys, you made a great game but id has outdone you here). However, Quake isn’t the awe-inspiring game that id promised either as it lacks many of the engine and graphics improvements which they promised.

Gameplay is slightly different from DOOM 2 or even Hexen. This new game engine allows for much more refined control using the keyboard, mouse, etc. Even your soundcard is setup automatically when you run the game (as long as you have the proper environment variables setup on your Soundblaster — the game only supports Soundblaster or 100% compatible cards (in version .91). You can configure the keyboard to any keys you desire and the game will also keep it’s defaults, so that you can use either. In fact, you can change the games video mode during gameplay with no graphical errors or flickers.

Monsters in Quake look great! Creatures are very highly detailed right down to facial hair on the humans and move in very realistic fashion. When you shoot them they wince and act out where they got hit, unless you’re using the shotgun — it’s pretty much a pellet spray of death. There is also armour in this game which looks not only cool, but can seriously save your hide in a firefight! As in DOOM games, Quake also contains boxes of healing and various ammo boxes filled with the stuff you need to kick some major booty! There are several weapons in the game, the most notable (because I found them first, not necessarily cause they’re the best) are the ax (yes, for hacking your enemies down), the nailgun (very lethal), and the double-barreled shotgun (double your pleasure with 2 barrels of pellet filled death).

Many of you and others on the Net have played Quake and decided that it sucked and that you hated it (and then you wrote me to complain). However, many of you who have written seem to have not read how we judge games via our page. We don’t rate games on what they lack, don’t let you do, or if they are missing what they were supposed to have — we rate them on what they do let you do and how well they let you do it. Many of you seem to have thought Quake was going to have exactly the same elements of Duke Nukem 3D. What would have been the point of that? Others have stated that Quake sucks because it’s a DOOM clone with better graphics — at least this may be a valid argument.