Quack 2: Back in Action

[Dark Jaguar]

Nightdive Studios did it again.  On the tail of the recent remastering of Rise of the Triad, they've given us an amazing remaster of a rather contentious Quake 2.  The game had... flaws as it was the first id made after Romero left the company, and unfortunately it showed.  The level design consists of numerous tubes, and the enemies are very... samey.  The remaster does a few things to fix this.  Namely, it reenables a number of AI subroutines to make the enemies more interesting to fight.  But, the biggest contribution?  They put in Midway's Quake II 64 (like Doom 64, a whole new game).  Now, it's not a true port of that game.  Instead, the levels are brought in from the N64 game but are running in the Quake 2 engine proper instead of a modified Quake 1 engine as on the N64.  Still, the new AI additions manage to enhance that experience too.

But, the biggest addition is a whole new campaign from Machine Games.  They proved themselves with their campaign in the Quake 1 remaster, and their dedicated to good retro shooter level design is on full display here, with the benefit of zero hardware limitations meaning they can just ooze out hundreds of enemies all over the place and make levels that are detailed and sprawling.  This is frankly the best campaign ever made for Quake II, and I'm including both the second expansion pack and Midway's Quake II 64 in that assessment.

It's good stuff, and unlike so very... very many modern ports, they kept full support for LAN play and direct IP connections.

Edit: Corrected a name mixup

[A Black Falcon]

You mean without Romero (and Tom Hall, who had left during Doom's development), not without John Carmack; he didn't leave id until 2013.

Yeah, this is a very impressive package, and ridiculously cheap for all the stuff you get.  They didn't even charge extra for the full new campaign!  It has a few minor issues, such as that apparently the Switch version doesn't have a control scheme that lets you use the Switch N64 controller (that's a shame), and of course it's Quake II so it's a very visually generic space marine game compared to the much more interesting fantasy/scifi hybrid that is the original Quake, but still, it's impressive stuff.  I picked it up for Xbox.

[Dark Jaguar]

On Purpose?!  Well, the XBox series is... a console.  I'm sure it's... fine?  I kid, but it's so cheap it's basically free in a lot of cases, such as mine when I had Quake 2 on GOG.  It was just gifted in.  You're right, Quake 2 lost a lot of charm the original Quake had, and worse for some reason Quake kept digging into the "wannabe borg" well in future games.

Anyway, I corrected the name drop I got mixed up there.  Speaking of Tom Hall, Nightdive also did a wonderful remaster of Rise of the Triad (Ludicrous Edition) which has.... everything.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, a FPS is going to be better with mouse and keyboard and I don't have digital Q2 for PC (I have it physical, jewelcase only) so I don't have a copy that will auto-upgrade to the new release, and I definitely prefer playing FPSes with mouse when possible, but... I want to be able to play it in 4k on my TV too, so for now I got the Xbox version.  I'll get it for PC also eventually.  My computer is not 4k, so would there be that much of a point of buying a remaster that mostly upgrades the visuals above the resolution my PC outputs?  Sure, it also comes with a few more campaigns, I don't have any of the Q2 addons for PC, which is why I'll buy it for PC eventually, but still despite the controls my first thought was towards console because of the resolution and screen.

Anyway, I corrected the name drop I got mixed up there.  Speaking of Tom Hall, Nightdive also did a wonderful remaster of Rise of the Triad (Ludicrous Edition) which has.... everything.

Oh right, that released recently for PC.  It's coming to consoles but isn't out yet. That's a game I've owned a digital release of (but not on Steam) for a long time, but as much as I love Tom Hall's '90s work I only ever played a few levels of it.  It's definitely something I should play a lot more of so yeah I'll get some version of this remaster for sure if it adds much.

It's sad how Tom Hall mostly stopped making great games after the '90s, his work then was so amazing but since he's done almost nothing of note...

[Dark Jaguar]

I take it your TV is a higher resolution than your monitor then?  Mine match, but with one distinct difference.  My PC monitor has practically no latency but sadly my TV was made before "game mode" became standardized, and suffers quite a bit.  That... didn't make the Souls games any easier that's for sure.  That's at least part of my motivation for just going PC whenever I can.  The other's mods.

Quake 2's enhanced edition comes with an absolutely amazing new campaign that is frankly far better than any of the official campaigns for the original game.  They did the same thing for Quake 1 Enhanced.  I have to give it to Machine Games.  It's like they pump out those Wolfenstein games purely to fund making mods for retro 90's shooters.

[A Black Falcon]

Yes, my TV is a 4k OLED (55", 120hz), while for PC monitors all I've got is a 1920x1200 (60hz) main monitor (it's like 27" I think) and a second monitor that's a mid '00s Dell LCD which uses VGA and is 5:4... yeah.

I love that main monitor, it has quite nice colors for a LED panel, I love 16:10 and think it's a lot better than 16:9, and it has some nice features like rotation to a vertical orientation, but it's not modern in terms of resolution.  It's fine for my current computer, though, since this computer I put together in 2017 is not exactly high end anymore either -- my graphics card is a GeForce 960 after all... a 4GB 960, but still, older.  I'd definitely need a better graphics card if I got a 4k computer monitor.  I think I'd keep the 16:10 monitor and retire the older LCD, I don't think I have room for three monitors.

This computer is totally fine for all regular computing / internet tasks and most games, but some PC games are finally starting to push this graphics card to its limits, and the resolution difference is definitely noticeable between the XSX at 4k and my PC at 1200p or less.  A few years ago I decided to spend on TV hardware and not computer and I don't regret that since I needed that, but I probably will need to upgrade the PC too in the not too distant future.

[Dark Jaguar]

We picked to spend in opposite directions it seems.  I'm also interested in a new TV but I'll need to pair that with an OSSC or RetroTink too for all my retro consoles to still work.

[A Black Falcon]

I have two Tink 2Xes (one Pro and one Mini). I'm very interested in upgrading to the Tink 4K once it releases, I know it'll be quite expensive but it might be worth it particularly given that I didn't get a Tink 5X...