11/13/2023 0 Comments Quake ii rtx![]() ![]() While the AI advancements were awesome, I didn’t find the actual enemies as memorable as in earlier id titles. Enemies and Map Design Look at that skybox! But I can’t dock too many points considering ladders still suck all these years later. You don’t really climb, it’s more like you ‘float’ upwards or downwards when you touch them. Ladders also make their first appearance, and they’re so weird. Rocket jumping still isn’t wholly embraced, but the devs were clearly aware of it and often hid messages/secrets behind hidden jumps. In general, while gameplay is a bit slower than Quake I, you’re still plenty fast. I like this, as it leads to more creative map design. The inclusion of crouching is the main movement upgrade from Quake I, and is exclusively used to create crawlspaces. In general the game feels like it has a rugged (if rudimentary) physics engine, which all keeps gameplay from getting overly predictable. ![]() Explosive barrels can be pushed around by running into them. ![]() Several maps include neutral NPCs in the form of pitiful prisoners crawling around begging the player to either save (or kill) them. A new medic enemy inherited the arch-vile’s resurrection ability from Doom, encouraging players to gib every corpse after a firefight. They’ll suffer variable bloodstains/dismemberments as you shoot them, and their corpses will attract flies when left on the ground long enough. Most of the improvements come in the form of visual/animation overhauls enemies will dynamically crouch, dodge, or change positioning in between salvos. That’s probably due to looking more like actual places and having an advanced lighting system. The setpieces are far-more-detailed and memorable than in Quake. (One day I may review Daikatana, his infamous attempt to actually do so.) Despite me saying this, the story is definitely throwaway and the real focus is on the gameplay. It has a much more cogent storyline and cohesion of artstyle than Quake 1, which is ironic considering John Romero quit id because he wanted to make a story-focused title. ![]() It continued id’s tradition of massively-improving their underlying tech and showing the industry a new benchmark for FPS gameplay. Quake II was released 1½ years after its predecessor. I’m not sure how useful it is, but it was cool to have a third-person option. For ease of use, customizeability, and compatibility, it’s the easiest way to play this old classic, and it’s free to boot. Overall, I recommend Quake II RTX to anyone interested in playing Quake II. Since Quake II recycled Ranger’s grunts from Quake, I found them overly distracting and appreciated being able to play as Athena instead. There are several expanded gameplay settings in this new version that I really appreciated, like toggleable third-person and a playable female character. This is not a complaint, I totally understand, I just found it funny Quake II RTX comes with new throwable flares, which 100% don’t work with RTX disabled. My only question involves music I had it enabled in the options, but never heard a single song. Widescreen 1080p is enabled by default, controls are adjusted to more modern expectations, and everything’s fully customizeable in options. You can turn the RTX off in the options, making Quake II RTX an easy way to experience the base game without requiring QoL mods. But from what I saw, it’s very good-looking and I’m not surprised we’re seeing many more games using ray tracing tech. It essentially turned my game into a slideshow. Now, I must confess I didn’t play the entire game with ray tracing enabled, as my computer couldn’t really handle it. Quake II RTX The RTX reflections/enhanced lighting adds a ton to the experience, from what I saw. So this is going to be a dual review of both the tech demo and Quake II itself. Plus if you own the base game you can play the entire thing, like I did. If you’d like to experience it, there’s a free demo version on Steam you can play right now. If you want to know more, watch the above video where Nvidia’s Tom Petersen explains the tech to me in more detail. Ray tracing is a unique way of handling reflections that allows world objects to accurately reflect light. Quake II RTX is a “remastering” of the original game that ray traces every single asset. At first, I didn’t think they’d given Quake II the same treatment, before remembering an experimental tech demo I encountered at GDC 2019: Even more impressively, they’ve gone back and updated Doom and Quake to run perfectly on modern systems. Imagine inventing the FPS genre, codifying it, and then propelling it into the third dimension within a mere 4-year span. Having recently finished Quake’s expansion packs, I was curious to see where id Software went from there. ![]()
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