What do you think is best and worst about Quake?

[Mindf!3ldzX]

Ability to connect & play. Waiting is the worse part of Quake, 20minute Quake killed the Multiplayer Star !

[Phenom]

I hate how people stopped playing Quake for "CS".

[Hazza]

I never really got into CS- COD4:MW on the other hand I could understand: absolutely best interface ever that somehow equalizes fast players, sharpshooters and methodical, careful players altogether (unlike other games where the winning formula is to be the best circle-strafer, or master of one specific weapon).

I actually think something similar would work very well in Quake;
*Shooting in standard mode (aka took-me-by-surprise panic-mode), your shots are really innaccurate (well, about as innaccurate as a standard Quake game)
*Shooting an enemy down the hallway you can aim through the sights. and although the shots will hit true, the weapon (and your view) might buck a bit (like in Quake 2)
*unlimited sprint with no weapon usable except your knife- for running away (or for charging a group of enemy soldiers for some stabby action!

[JH24]

On the subject of expansion packs I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with Abyss of Pandemonium. It had some very nice looking levels and very good action. The new monsters (except Blud) were somewhat disappointing but overall Aop really gave what makes Quake so great IMHO.

Aop good stuff: Nice levels (both the base and medieval ones, there were several moments that I really stared at the environment), nice fights and almost constant action. Great atmosphere and sounds.

Aop bad stuff: New monsters are not convincing, too short (left me wishing for more)

[Hazza]

On the note of unofficial expansions, NOTHING beats Q-Zone;
The entire product was although incredibly shabby looking- was also outrageously fun with the levels really well geared to challenging gameplay mechanics that Quake never really touched on;

Q-Zone good stuff; Insanely fun, maps, weapons and enemies are all extremely refined gameplay-wise, and it varied from pleasantly simple to insanely challenging- even had many non-linear bits, and situations achieved the impossible;
-a situation where grunts are actually dangerous
-A fun, handy weapon replacing an old weapon (nailgun) that makes me forget about it's predescessor completely
-Situations where having a grenade launcher is actually really handy and way better than the rocket launcher
-Creative new level layouts and enemy functions, all remaining completely balanced
-Reconfigured deathmatch maps that actually make fun, proper single-player maps (the only other map to achieve this is that space map in Armagon).
-A boss monster that REALLY keeps the player on his/her toes; the damn thing chases you around spewing painful stuff over you- you have to keep your distance, shoot it, strafe away from its spit, and ensure you don't back yourself into a corner because its REALLY fast and doesn't stop running!)

The Bad:
Horrible, awful graphics; textures randomly had wooden castle textures and base textures close together, and the monsters' appearance is so nonsensical I doubt even the designers had a clear idea of what they were supposed to be (to be fair, it was the original quake engine- so I don't really want to bash the designers for not making the most out of like, 8 blocks and all 240 pixels of texture that makes the average Quake monster.
-One bug makes the 'boss' creatures frozen; the player must make the ultimate sacrifice and walk close to it to encourage it to attack (and vulnerable to your weapons so you can continue by killing it).

All in all, the experience is you start the game, note how awful everything looks- and promptly forget about it as it becomes too much fun.

[MH]

The simplicity, the ability to just pick it up and play without needing to worry about crap like special moves and alternate fire modes, the (unintentional, it's accepted) uniqueness of the design, all rank high for me.

The worst. Potentially a mite controversial but I'm going to say the community. The community is badly fractured between QW vs NQ, SP vs MP, modders vs mappers vs players vs engine coders, ultra-trad vs eye-candy, purism vs pragmatism, with a large amount of hostility, negativity and each side thinking that they're the "one true Quake".

[Panties]

Those days....
Good - 1 of the earliest (Could be the 1st) 3D Games engine. I played DukeNukem3D and enemies are like 2D in 3D, but Quake is truly 3D in enemy. Overall, I love Quake in every aspect. Even in most computer game magazine, quake was about 15 pages long! Come on, 2 Boss and 5 episode is not that bad during those time! Deathmatch and CTF was my favorite!

