Quake II Remastered review

Quake II Remastered review: I’m not sure how much Quake II is of interest to new generation players, but its place in the game world is unquestionably great. We’ve been hearing rumors of Quake II Remaster for a while, an RTX update or something, but I never thought it would appear in front of us at a time like this.

Quake II Remastered review

Quake II Remastered review

These days, we come across a lot of renewed versions of old games, some of them come completely renewed like System Shock, while some of them are remaster versions that come to new generation consoles with simple updates like Pikmin 1+2. So, is Quake II Remaster a completely remastered remaster? What kind of game came out of MachineGames, which we know from the Nightdive and Wolfenstein series, which also worked on the System Shock Remaster version we reviewed before? My expectations were high, let’s examine how much was met.

If They Occupy Us, Let’s Occupy Them

Developed by id Sofware in 1997, the game was the first encounter of many players of my time with the FPS genre. I really don’t know why it was like that at that time, but I was running into Alpha and Beta versions of anyone with a computer, and I was playing the episodes they had. That’s why I still remember the first chapters of the game’s story missions by heart.

Quake II Remastered review

Quake II, in which we control a soldier named Bitterman, is about a counter operation to stop the invasion of the Earth by aliens called Strogg. “Invasion against your occupation!” Our soldiers attacking the Stroggs’ planet are not performing very well. Most of the soldiers are killed, some are taken prisoner, Bitterman gets lucky and starts the invasion on his own as a full duty man.

The story that continues with the additional packages included in the Quake II Remaster package and Quake 4 may not be very interesting or impressive, but it does its job. After all, we are in an extraterrestrial realm and we have enough reason to clear out the enemies. Let us also remind you that Quake II, which was originally planned as a separate game, took this name with the thought that it would have a positive impact on sales later on.

Quake II Remastered review

So you won’t have a problem switching to this without playing the first game. The story is also enough to explain how we came to aliens from medieval places. Along with this package, a new deathmatch map is also added to the game.

What’s New in Quake II Remastered

Quake II Remaster includes the previously released expansion packs The Reckoning and Ground Zero. You can fully experience the original Quake II experience with additional packs containing more than 30 single-player episodes. The Deathmatch maps that come with these packages have also been added as playable.

The Quake II 64 game, which was prepared for the Nintendo 64, is also presented to the players with renewed visuals. I really liked that they renewed a game, most of which were cut to fit the Nintendo 64 dimensions, and the section structure and enemies were made playable with a controller so that “this is not missing”. Although it is much easier than the main game, it is a great opportunity for those who want to experience it. It is a lesson for games that take out the content in the original game and present it as “Remastered”.

Quake II Remastered review

With Quake II Remaster, a brand new expansion is coming to the game, Call of the Machine! Moreover, the developers of this package are MachineGames, who also developed the Wolfenstein series, so you can have very high expectations. It is an expansion pack that makes people say, “It successfully carried Quake II to modern times”, with an enjoyable campaign mode consisting of different sections.

I’m guessing Quake II is the first multiplayer game most old players play. In the remaster version, multiplayer options have not been ignored, and it has even become easier to find games. Lots of options are waiting for you if you want to play with or against your friends. First of all, you have the chance to play the campaign mode in Co-Op with up to 4 people, I haven’t tried it yet, but even the idea is pretty good. Apart from that, there is 1v1 combat, Capture the Flag mode and of course Deathmatch.

You can play the multiplayer mode by dividing the screen (splitscreen) by up to 8 people, against computers connected over the local network or over the internet. There is also a crossplay feature, but you need to connect a controller to play with console players on PC. It’s a nice countermeasure against the keyboard-mouse advantage. There are also bots that fill vacancies in Team Deathmatch and Deathmatch modes. I also noticed that they put up good fights according to the level of difficulty.

Quake II Remastered review

The best part of the multiplayer mode is the game finding feature. In the past, you could know and enter the IP address of the game you were going to play. Now you can see the lobbies, choose the one with the ms value close to you and dive into the action.

