Quake (Xbox Series X)

While the Doom series will always be id Software’s crown jewel, Quake is more than just its similar younger brother. A first person shooter with good level sense along with enemies and weapons that strongly complement each other, you end up thinking less about how you’ve gone from fighting the forces of Hell on Mars to monsters from another dimension in the transition between the two separate series. Quake was id Software searching for ways to evolve their fast-paced shooter action and that quest was so tempestuous it pretty much fractured the company afterwards, but this video game forged in fire was pieced together so well that it managed to inspire the QuakeCon convention that has run uninterrupted every year since the game’s 1996 release. The modern enhanced rerelease by Nightdive Studios is a little less surprising when you hear about the passionate fanbase, but the release was more than just a clean way to play Quake and its original expansions on modern systems. It also comes with new content, behind the scenes concepts, and mod content like repackaging the unique levels from Quake 64, packing in a great deal of the legacy of this FPS juggernaut.

 

When you first jump into Quake, it won’t exactly be forthcoming with its story, the player needing to spend some time blasting their way through the first episode to get the first of a few long descriptors of what’s going on. Spinning a bit of a fanciful yarn after you were just using your shotgun to blast soldiers and monsters to bloody chunks, Quake’s after episode text dumps speak of the Slipgate, something humanity hoped to use to teleport easily across space only for the forces of a mysterious being codenamed Quake to instead send their forces through. While your character, later identified as the Ranger, comes from a world of solid sci-fi technology, the forces of Quake come wielding dark magics, meaning to defeat them you’ll need a mix of whatever weapons are strong enough to blow them to smithereens and the magical runes that can overcome their power. There are no wizards or witches from that other dimension though, most monsters you face instead twisted things that look more like warped humanoids than something mystical. Music from Nine Inch Nails will sometimes try to get you pumped up for the action while at others lean into the more atmospheric element of stepping into the hostile unknown, although a few tracks with high-pitched whines might make you reach for the volume controls because they push past unease into actual discomfort.

 

No matter how flowery or foreboding the episode end texts try to be though, Quake is often a game guided well by its stage layouts. Technically most stages only require you to reach their exit, but there are keys and switches to encourage you to weave through the level and face the abundant enemies on your path there. While grabbing keys or pressing buttons to open doors doesn’t sound thrilling, it’s often just a way to shape level exploration, the player often going down a path for an important trigger and finding a clean enough way back to wherever they need to be to now continue forward. This won’t always keep you from getting lost despite the game keeping many stages rather condensed and trying to make it obvious where you should go next after grabbing a key or some such, but when it does work there is a strong sense of flow as you balance what weapons and ammo you find with the enemies you encounter as you press onward.

Quake always starts you off with a shotgun as well as a back-up axe if you truly can’t conserve your bullets well, but that shotgun is already a useful starting weapon. It’s strong at range, and most Quake episodes ease you in with simpler enemies like other gunmen rather than the tough monsters that give the game its real spice. As you progress you’ll start to find new weapons and upgrades for those guns, the nailgun your first taste of increased power with its fast-firing shots that chew through ammo quickly but can often take down even the toughest foe with sustained fire. Most everything that’s a step up from the standard shotgun hits hard enough that you don’t want to waste it but are thrilling when you have the ammo to utilize it, the nailgun soon joined by the rocket launcher and the electricity-firing Thunderbolt for your spread of weapon options before you count variants like the stronger Super Shotgun and Super Nailgun. Thunderbolt ammo is very rare while rocket launcher shots can be deadly to you too at close range meaning sometimes grenade launcher tricks are smarter than fighting head-on, but the core set of weapons all form an easily swapped through arsenal because they’re all pretty good but require proper management to actually be able to defeat Quake’s forces.

 

The early gunmen of a Quake episode are usually fairly basic opposition, but when Quake’s monsters enter the mix, you start to see how level layouts really work to squeeze the most out of the threats these creatures pose. The large Fiend will spring at you the moment it sees you, a durable foe that is often positioned around corners or behind slowly opening doors to keep you on your feet and never too comfortable in the often dark and dingy caves and castles making up the main Quake campaign. The Ogre proves to be a far more common foe, its grenade launcher often a damaging surprise if you aren’t quicker to kill it, but it also wields a chainsaw for if you get in close. You might think that’s overkill, but tricking the Ogre into trying to slice at you and exploiting your very swift movement can keep Ogres at bay, save when the game knows to give them high ground so they can still make for a quick tense shootout where you’re hoping you can dodge any explosives come your way. Admittedly, a good deal of Quake’s enemies have fairly rudimentary AI. The flying Scrag mostly tries to float towards you and sometimes spit out attacks and the sword-swinging Knights also just beeline towards you once they know you’re there, but this is often why their placement is the important piece of making them so fearsome. Walking through tight corridors and triggering a room of knights will keep you on the run for a bit, and since only those soldiers from the start have guns that hit you instantly as they’re fired, most of the time keeping your eye on a baddie and responding appropriately in movement and firepower is the frequent skill test with high damage stakes that gives Quake its entertaining sense of pressure.

