Why Quake?

[SantaClaws]

Great observation, Amon26. I had thought much along the same lines with movies and writing in the past, but I had never connected that with why I liked Quake so much. It's very true.

One other thing: as far as Quake's environment and consistency goes, ironically the Quake palette does a lot to make custom maps, both deathmatch and single player, consistent to the environment. You don't see too many heinous Quake maps that use colors that don't look the part as a result.

*Very* true. One thing I've always felt slight annoyance at was the fact that many of the retexturing projects and colored lighting sets stray from this palette. You end up with a kaleidoscope of colors that boggles the mind, and rarely gives the same feeling of consistency that Quake is so good at. I always end up going back to normal lighting and the original textures because of it.

[flay]

Well quakes kind of been part of my life now for 10 years, off course i dont play the same levels every night over and over but who would, it gets boring.

Ive been a Q3A online man for many years but am now returning to my roots and have missed quite a bit....joequake,ctf,etc etc.
It's time for me to brush up on the latest quake moods, so i dont sound like a noob..

But in answer to your question quake was there for me during the late teenage years and defined my darkside.

[Tyrann]

Quake just has such a strong atmosphere and everything fits together beautifully. Surfaces are all corroded, rusted or oxidized so everything feels _old_. The sounds are all nice and gritty to match - smack your (trusty) rusty old axe against the wall and it gives a nice 'clink', not some clean metallic 'ping'. The monsters have blood stained skin/fur - parts of the environment have their own blood stains as well. It's all dirty, gritty, consistent and fantastic.

Add to that an (almost) unlimited supply of custom maps and mods and you've got a game that will never die.

[mikeTOOtall]

Quite frankly, I just love the simplicity of the game. The fast paced multiplayer DM always kept me coming back for more. Just throw me in DM6 with a rocket launcher, some rockets, a red armor and a bloodthirsty opponent and i'm good to go!

[Monster]

Yep, I also love the atmosphere and its single player capabilities.

This MIKETOOTALL guy is good, I fought him in Practice Mode, and it was very difficult. I cannot remember what the final score was, but it was pretty close. And he says he is "rusty". UH OH!!

[SIR GUY]

sounds,graphics,atmosphere,PLAYABILITY,rawness.i cant wait to munch a space cake and get in tae a good session one evening,i have waited so long to find and get this game working....and it runs on this piece of crap slow p.c. my mate gave me for hee haw,yessss bring it on, quake hath found me.....................

[Shok]

Community, joking around with the guys, making stupid nonsense comments and playing DM3 repetitively.

I TOO TIRED TO WRITE
KTHNXGG

[Hazza]

I'm sort of repeating but....

-Art style and setting is totally awesome. The only game with a more surrealistic (yet strangely logical) art and atmosphere is a multiplayer game of the same name. Plus, there is a sense of roughness- the castles look mean and not prissy.

-Monsters are the absolute pinnacle of abstract and scary. A shaggy, eyeless brute with blood-stained claws and a massive mouth for a head takes the cake. Also, they mix a diverse style. Half-Life is the only other game in existence that has such imaginative creatures- yet Quake has the extra charm of being able to bend multiple genres.

-Enemies all function differently. Sadly, let's face it, almost every game in existence the enemies do roughly the same thing and you can copy the exact same basic tactic (Quake 2, they're all slow point-and-shoot monsters- jump out, blast, and hide). The only exceptions are Serious Sam and Half-Life. Bouncy grenades, bouncy BODIES, charges like a bull and LEAPS- all in one game.

-In other words, MASSIVE gameplay even down to the simplest level.

-More flexible in every way. Including in themes.

-WAY more imaginative mods- anchored for gameplay; Like, 99.99 percent of weapons mods install crazy new features that still maintain a challenge; Weapon mods in other games are staggeringly unambitious (like, vague ammo capacity tweaks). And that's not even the begginning. Plus there isn't such a massive push to mimic WW2, Zombie survival or something that at least 200 other people are doing at the same time.

[Panix]

Someone necro'd this thread but......

Because it has Gibs.

I got work but one of the reasons I play q1 still is when I've tried playing like Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Quake 3, they make me motion sick playing for lengths of time. Quake 1 doesn't.

[lennox]

Formerly because it was fun to play, now its just meh. The fact that people still use cheats in a game that is almost 15 years old is pathetic, thats why i havent played in months.

[Dreadlorde]

Formerly because it was fun to play, now its just meh. The fact that people still use cheats in a game that is almost 15 years old is pathetic, thats why i havent played in months.

You need to pick some new servers to play on then or play SP more.

[Samus_Aran]

You need to pick some new servers to play on then or play SP more.

Or play coop with close friends, as I do!

My reasons for playing Quake for fifteen years are that I absolutely love the atmosphere. I can still get startled by a fiend leaping at me, or running into the butt of a Shambler who is facing the other way. The creatures in Quake are just epic. The weapons are quite nice, though I personally prefered the Doom style double-shotgun that does more damage but takes longer to reload. Trent Reznor's sound effects add soooooo much to the game (he's my favourite musician as well).