Finally, I want to talk about mod support. The game has mod support and you can use the multiplayer maps you made in the old game in this game. Mods that were previously released for Quake II are not supported because the 64-bit version has been upgraded. But the makers have released the source codes of the game for players who want to update their old mods. In other words, it offers the opportunity to prepare new mods and update old mods.

Revamped Audio and Visuals

Quake II Remaster offers a very pleasing performance visually. The skins and lighting effects look pretty cool. Having played the original game, I liked the new environment so much that I was surprised when I first saw the enemies. Interestingly, all the visuals have been enhanced, while the character models have been left low-polygon. It was strange at first, but as I played, I thought, “It was like that in Quake II, which I remember.” This is one of the attractive aspects of retro looking FPS games, it was nice to get the same vibe from a real retro game.

Quake II Remastered review

To play the game at 1080p/60Hz, you need a minimum of GTX 650 TI (2GB) – AMD HD 7750 graphics card, i5-3570 – Ryzen 3 1300x processor and 8GB RAM. If you say you will play at 4K resolution with 120Hz, you must have GTX 1070 (8GB) – RX Vega 56 (8g) graphics card, i5-6600k – Ryzen 5 1600 processor and 8GB RAM. I tried it in both 4K and 1080p and did not encounter any technical glitches.

I won’t say much about sounds and music. Quake 1’s sound effects sounded slightly muffled, but here everything was clean and of high quality. I have experienced each weapon separately in multiplayer matches, I am satisfied with all of them. The music of the game has also been improved in terms of sound quality. After the discovery of “You can put the CD in Discman and listen to the music” in those years, the music I listened to a lot is still great. It’s not Quake 1 level music, but it’s because Trent made it anyway.

Quake II Remastered review

I would like to give a little information about the controls of the game, although I did this review on the PC version, I also played a little on the Xbox. Although it is always more comfortable to play FPS games with a keyboard-mouse duo, I would like to point out that this game is quite suitable for playing with a controller. It has a heavier movement structure than the first and third games, making it easier to aim with the controller. It also supports gyro controls and HD Rumble feature on Nintendo Switch, I would like to try it if I get the opportunity.

Also, playing with the arrow keys in the default controls is not attached, I had to adjust the settings to try to play as before. Since all features such as jumping, shooting and leaning can be done via the mouse, you can even play using only the arrow keys, giving a different atmosphere.

Conclusion

Quake II Remaster was created in response to the saying “there is no such thing as a perfect remaster”. All the expansion packs, aside from completely taking the game released on different platforms and adding it to the main pack, have put a brand new expansion pack.

Quake II Remastered review

They developed it technically, added a lot of life-enhancing features, strengthened artificial intelligence, provided the opportunity to review all the past content with iD Vault, and made the multiplayer side more powerful and effective. They even took the necessary steps to reach more people with a lot of new options in the accessibility section.

I could have complained a bit if they wanted a new game price in the face of the improvements I mentioned above, but we’ve come to the best part of the job. They’re all on sale for just $10! With a price tag of 172 TL on Steam in Turkey sold Quake II Remastered is given for free to those who own the old version of the game. If you have Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass service, you can play there for free. If you want to play on the PlayStation console, you can buy it for 175 TL from the PS Store, and if you want to buy it separately for Xbox, you can buy it for 172.5 TL from the Store. Nintendo Switch is the most expensive in our country, and it can be purchased on the Nintendo Store for 10 dollars.

If you have bought it on Steam before, be sure to download it and try the new version, if you have Game Pass, download it and have a look. If you think that this game can be bought at this price, rest assured, it is definitely bought. There is not the slightest thing I can say about Quake II Remastered “that’s bad”. If you say forcefully and incompletely, I can say visual improvements in the previously released RTX version, but even those lighting effects are not important for what we have. What we have is an almost flawless remaster, and it deserves all the praise.