Quake (Third Review)

Title		Quake (Third Review)
Game Type	3D Action
Company		ID/Clickboom
Players		1 (or lots on-line)
Compatibility	020 plus
Submission	Angus Manwaring Profiled Reviewer

Review
Quake is most definitely a development of Doom. In Doom you had the
original (almost), 3D corridor blaster, where you shot your way through
level after level of bad guys. In Quake however, you have....... well,
much the same sort of thing, actually. The difference though, and it`s  a
biggie, is that the 3D in Quake is far more sophisticated. Well, having
said that, the 3D engine in Alien Breed 3D was more sophisticated than in
Doom, but Quake is something else again. The environment feels very
realistic; including buildings containing many different levels, ledges
that you can jump down to lower levels from, flooded tunnels that you must
swim through, and a variety of lighting effects that bring class and
realism to the graphics. The enemies themselves are composed of
texture-mapped polygons, and are well animated, therefore appearing far
more detailed than their counterparts in less ambitious games.

The gameplay in Quake is, as you might expect pretty similar to Doom, but
obviously within a far more sophisticated 3D enviroment. That`s good news
in the realism stakes, but not so good as far as the framerate goes. You
will not be using those pin sharp resolutions that your PC owning friends
use on their 400 mhz machines, not if you want to play
the game. On a 50 mhz 060 processor at a low screen resolution the game is
very playable though, infact my first sight of Amiga Quake was on an 040,
and that looked acceptable as well, but there wasn`t much on screen at the
time. I should say though, there are patches available that will speed the
game up, albeit at the cost of some of the previously mentioned lighting
routines, and the sophistication of various objects etc. I gather that
much of Quake`s appeal on the PC is in the quality of the graphics and the
speed of the gameplay, unfortunately us Amiga users are not likely to
fully appreciate these aspects, atleast not without using an illegal PPC
port. It is regrettable that Clickboom decided against porting Quake to
PPC equipped Amigas, this might have had seriously strong implications for
the Amiga`s specific future development route.

Because of the open-ended game engine used by Quake there are various
adaptions of the game, like Malice, that you`ll be able to purchase and
play as well. Additionally, if you have internet access you`ll be able to
play Quake on-line, which is apparently one of the game`s most enjoyable
aspects. I found it very disappointing though, because of the lag between
my inputs and the results in the game. Other players seemed to be flying
all over the place dealing out death with the greatest of ease. It was a
bit like going down to the playground on your first day at school, with
all those big kids charging around. Scary. I understand that this was
basically down to the speed of my modem/internet connection.

As for the actual enjoyment offered by the game that`s obviously down to
individual taste, but for my part Quake is not a game that I have ever
played intensively because I don`t find it to be very addictive. I think
we certainly got our money`s worth from Clickboom in terms of a conversion
though, and if Doom was something you raved about, and you`ve got a fast
enough Amiga, then you`ll probably love Quake to bits.

Alphabetical list.