The main thing that lets me keep playing is I don't do things which are ultra-repetitive, I don't do DeathMatch, I don't even do SP. I only do coop with friends, and each time we work our way through a new level. I've played hundreds of fan-made levels in coop mode with my friends. Some are just average, others are truly astounding, putting the real Q1 levels to shame. And the more levels we play, the more I realise just how many levels we *haven't* played. There are thousands of levels out there! And more and more are still being produced. I doubt I'll ever be able to play through the majority of Q1 levels, simply due to lack of free time.

I also am a mapper, though I have yet to release anything. I used Qoole in the late 90s and have tried numerous other level editors since then, all of which had critical problems which prevented me from getting anything useful done. Just a few days ago I have started with WorldCraft 3.3, and it is looking like it will be good... I hope. I noticed that many of the top mappers used this level editor, so I figured I should get around to trying it. In the late 90s I was going to try it out, but it was a limited shareware, which annoyed me. It seems to be freeware now. I've tried at least 20 different level editors over the years, including QuArK and GtkRadiant. I use the GNU+Linux OS currently, so would have prefered a native editor (GtkRadiant), but it is just too lacking to be used as a Q1 editor (no ability to create cylinders, spheres, etc.)

After all these years, I still love grabbing a Quad Damage power-up and double-shotgunning my way through a hectic room of monsters, fiends and soldiers exploding, shamblers collapsing to the floor, nails pinging off the walls, grenades exploding... and then the silence after the fight, you have survived! Quake is beautiful chaos.

I should also mention that Quake perfectly matches the feeling of dreams which I had been having for at least a decade before I played Quake the first time -- dreams wherein I am fighting to stay alive, with something trying to kill me. It could be anything, a demon, someone in a business suit, some invisible predator, military special ops, animals, skeletons, zombies, a lunatic with a butcher knife, etc. etc. and the settings were also quite diverse: a large highrise building on a bright sunny day, nearly pitch-black dense forest with gnarly roots everywhere, rocky cliffs above a rough ocean, surreal maze world like in the movie Cube or a video game, etc. etc.

I have almost never found nightmares to be a bad thing, to quote a NIN remix song title: "My Favorite Dreams Are Nightmares". I love these survival dreams, they are intense, they are "being alive" while being asleep. After about 15 years of these being pretty much my only dreams, they stopped. I miss them now, but they were a big part of my life.

Anyhow, Quake sort of epitomises that dark, grim, survival instinct in a video game. Usually you can creep along and avoid the bad situations, find secrets and protect yourself with items... but then you get into the chaos and must think fast, staying alive.

DeathMatch is utterly dull to me, as there is no penalty to dying, no itensity, just robotic repetition.

When I play Quake, I play it to avoid dying. That's why coop or SP are still fun after all these years.

[MaraST78]

One thing I've always felt slight annoyance at was the fact that many of the retexturing projects and colored lighting sets stray from this palette. You end up with a kaleidoscope of colors that boggles the mind, and rarely gives the same feeling of consistency that Quake is so good at. I always end up going back to normal lighting and the original textures because of it.

Precisely.

It's maybe 14 days I rediscovered Q again, dl'ing mods, maps and engines. And new textures and models. Ok, after seeing Rygel's pack in DP for the first time, it was simply stunning. And parallax mapping is looking ultra great. But vanilla Q models were not fitting, so I got Fragger's skins too. I was enjoying it for a while, till I got to the point where I felt that something is not right. It looks superb cool, but it's not Quake. So I went back to the default models and textures, "to get Quake back".

Don't take me wrong, I can hardly imagine the amounts of work and time invested in similar projects. It's just that I like the default more.

Well, there is one thing I don't like about default powerups. They're too bright and colors have too much saturation. So I got one powerups skin pack from web (very faithful one), resized, darkened and lowered color saturation, so that they fit the Q world much better. I'm 100% happy.

So "why Quake?"
Yesterday I finished Rapture in night. That's only one of those amazing mods available and I was almost blown away by it. That's another reason why I play Quake again. It's sooo extensible, with so many great alternative, atmospheric worlds available!

Quake just rulez.

[golden_boy]

As a basis to create a new basis to make something cool.

[Pegasus]

In my opinion, quake is the best game ever made.

Reasons:

1: It was the first game to implement a truly 3D world (as far as I know...). Hexen came close, but not quite.

2: You can modify the game to do literally anything (don't belive me? take one look at Qrack, Darkplaces or ProQuake).

3: Quake is the only game (besides doom) which HAS been modified to do just about anything.

4: We've got Single play, Co-op, Deathmatch, team deathmatch, CTF, survival, invasion, runequake, rocket arena, etc, etc, etc; assuming you have the time to download/install the mods, you can never get bored of quake.

5: Besides doom, it's the only game (that i've heard of) more than 10 years old which is still actively played online.

6: Except when I try to go inside the shub-niggurath using noclip, the game has never crashed on me.

7: The atmosphere still awes me. Despite having played through the game countless times, traps involving shamblers still scare the sh** out of me.

8: I simply never get bored of quake (or doom, but i prefer quake in every way).