Game:

Quake (1996)

Duration: 5:25:16

171 views

6

Original stream date: 05/28/2024

Uploading VODs a bit out of order again, ye

So yeah, I think if I had to rate this I'd have to rate it in two ways. Visually it's easily a 5/5, all the levels look great visually. The gameplay of the pack varies between a 4/5 and a 2.5/5 (If I rated it as a whole package it'd probably end up somewhere around a 3.5/5, which doesn't really sit right with me which is why I'm doing it this way).

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General thoughts in text form:

The ambient music was fine, didn't really pay attention to it for the most part but y'know.

The time slow powerup, even if it is just the catnip from Postal 2, probably would've been really neat if it came up more often.

The new shotgun was really good, basically everything I wanted the Dwell shotgun to be. Still wish the max ammo stack for shells had been increased a bit but it's fine.

The railgun was weird. Damage was high, ammo consumption seemed fair I guess, but it seemed to have an odd tendency to just miss for no reason, and there was basically no ammo for it.

The chaingun weapon was alright I guess. Damage seemed fine, I didn't really like the wind-up before attacking (but tbh I don't really like Quake 2's chaingun either, so yeah), and ammo for it seemed really sporadic so it was kind of hard to justify using it over the Nailgun in a lot of situations.

. . .

The chaingunner enemy was fine, I appreciate that it didn't seem to have 100% accuracy on the player.

The spike enemy was pretty alright, it's basically a Spike Ogre, but the general usage of it felt extremely cheap (mostly the point-blank spawns and hiding it right around corners).

I did not like the disciple (think that's the flying guy with the lightning orb). I don't know if I ever had an encounter in here where I felt like it was actually fun to fight, and it effectively ruined the ending fight of Map 5 due to the sheer number of them.

. . .

Maps 1-3 were really good, great even. Very strong start to the pack. My only real issue is that you can softlock in map 1 by jumping off the lighthouse, seems like a weird oversight.

Map 4 was a royal pain in the rear to navigate. It is a very large and deceptively labyrinthine layout, not helped by the general lack of ammo and armor, lack of signage (IMO routes that go back to the staircase should've been signposted as such, and there should've been more signs pointing to the actual exit), areas just generally looking the same as each other, the extremely finnicky button at the exit (should be poking out a bit more so the player can actually hit it at that angle), and some of the meanest monster placement in the entire pack.

I'm pretty sure the secret exit was in map 4 because I do remember there being a silver key locked behind a forcefield, with a silver key door in a secret, but I honestly couldn't be bothered trying to navigate this level to figure that out. Map 4 was probably my least favorite map in the pack from the ones I played.

Map 5 was mostly fine. The map does have a box softlock (right at the start of the level), and there are some bits toward the end felt extremely mean and unfair (notably the section with the ring where you kinda just have to avoid everything and try to blitz through it, and the final fight with all the lightning spammers, as mentioned above, that could've been easily toned down a bit).

. . .

The final boss of the pack was extremely frustrating. The arena itself looks good, but it was really hard to walk around, as I kept getting caught on random geometry. Combine that with the boss having an instakill arch-vile gimmick for a random attack and it becomes a ridiculously tedious RNG fest.

The third phase, however, was abysmal. The sheer volume of projectile vomit in that phase, in tandem with the eyeballs being extremely tedious to destroy effectively ruined what would've been an alright ending to the fight. Can't remember if I still had the time slow powerup available or if I used it in phase 2, but even if I did have it I don't think it would've helped that much, and might've actually made phase 3 worse if I did use it.

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Timestamps:
0:00 - The Shape of Things To Come (start)
5:59 - The Shores of Non-Existence
46:13 - Sleepwalking Through Mud
1:20:32 - No Rot In The Cold
2:04:45 - Dissection of A Concrete Body (Entrance B)
3:30:51 - His Still-Breathing Corpse
4:43:06 - Her Throne, Now Mine
5:17:23 - End

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