Quake


Title		Quake
Game Type	3D Action
Players		1
Compatibility	020 plus
Submission	David Tansley

Review
First up, I'm going to get the bad stuff out of the way first. There's
quite a bit of it, so hold tight.

First impressions - getting hold of the box, you're immedietly impressed
by the lovely matt black digipack style case (why cant all games come in
these regular sized boxes??). Lovely, dark millenium style artwork in
moody browns and various shades of black. Then as you fondle its
delicious form, you flip it over in your hands and the bubble of ecstasy
bursts as you read the system requirements....MSDOS PC, 486 or greater.
Hmmmm. That was cheap ClickBoom, I know it's a niggly point, but surely
it wouldnt have hurt to cover over that with some vaguely amiga related info?

Anyway, onto the game. Installing is a doddle, click and go...although
finding 60Mb free might be a hardship for some old timers clinging to
their 50Mb 2.5inch drives. Also, it would've been nice to see the CD icon
changed to something quake-like.

Clicking the Quake icon to run the game itself, and I was immediatly
confronted with a crash. DOH! It was going so well.
Unperturbed, I reboot and tried one of the preprepared Quake scripts to
run in safe mode, with no CDAudio....And it works perfectly. The problem
I was having was with my CD player (squirrel?) screwing up the supplied
audio files....If anyone can help me with this, drop me a line.

One of the first things I noticed within the game itself was the number
of bugs....especially within the menu system. Changing screenmode
frequently hangs it. As with soundmode, renderroutine, stuff like that.
I also found a conflict with MCPs screen menu and the "Mouselook" option.
These may be bugs in the code itself, in which case we'll more than
likely see patches, but i'm more prepared to believe that the fault is
with my system and the number of hacks I run.

And as for bad stuff, that about wraps it up. The presentation things I
can live with, and the hangups are infrequent enough to not really cause
a problem....besides, once you've set your screenmode etc, you probably
wont want to change it that often.

So....the good stuff.

People moan about Quake being a crap one player game. Well, dont believe
the hype. This common complaint only exists because Quake is such an
excellent MultiPlayer game. In one player mode, the atmosphere is
stunning. I've never played a more atmospheric game than quake...at least
not for a long time. It's a 100 times more realistic than Doom, which was
like Tom and Jerry compared to Quake's Ghost in the Shell. The sound is
superb. Walk around a corner and you hear a metallic slash from your
left, you turn to see a sword weilding knight about to carve you a new
butt. Scary.

The inclusion of multiple levels allows ledges and walkways which can be
viewed from above or beneath thanks to the excellent Freelook mouse
control system. Water and various other nefarious liquids allow for
excellent swimming effects, and tense rushes to the surface as your air
runs out and your energy ticks down in a series of gulps.

It's still the same old routine....Find switch, press switch, leave
level. But what the hell, if it aint broke, dont monkey with it.

The real joy of Quake is it's expandability. On the net there are
thousands of patches, upgrades and total conversions that can do anything
from changing your weapons to turning you into a car or a plane. The most
interesting of these are so called "Bots". These are autonomous
characters that are more intelligent than the run of the mill baddies,
and can be used to simulate Deathmatch play....if you have no network
connection (or no mates) this is incredably useful, as the hunter-killer
deathmatch side of quake is unparalled.
If you dont want to fight them, then you can always use them. Load up the
"Cujo" bot, which looks like a zombie dog, and he'll stand by your side
until a baddy appears, and then run to defend you.

There are no limits to what can be done with the quake engine, and I hope
to see Quake utilities for creating levels etc ported to the Amiga.

Finally, the old chestnut. Speed. How fast is it exactly? Well, dont
expect to see P200+3dfx speeds, because you wont get them. Even if you
have a PPC, then you'll have to fall back on your 060 or 040, as no PPC
code exists.
But on my 060, with AGA graphics (my ZII CGFX system is slower than AGA
:() I get 10fps, which may sound bad, but it really is quite playable. It
does tend to slow down when you're being  attacked from all sides, but
thats to be expected, and you can lower the screensize and detail level
to suit. But I really dont think i could recommend it to 040 users,
unless they were really desperate to play it.

On the whole then, quake is great. Easily the most technically advanced
game the Amiga has ever seen, and a fine conversion that stands up well
to the pcs and macs of the world.



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