Worst - Probably, extremely lack of servers in my country? From Malaysia, to connect Quakespy server in US, I could hardly enjoy the game! Malaysia was not really into a gaming industry, so there is very limited in what I can connect.. T.T Lag all the way...

These days..
Good - what can I say, It's still playable in Windows Vista/7! Some old games (Take "C&C: Red Alert") for example, you can't play on Windows 7 64Bit. You got to go through some emulation (like DOSBOX) or virtualization (VMware), in order to play them. But Quake, can be played on the Latest Operating System, or even the Latest Linux Kernel (Ubuntu, Redhat, OpenSuse..), without much tweaking....

Worst - Probably now, if I compare with other games, the storyline of Quake is suck. QuakeSpy now becomes GameSpy, but still, I will lag.

Conclusion: Quake still ROCKS!

[metchsteekle]

panties - you could maybe try bigfoot.quake1.net, it's both a nq ans qw server in europe, and its usually played alot, and it has tons of custom maps

[Mindf!3ldzX]

Those days....
Good - 1 of the earliest (Could be the 1st) 3D Games engine. I played DukeNukem3D and enemies are like 2D in 3D, but Quake is truly 3D in enemy. Overall, I love Quake in every aspect. Even in most computer game magazine, quake was about 15 pages long! Come on, 2 Boss and 5 episode is not that bad during those time! Deathmatch and CTF was my favorite!

Worst - Probably, extremely lack of servers in my country? From Malaysia, to connect Quakespy server in US, I could hardly enjoy the game! Malaysia was not really into a gaming industry, so there is very limited in what I can connect.. T.T Lag all the way...

These days..
Good - what can I say, It's still playable in Windows Vista/7! Some old games (Take "C&C: Red Alert") for example, you can't play on Windows 7 64Bit. You got to go through some emulation (like DOSBOX) or virtualization (VMware), in order to play them. But Quake, can be played on the Latest Operating System, or even the Latest Linux Kernel (Ubuntu, Redhat, OpenSuse..), without much tweaking....

Worst - Probably now, if I compare with other games, the storyline of Quake is suck. QuakeSpy now becomes GameSpy, but still, I will lag.

Conclusion: Quake still ROCKS!

Once upon a time, Quake was hosted in nearly every country imaginable. I would imagine now days its pretty hard to find a game outside North America , Euro-Asia, and Brazil.

[Spiney]

Good:

Enemies

Unique mix of strategies required for different enemies.
Some you need to keep your range, others are better dealt with from upfront.
Some are best done in a hit and run fashion, other need to get killed as fast as possible.

My favourite enemies are Ogre, Fiend, Zombie, Vore and Shambler.
I feel those are the most original, and essential to the Quake experience.

There's also the grunts and knights, but those aren't on the top of my list as must haves. Save perhaps the Death Knight.
Scrags are kinda boring to fight. Spawns are kinda 'what were they thinking?'.

All in all, Quake has some of the most fun bad guys.
Quake 2 lacked those for a large part.

Level Design

Quake maps are pretty boxy and rudimentairy looking. Didn't matter much in 400*300 software renderer. But the flow and design is something that puts contemporary shooters to shame.
Some of my favourite single player map design of all time.

Sound Effects
Sound effects are great, everything fits. I'm a little less fond of the nailgun sound, a bit too screechy.

Mixed Bag:

Color and lighting

A lot can be said for the art direction in Quake. How from a design point of view it's a jumbled mess of all kinds of influences. But it's the color palette that holds it all together and gives a coherent look to everything.
And that's a good thing, because Quake needs it.

If iD had to make a new Quake 1 this day and age though, some more vibrant colors would have been a nice addition. And I can't help myself but thinking if Quake would have been better looking if it was more contrasty.
They could have pushed the lighting more. 2* overbrightening might not be much, but with the right texture and lighting interaction they could have come up with some better looking lighting.

