Quake II - Enhanced Edition

I can Always come back to this game, with timeless gameplay, balanced weapons and great levels.

Q2 was first Quake I've ever played. I had a demo disc. At the time it was visually ground breaking game. I only had P133 with no accelerator card, so I run it in 360. But after the demo my mates and I started playing Q2 deathmatches at Internet Caffee's for over a year and a half ( and depending on the machine in 640 or 800! ), and that was best part of this game. BUT I can't tell you exactly when I've played full Q2 campaign for the first time - I think it was around the time I've got Voodoo 1 but I've got to a certain point and didn't complete it. Certainly I've completed it a decade later when I've got my hands on the full game disc at a second hand store. Regardless, that's the problem with this game's SP campaign: it's forgettable. Not only forgettable, but already few maps in it starts dragging. It felt exactly the same playing it all those years ago as I am feeling right now about it. It's hard to put finger on what it exactly is: is it a map layouts? Connected levels? Enemy placement? Environment design? Weak weapon impact? Maybe it is a combination of all of these elements. The level layout just doesn't stick, and everything feels samy. Enemies placement feels like a pattern. Got to say, first time I've played Q1 was after playing Q2, and although visually poorer, the level layouts are much more memorable, weapons feel stronger, enemies placement seams more thought-out, and in general Q1 feels like a much more precise design, even thought creating it was probably much more hectic. Although the soundtrack in this one still rocks socks off ( crank that volume knob up! ) The Enhancement looks really cool. Added new effects and lightening make it much more atmospheric, there are 2 og expansions plus brand new one, and N64 port, which is a very nice package and a job well done. But because the game itself just isn't that great I am giving it a fair score of 6. For anyone who never played it, it's worth getting it at current price to experience it and make up their own mind.

PC version crashes quite a bit at the moment. Here's hoping there will be patches for stability... otherwise my PS5 review transfers over here.

The other red reviews are definitely trolling (if you couldn't tell) but I assure you this remaster is mediocre at best. As usual, NDS couldn't help but take license with everything like they've ever designed a decent game in their lives, and as such the railgun damage was reduced by 1/3, enemy behaviors that were cut for quality reasons were re-introduced like that's a good thing, menus are tacked on like always, they just had to go and mess with nightmare-difficulty balance, and so on. The KEX engine renders everything as competently as the other source ports, which is to say there's no reason not to play the other source ports, and accessibility options may be helpful for a tiny minority of the tiny minority that are even going to play this. Four points for not being a total travesty at release like the Quake KEX port.

As an old-school gamer (get off my lawn! lol) it is disappointing to find out that this is actually Quake 2, the second game in the Quake trilogy, and not Quake 4 the best one. It's a very ugly game from the 90s but it looks like a Playstation graphics which is an immediate "thumbs down" even for a fan of retro games like me. The art direction is basically like if James Carmack said: "make everything brown and then light it with the most garish colors and particle effects you can find... pronto!" The music was pretty cool though it was on the CD-ROM and you could put it in any stereo to play it, though since this is a digital download I guess you can't do that. but it's probably on you tube