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so let me start by saying this: I'm playing both of these via the modern remasters/rereleases which come with their own caveats, like the fact that they tweaked nightmare in quake to just be hard but with your HP capped at 50, instead of having more aggressive AI, or the fact that they apparently added cut level geometry to both games so you can be gaslit if you're familiar with the originals, or the fact that they added doom 2016 style weapon wheels with slowdown because they wanted to port these to console... anyhow.
I'm writing this on the heels of telefragging the second of two bosses in the base game of quake 1. I started the game on nightmare, made it through episode 1 before deciding against continuing on with that difficulty, and moved to normal for the remainder of my time; the notable exception is that I used console commands to set my difficulty to nightmare again for the final boss level, given that it was going to be the same number of enemies anyway and I wanted to see if the game would give me the "beat the game on nightmare" achievement for just doing the last level on nightmare.
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mostly what playing quake taught me is that the shareware (first) episode is kind of just underwhelming (more on that shortly) and that I might not have tinnitus but I don't like the particular dark ambient stylings of NIN's Trent Reznor that people will prop up as a big selling point of this game in particular. I could probably replace it with any one of a dozen dark ambient playlists and come away having more vibes, or any one of a dozen other shooter soundtracks and come away with a more coherent FPS feeling.
the trains of thought I have on quake run on two tracks: arsenal design and level design. let's start with the weapons, which will be shorter; there are essentially four weapons and a melee option. three of these weapons have a lesser version and a superior version, but ultimately they fit the same niche in both forms. the shotgun and super shotgun are hitscan and best at close range but can still be somewhat effective at mid-range (which is the furthest most base game maps will let you get from enemies anyway), the nailgun and super nailgun are accurate at any range and fire rapidly (so can prompt enemies to flinch repeatedly) but aren't hitscan so leading your shot is important, and the grenade launcher and the rocket launcher have explosive projectiles which do gib-tier damage.
the problem is, these distinctions rarely matter enough in the base game to merit deep decision-making in how you manage your arsenal. instead, it becomes a flowchart with two questions: is there any reason to not use the rocket launcher? if not, use the rocket launcher (or grenade launcher if you're starved for choice). if so, which gun has more ammo? use that one.
the rocket launcher is, for a lot of reasons, the star of this game. its projectile is fairly fast, it does a lot of damage in a fairly large radius, and most importantly, the ammo for it is dropped by a fairly common enemy. this combination of strong damage and its prevalence as a drop means it's both fairly valuable as ammunition (especially when dealing with large groups of enemies or zombies who need to be gibbed by large singular hits of damage lest they resurrect) and one of the more sustainable weapons to keep loaded. shells are dropped by grunts and cells by enforcers, but those only show up in the first level of the episode anyway. ogres are in basically every level.
speaking of which, let's move onto level design. every level in the base game has a level designer associated with it, and I think tim willits' levels were kind of bad. which is crazy because he's the one who did most of episode 1! that's the one you get to play for free in the shareware edition and it's the worst foot forward you could've given this game. every other episode trounces it and every time one of tim's levels comes up, the vibes are off.
the thing about level design is that especially in this particular era (and style) of small development and design teams, the personality of the designer can shine through in really fun and interesting ways. I felt none of that from tim's levels. they felt like someone churning out half-baked ideas with no flavor. they were Adequate. they were fillers. they could've gotten someone with any passion for level design and not just passion for Beating The Other Guys To Publishing Levels, in my opinion, and it would've been a lot better to lead with that.
the further episodes all had a sense of playfulness to them, of building spaces with specific vibes, of encounters to be danced through, of traps and secrets that felt like pranks you were getting to know someone's sense of design and/or humor via. it really impressed on me the importance of the author knowing how to handle their tools and knowing how a player will engage with the work in these sorts of exchanges.
for example: episode 4 has a level that mimics the entry to the episode itself from the hub, and upon entering, the game informs you that the window holds the key to a secret. you shoot the stained glass window and it acts as a button to reveal a switch you can then press to open two cages for a super shotgun. this stained glass window continues showing up throughout the level and episode, acting as a switch sometimes and a temptation to shoot others. it's cute.
it's also funny picking up on some smaller things, like... the placement of armor (especially higher-grade armor like yellow (150) and red (200) pickups) and megahealth (+100 hp, ticks down to your natural max over time) are often tied to monster closets, which means you're getting jumped as a consequence of being given these tools, and the degree to which that reward is useful in the long run depends entirely on how you handle the monsters in the aftermath. they're also pickups that you need to be able to pick up in order to prompt these encounters, so in the case of armor, at least, they're usually always more than you have on already.
this is true of quad damage drops, too; a very useful tool for clearing a room, but often prompts the room to need clearing in the first place. a deft hand could definitely use these tools to present interesting decisions in how the flow of encounters is built, and I think the other three mapmakers in the base game use them pretty well.
