Conversation

Notices

1. Damiano Gerli (damianogerli@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Sep-2023 15:49:34 UTC Damiano Gerli

   Call of the Machine shows that in the hands of a team (MachineGames) that actually cares about a single player experience, Quake 2 can indeed offer a fantastic journey. Sure, it's been decades of design later and they're working on the strength of an updated engine and all that, but the design is just great, challenging in the right ways and keeps you on your toes.
   Basically everything that Quake II SP vanilla isn't.

   • Anatoly Shashkin💾 (dosnostalgic@mastodon.social@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Sep-2023 15:49:29 UTC Anatoly Shashkin💾

     in reply to

     • Richard Troupe

     @damianogerli @richardtroupe I don't think it feels like an afterthought. And there's certainly *a lot* of it. I just think at that particular point there weren't many people left at id who knew how to vary things up to make them interesting. Because let's face it, even multiplayer got really punched up with mods.

   • Damiano Gerli (damianogerli@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Sep-2023 15:49:30 UTC Damiano Gerli

     in reply to

     • Anatoly Shashkin💾
     • Richard Troupe

     @richardtroupe yeah, I think we briefly spoke about it with @dosnostalgic recently.
     The original Q2 single player campaign definitely feels like an after thought. I guess ID was just paying attention to the engine and that the multiplayer worked as it should.

   • Damiano Gerli (damianogerli@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Sep-2023 15:49:33 UTC Damiano Gerli

     in reply to

     • Richard Troupe

     @richardtroupe well the design of the original single player campaign was honestly terrible. No flow, no pacing, I played on hard and the bosses didn't even get half my health off (and I'm not pro player, god forbid). Really boring, even Quake II 64 is better.

   • Richard Troupe (richardtroupe@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Sep-2023 15:49:33 UTC Richard Troupe

     in reply to

     @damianogerli Really? I quite enjoy vanilla Q2 but maybe that's just me. 😂

     I must admit that I'm an outlier in terms of my gaming taste.

   • Richard Troupe (richardtroupe@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Sep-2023 15:49:34 UTC Richard Troupe

     in reply to

     @damianogerli I think what is really evident is the strength of Quake II's engine and game design many years later. That others are able to refine what makes it so good, leads to other great experiences.

   • Damiano Gerli (damianogerli@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Sep-2023 16:16:25 UTC Damiano Gerli

     in reply to

     • Anatoly Shashkin💾
     • Richard Troupe

     @dosnostalgic @richardtroupe it's just very bland corridors after corridors of repetitive stuff, even the enemies do not seem very well utilized (not the bosses for sure). It's like a solid framework for a good single player campaign, but definitely does not play like one.