 

Quake does have a few high end enemies though that can push the power balance pretty hard against you, but not to its breaking point. Partly that’s because you can save anywhere without penalty, but it’s also because you’ll develop systems of understanding for them just as you will the Ogre. The enormous Shambler is treated almost like a midboss, a monster that can swipe at you if you’re close but it is truly dangerous for the lightning bolt it shoots at you that will hit if you don’t find cover during its wind-up. The Shambler is the kind of foe that will leave your nailgun or Thunderbolt dry after you kill it and it’s not overused in the initial campaign, and when it crops up in surprise places it adds an exciting hectic scramble to account for a sudden rise in the power level of what you face. The Vore and the Spawn are a bit of a different story though. The Vore doesn’t like to walk much and will only slowly chase you if you stay out of sight, but its claim to fame is an exploding spiked projectile it fires that homes in on you with more complexity than a typical homing shot. It can wind around corners, chase you in circles, and usually won’t go away until it hits something to explode. You can still throw off the homing if the spike ball is far enough away from you and in more complicated levels it can’t always keep up, but the Vore adds a different type of fear to exploration than the Shambler. You fight both often by peeking out and using strong weaponry, but the Vore is often a more distant measured fight closer to a sniper battle than the pseudo-boss fight with the big guy. The Spawn though feels like it wasn’t considered as carefully in its design. A little hopping blob that lies in wait and can often blend in with the background, once a Spawn starts leaping at you, it’s an incessant little thing with a terrifying surprise. If you do blast it apart, it explodes, and since it so badly tries to be right in your face, you might get hit by a blast that deals more than your default maximum health. If you know it’s there or spot it from afar it’s a quick kill and you can just try to book it like when facing a Vore projectile and hope to eventually have a safe distance, but Spawn are sometimes placed in tight areas where it’s hard to get such distance or even get past them when a group of them start hopping towards you.

Besides the Spawn that is thankfully not overused, Quake does feel like it has a strong understanding of how to space out its encounters. Foes like the Fiend and Vore appear with just enough frequency you can’t get complacent but there are stretches focused more on larger groups of Ogres or other simpler foes, and ammo distribution is measured to keep you from ever being in a space where you can too easily blast your way through without consideration. Playing co-op with other humans can throw off the balance a tad, although it comes with a little issue where finishing a level with one player dead wipes all their guns but the shotgun, making some later levels practically impossible for that unfortunate player. However, Quake does also reset your guns intentionally at times, each episode going back to square one and allowing the weapon power to gradually grow again as you rediscover the familiar tools and can work your way up a new difficulty curve. Quake does encourage moments of quiet searching too though, many levels featuring secret paths with useful rewards. Armor, temporary health expansions, temporary power-ups like a ring of invisibility or Quad Damage, or even just a good stash of ammo or a way to earn a weapon earlier than you would otherwise, makes looking for odd surfaces you can jump to or hidden doorways to shoot open a nice extra task that usually isn’t demanding either. The levels often wind back on themselves anyway so you don’t need to worry about getting too off course, and with secret levels also found down some alternate paths, Quake concocts an excellent FPS adventure even if the way you actually kill the final boss is a bit obtuse to figure out.

 

However, the original Quake campaign comprising of four episodes of around 30 levels is not the end in this rerelease. Quake includes the two original expansions for the PC original, Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution of Eternity. Both add new content, but Scourge of Argmagon is the more successful of the two in producing a new spin on things with its added ideas. Developed by Hipnotic Software, Scourge of Armagon begins with one episode purely focused on those military enemies that were initially pushed aside in favor of monsters, but it also introduces the mechanical scorpion Centroid to their ranks and later when creatures do come back into focus, the Gremlin is introduced as a new fairly weak foe but one that can steal your weapon if you don’t blast it before it reaches you. The laser cannon is added to your arsenal for a new strong bouncing projectile, but the proximity mine launcher doesn’t feel a good fit because low enemy intelligence often means they’ll be running towards you so often that setting up a trap is often more trouble than just shooting a foe the moment you see them. Scourge of Armagon continues strong level design ideas from the original, but Dissolution of Eternity from Rogue Entertainment is a much more mixed bag. Its levels are more confusing and winding, utilize weaker mechanics like earthquakes for more than color to the point you might get nauseous, and many new elements are just variations on what you’ve seen before. Lava Nails are a cool upgrade, the game even announces them with an exclamation mark as you pick them up, but its just a stronger Nailgun and the multi-rockets just fires more shots, the weapons still strong enough to thrill on some level but not changing your approach much. Some new enemies do shake things up a bit at least like knights invisible save for their swords and more minibosses, but the Quake formula does start to wear out some because the AI complexity and weapon range are still somewhat limited.