between the paltry arsenal variety and the pretty plain array of enemies, however, the game ends up just feeling a little rote. it feels like a joke that the final boss was guarded by five fish, a flying mummy-type thing, and then shambler, shambler, vore, shambler, vore, shambler, vore, shambler, vore, shambler, vore, shambler, vore. and then you telefrag shub to death instead of fighting her in any way.
all of this is, of course, exacerbated by the mission structure. episodes are isolated, and each one takes your weapons away at the end, meaning that the final boss level also needs to re-equip you with the four weapons that matter and enough ammo to actually deal with the shamblers and vores. it's not compelling as a finale in the slightest, regrettably. with a longer arc in mind for weapon, level, and enemy threat design, it could be better, but quake 1 is not that game. the OST doesn't match the vibes of the gameplay, and I don't particularly like it either. so it goes.
I was worried that I wouldn't have anything to say about the additional episodes in the remaster, but it was an illuminating experience seeing more experienced and/or modern level designers tackle the ideas quake had on hand. ultimately, my opinions were not affected much; there is only so much an interesting level can prop up a small set of tools and lackluster roster of foes.
dimension of the past feels more like quake, to me, which is to its detriment as a thing to follow episodes 1-4, but it's probably my second-favorite episode out of that selection. (episode 4 > episode 5 (dimension of the past) > episode 3 > episode 2 >>> episode 1 is how I'd rank them, roughly.) dimension of the past doubles up on the idBase level style, which was a breath of fresh air, but otherwise mostly feels like a pretty deft bit of playful development in the same vector as episode 3 or 4.
dimension of the machine, however, feels distinctly different, presenting five realms made up of two levels each, and really goes for it, presenting ten expansive levels that hardly feel anything like quake. often, I felt the machinegames blood running through this expansion, but more frequently, I felt a twinge of fromsoft's influence on the gaming landscape, in the way it blocked out sightlines and played in the crumbled ruins of the broken baroque structures that lay strewn across the pumping industrial bloodlines that form the paths you walk and the trail of bodies you leave.
it's the least quake-like episode. all five subepisodes are very good, each encompassing a two-level arc where you have to reacquire all your tools, and they're quite good at that. but it still leaves me wanting something more. nothing against the level designers, truly, because they're beautiful, and quite fun to explore, but the stock this was made from needs something. it's lacking in some way that can't be made up for without changing what it's trying to be.
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quake 2 is good. I'm biased, of course, given that I have past experience with the game driving me to play it once more, but replaying it, it's really stark how what it does take from quake 1 is either honed beyond recognition or simple powerups.
the notable things, in retrospect, about the first quake are... how clunky the design language and player toolkit are, basically. the smaller team size and lower general skill level made the moments where the mapmaker hit a trick or a beat feel a lot stronger in comparison to the lackluster moment to moment gunplay. development apparently went through multiple phases of revamping the engine even after they settled on an FPS, which meant they made a lot more maps than actually made it to the game.
quake 2, on the other hand, feels like people knew what they wanted to do and how to work within the engine from the start, and with a unified vision instead of revisions upon revisions to maps, and romero demanding the gothic plot he did.
much like doom 1 to doom 2, the transition to quake 2 turned the structure of the game from episode-based shareware to one long cohesive campaign, meaning the power curve of the player is a lot smoother; alongside this, the actual arsenal is expanded to a full ten guns (and hand grenades) in the base game, only one of which is a strict upgrade/replacement for another. the super shotgun is still basically just a better shotgun, but the matchup between machine gun and chaingun is less clear, and the remaining weapons are meaningfully distinct while allowing the ammo economy to fluctuate and dictate what ammo you can afford to use in a given area.
on top of this, you eventually get power armor, which uses the same energy cells as the hyperblaster and BFG, but can stand in for and in addition to regular armor. I should've used the power armor more, frankly, because cells are quite often available and I avoided using the hyperblaster outside of specific enemy types.
you can also carry powerups with you, which means both that finding them after a level's cleared is not as bittersweet a prospect and that you can take a quad damage and invulnerability to the final boss if you so desire. I enjoy it, but I understand why people would want the levels to be designed to only let you use powerups as they're provided. it's a fun little foible of design.
the remaster has a bunch of changes which I'm not so fond of, including some graphical ones, a compass that will literally place down a path for you to follow, and a whole slew of behavioral changes and new attacks for enemies. some of these come from ground zero and/or the reckoning, the two expansion packs, but a lot are new to the 2023 edition of the game, including the berserkers' jump attacks (horrifying) and the fliers being really aggressive about being in melee range. there's also multiple secrets that were added to the levels for no particular reason? I dunno.
quake 2 is good, and I'll probably go for the expansion packs and/or the remaster's exclusive mission pack at some point, but for now, I'm done with these games. the soundtrack, however, can still get it.