Also, it's not because a game only can use 256 colors that they can't get a good color palette. MDK is a great example of an 8 bit game with a simple but rich color palette.

Bad:

Music

I'm a big fan of Nine Inch Nails, and Trents work.
But the Quake soundtrack is something I'dd rather do without.
The droning sounds are particulary depressing, and I can see them bieng very effective in situations, but not during the entire course of the game.
Quake is already such a dark and depressing place, you need something to counteract that a little or it becomes monotonous.

Strange Texturing

Some texturing could have been done better.
I'm not expecting Quake 3 level mapping, but it feels as if they hadn't really grasped the importance of alignment and trim textures untill that point.


All in all, it's strange for a game that did so much things wrong, to do all of the right things wrong and still keep itself up after 2 decades

[golden_boy]

As a content designer, I'll pick:

Good:

open source gamecode and engine
quakeC easy to pick up (if you consider C easy to pick up)
variety of editors and tools available
easy to modify

Bad

Obscure file formats
Ridiculous technical limitations that backstab you when you least expect it
No standards, incompatibility between tools and engines
Rudimentary, obscure tools required that often only run under Windows
Community and hating, zealotism, envy, power struggles, One True Quake problem
Most of the features that newer games have (Q2 onwards) must be arduously "backported" which wastes a lot of dev time

[Particle]

Good:

Team. Fortress. This point wins five Internets. I mean classic TF, btw, like version 2.5 instead of MegaTF. The experience of the late nights playing those classic maps like rock2, town2, town4, unholyk, hunted, border, engbat, and canalzon remains unparalleled to this day. I realize a lot of this is simply due to the facts that 1) I was a kid when this game was released and thus Quake benefited in my mind from the everything-is-magical haze that surrounds kiddom and 2) this was the first game remotely like this that I'd ever played and thus Quake benefited from the newness of the experience. Either way, I wish for something new to do this to me again.

Bad:

Mouselook wasn't possible by default. I never knew about mouselook until after the hayday had already passed.

The crosshair is misaligned, making it useless.

Hard to change video modes successfully. Random errors are often met--"What do you mean 1600x1200 @ 32bpp color isn't a valid video mode? Sure it is."

[Bloodshot]

I agree with many of MH's points. It's good because the game is simple, but at the same time, the wide range of enemies in the game and the different weapons makes the game diverse, and adds a slight bit of depth to the combat, while retaining its simplistic gameplay, and that makes it quite fun.

The art style of the game is awesome for me (my least favorite is the tech levels which, ironically, I'm making one). The environments look good despite their age, as do the monsters - even though they are noticeably polygonal, they were designed with low polys in mind so they are recognizable, unlike other games which haven't aged well.

The incorporation of traps and tricks also is another plus, because again, it makes the gameplay more interesting and diverse, without forcing the player to do something he doesn't want to.

The atmosphere was also a good thing about the game, something to many games lack today. It really helps pull you in to a game.

The worst part of Quake? I'd say the worst part is 2 things: 1, the story of the game sucks, and 2, they didn't ever make a sequel in the same style.

[Particle]

The lack of story is sort of a bonus for me. It lets you treat it like an arcade game that can be fired up, played for 5 or 50 minutes, and sat back down without the emotional overhead. There's no "I've already played this part of the story" feeling when levels are played again in the future, either. It just is what it is--here's your shotgun and here's the level. Go.

Interestingly, the tech levels were always my favorite with some crossovers also making my list. Basically every map in E1 is pretty darn fun.

[Shadowswift]

The fear factor that Quake put out was unlike anything I'd seen in a game at the time. Growling, angry-ass creatures that want to rip you apart with chainsaws and whatnot, zombies rising out of the ground, dark hallways with mutating flying snakes that like to ambush you, crap like that. For a 12 year old, that was pretty intense. The online aspect of Quake at the time was amazing. Thousands of different servers, nearly all of them full of people. People you've never met before and likely will never meet again! It was chaos. It was wonderful.

The worst thing about Quake...is that those days are over.