 

You might think this makes the three new expansions added for the enhanced rerelease more of the same, but MachineGames seems to understand that simply making more Quake levels doing the same old thing wouldn’t fly. You do have the mod area for fan made levels and the like anyway, so while their first addition Dimension of the Past is a pretty safe but quality set of challenge levels essentially, they really begin to stretch their legs in Dimension of the Machine. Both dimensions only use the default weapon sets, but what a level in Quake can be really starts to change in Dimension of the Machine. Instead of exploring the halls of stony temples or military bases, you encounter levels with bigger concepts. A church where you flip it upside down to enter an inverse dimension, an ethereal space where you hop between floating stones, a stellar prison where your actions gradually release the monstrous inmates, and even less extreme ideas like a village whose buildings you gradually scale bring new level ideas to the table but are honed to provide the right level flow that made the original campaign so effective. Come 2026 for the game’s anniversary though, Dawn of the Machine takes some of that adventurous level design and also lets itself introduce some weapon and enemy variation as well, and while the Quake format still feels like it will probably need a heftier injection of more advanced elements to truly stave off repetition, a more measured pace playing the expansions (or skipping past Dissolution of Eternity at least) might help the player better focus on what works rather than seeing the mostly well disguised seams.

 

On top of mostly quality single-player content though, Quake also packs a chaotic multiplayer mode that makes some use of the game’s speedy movement for player on player combat. Here you can see features like deliberately shooting the ground with your rocket launcher to jump higher really show off their stuff as people zip and fly around small arenas, although the high weapon power and movement speed do make matches with more than a few players a bit too hectic. Twitch split-second responses are needed to be able to walk away from a fight, especially since weapon pick-ups are not hard to find so heavy firepower is often in play and brutally effective. Instant respawns means there is little downtime at least, although that also means points for kills can be racked up rather swiftly. The breakneck pace can have its thrills but also make it feel like you’re getting morsels of excitement rather than tense or memorable conflicts, although a smaller play group can alleviate that because it’s more likely you can see and respond to an opponent’s presence and play into that Quake campaign style of action where you know what the opposition can do, both of you are powerful, but it’s smart timing and space management that determine whether you’re the one to survive the encounter.

THE VERDICT: Quake’s remaster is overflowing with excellent FPS action. The original campaign’s masterful balance of weapons, enemies, and level design that smoothly lets you push forward while respecting the dangers ahead is a wonderful starting course. Expansions like Scourge of Armagon and MachineGames’s additions explore great new ways to make use of solid foundations while throwing in some conceptual twists to make up for how some of the format’s effectiveness will wane after you spend so many hours fighting Quake’s increasingly familiar forces. Space out the experience and maybe spend some time embracing the fast-paced chaos of the multiplayer though and Quake’s enhanced rerelease is bound to provide plenty of entertainingly difficult encounters, even if you might find yourself cursing the Vores and Spawns after.

 

And so, I give Quake for Xbox Series X…

A GREAT rating. Saying good levels, good enemies, and good guns are the key to FPS success isn’t exactly profound, but it really is what makes Quake work so well because it normally understands the vital interplay of these elements and it’s only as its scope broadens do you start to see some levels like those in Dissolution of Eternity that upset it with more confused levels or disruptive gimmicks. Quake is about a balance of power, be that in doling out ammo carefully so even a secret-hungry player still needs to watch their reserves and swap weapons often or levels that set up effective encounters even with the lower end enemies to keep you on your toes. Only your axe really feels flimsy since it’s a tool of desperation, every other option having good power and feel but with drawbacks that mean you’re reliant on an arsenal rather than a favorite toy. A Thunderbolt has a mystique to it because you can only zap foes so often with its powerful beam, but you also might find yourself in a tough encounter and whip it out because you can’t afford to be too slow or hesitate. The Spawn could maybe afford to be more visible if it wants to be so devastating and some levels lean a bit too much on button pressing and lose that sense of direction that makes much of the experience work so well, but Quake is well-crafted to make the most of its foundational elements even if you can only trot out Shamblers as midbosses so much before it loses its potency. That’s one reason MachineGames’s expansions help revivify it though, the level layouts starting to ask for more attention with the familiar foes complicating them rather than carrying the weight of needing to be the most interesting part of an encounter. Multiplayer might benefit from some more options too, Quake still showing some marks that it was a video game made for PCs in 1996 so it was still paving the way with ideas as simple as swift three-dimensional shooting, but the breakneck action has its own charm and other games can be what provides the slower and more personal player combat some might crave after the frantic split-second frags.

 

Quake’s monumental legacy may be slightly dwarfed by the equally excellent Doom, but Nightdive’s remaster provides a heaping helping of all the effective elements of this classic shooter to the point you might end up feeling a little stuffed after. Abundance for something enjoyable isn’t that bad of a problem to have though, especially if you take your time with the package, and it was perhaps wise not to do too much reshaping with all the extra campaigns less you see a few more Dissolution of Eternity style missteps. Quake’s original campaign is superb, many of its extra levels packs provide more of what you’ll love, so as long as you portion out the smorgasbord properly, this rerelease can provide challenge and thrills far beyond that initial smooth and satisfying shooting action from the first battle against the forces of Quake.