Quake Review (Switch eShop) | Nintendo Life

What is really left to say about Quake at this stage? It hit the FPS scene some 25 years ago as the successor to iD Software’s phenomenal DOOM, and it single-handedly revolutionized a genre with its real-time 3D rendering ushering in a new era of immersion that left its historic predecessor feeling resolutely old school. comparison. Quake was truly something of a game-changer, to the extent that its ripple effect can still be felt in more modern first-person shooter games. Yet a quarter of a century later, how does its brand of fast-paced FPS action hold up? Turns out spectacularly well.

Released stealthily as part of QuakeCon, this remastered version of the classic FPS wisely avoids messing with the magic formula that made the game so great in the first place, instead keeping the appearance of the original intact while carefully adding all sorts of modernity. bells and whistles in a feature-packed harbor that is an absolute dream to pass the time.

Jumping back here, making our way once again to a showdown with Shub-Niggurath, it’s amazing how well it all holds up. Quake’s level design still sings, its secret-filled maze puzzle boxes burden you with staying alive against impressively varied enemy types as you figure out how to grab the keys needed to forge an escape route. They are just as absorbing, as atmospheric and addictive now as they were when we originally sat down to touch them in our Nine Inch Nails t-shirts.

At first glance, it all looks a lot like DOOM, but getting familiar with it reveals a much more nuanced game in terms of action, level design, and how it places its enemies. This is not simply an endless siege or a mindless assault involving hordes of demonic enemies, although there is still plenty of it. Instead, there’s almost as much exploration and puzzling as shooting here, and it’s made even more immersive by the leap in technology brought about by its fully 3D game engine. There’s a lot more geometric complexity, you can fully explore your surroundings, something that was really mind-blowing in 1996, and the combat gets a real rear-end turbo-driven kick for the resulting freedom and the new level of travel it offers.

In terms of atmosphere, too, Quake’s Lovecraftian / Gothic horror nightmare world somehow still holds up very well given how completely insane it all is. It looks and sounds absolutely every one of its 25 years, make no mistake about it, but everything: the dark and gloomy nightmare environments, the twisted visuals, the hideous enemies and the stellar sound design, merge to form what is now It seems like a genuinely timeless environment. It might not look all that attractive in still screenshots, but turn this bad boy on, start shooting and shooting around the Necropolis, biting into Grotto Grisly or the House of Chthon, and immediately you are fully immersed in his nightmarish world. . On the move, it’s mesmerizing and as smooth as butter and exhilarating as ever.

Of course, this is all aided by graphic bells and whistles here – lots of modern little touches that don’t change the look of the original as much as they complement it. You’ve got texture smoothing, a choice of resolutions, anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, depth of field, motion blur, and perhaps our favorite dynamic lighting, subtly adding to the game’s already great atmosphere. You can feel free to toggle all of these things if you wish, of course, and we removed the motion blur and anti-aliasing in the head, but the additions here really highlight just how good Quake’s vision of a multi-dimensional hell is. sustained.

As we already mentioned, this is also a feature-packed remaster. There’s the fantastic original campaign to play with, all the expansion packs released previously: Armagon’s Scourge, Dissolution of Eternity, and Dimension of the Past, as well as the new Dimension of the Machine, a stellar addition from MachineGames that leans a lot towards that. . Lovecraftian horror aesthetics in its five individual levels and packs in tons of secrets, puzzles, tricky platforms and a properly hellish boss battle to top it off. There is also support for mods, Earthquake 64 it’s ready and waiting to be downloaded from the plugin screen when launched, and more player-created content is reported to be on the way.

In terms of online, Quake’s dazzlingly chaotic multiplayer is all here, present and right, and this remaster includes as many different ways to interact with it as you could ask for. You can play the entire campaign and all its expansions in cooperative mode with up to four other players in local or online splitscreen, get stuck in deathmatches with eight players online or four in local splitscreen. There’s support for bots if you prefer to experience deathmatches without other human players, dedicated server support, peer-to-peer for custom games, and everything even supports cross-play with all other available platforms.

Speaking of cross-play, it is often the case, especially with shooters, that playing on the Switch can leave you at a slight disadvantage to other consoles, but we found, especially with gyro controls enabled, that we were able to get caught up and even master some of the the hectic matches here when playing both docked and handheld. It’s such a seamless experience on the Switch, in fact, that we’d even go so far as to say that, considering the ability to be portable, this might as well be the definitive version of this updated classic.

There sure is a lot here. This feels like as good a remaster, as a full-featured package, as we might have hoped with regards to Quake, and it’s all available for a very generous sale price. Whether you’re a Quake fan who has been waiting and praying for a Switch port for years or a newcomer who has yet to experience the delights of this genuine classic, we can’t recommend this remaster highly enough. This is truly the definitive version of a truly great game and an absolutely essential addition to your Switch library.

conclusion

Quake returns in a feature-rich remaster that delicately updates the classic FPS, adding plenty of optional bells and whistles, packing a ton of content, and providing the ultimate way to play this 25-year-old masterpiece in the process. There’s a host of online and co-op options here, a glorious new expansion to exploit from MachineGames, super slick performance in docked and portable modes, and it’s all available at an incredible price. This is truly a star port of the true greats of a game and an absolutely essential addition to your Switch library.