[Subtle intro dinging] [QuakeGuy Hup] [Teleporter Gate Entry] [Nine Inch Nails - Quake Theme Song] AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa In 1994, Id Software was doing all this Doom stuff. And we know how that turned out. [Doom II's "Running from Evil" plays.] But at Id, there was a bit of a routine now: you make a game with an impressive new engine, and then they make a sequel with basically the same engine. And while that sequel is happening, the vessel that houses energy-based, fourth-dimensional being John Carmack writes some crazy new engine that pushes gaming technology forward a few years. I mean ok he had some help this time for Michael Abrash. You got to understand: the Wolfenstein engine was cute The Doom engine was a marvel at the time; but the Quake engine? I can't overstate how important the technology was. If you're playing a 3D game, chances are buried deep within it there's still some of Quake's DNA in there. Quake came along and was the most efficient way of rendering polygons ever. And some weirdos who used to work at Microsoft licensed the engine and heavily modified it to make some game called "Half-Life." The multiplayer was hugely popular, because the game has some of the smoothest, fastest, and most impressive movement ever in an FPS. Tournaments were held! Esports was invented! Carmack gave a fucking Ferrari away! Everything was 3D now. Everything. And it ran on a Pentium 90 in software mode. It was choppy, sure, because they didn't have skeletal animations and model interpolation yet. I mean... ok. Model Interpolation is when the game smooths out the animation between the keyframes. So it doesn't look like this, and instead looks like this! And that... oh that was an issue. Because when I started doing this episode, I was trying to decide what sourceport of Quake to use because they released the source code 20 years ago. So like Doom, there's a pretty wide selection. Darkplaces. Ok. Yeah, sure. However... Model interpolation. That thing? [Nailgun Firing] [Let's see that again!] What the fuck is that? Because it's blending the animations, the muzzle flash on the weapons - - which are part of the model itself, and not flat sprites, drawn like they would be later in Half-Life - - they're stored over here or something, and the game moves them into place when needed. Which is fine when you have choppy frames, you won't even notice, but then this... [Muzzle Flash slips away] This is the only reason I didn't use Darkplaces. (Darkplace engine are design for Quake 1.5) So my next option was Quakespasm, which runs beautifully and I probably would have used it if the fucking music worked. Quake has a legendary atmospheric soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor... who you may have heard of... It adds a lot to the atmosphere. Have a listen. [Ominous atmospheric tones play] It's a touch more pants-shittingly terrifying than say... ["At Doom's Gate" plays.
Relatively jauntily.] [Music stops] And Quakespasm, for some goddamn reason, wasn't playing it. Don't send me to all these places saying: "HEY, TRY THIS!" I tried all that. I don't know why, but it's not working Not even with the original Quake CD, which I still have. Sorry, Quakespasm. I love you, but some weird and unique thing prevents the music from automatically playing. I can do it from the console, but not in-game. I don't know. So I switched over to Mark V and that works. It's cool. Anyway, the single-player is... not quite as fondly remembered. Because it's not really anything more than Doom, except 3D. It's guns and monsters and castles. They had plants for all this RPG stuff, But you know... Quake is referenced as early as Commander Keen where it says Id Software's working on a game called "The Fight for Justice: a completely new approach to fantasy gaming. You start out not as a weakling with no food - - You start as Quake, the strongest, most dangerous person on the continent." He would have carried a cool hammer and travel through time and stuff. Yeah, that sounds badass! But you know... stuff happens. They were developing this hot new game for like 18 months. Way longer than any of their other games took to make. Everyone on this nine-person team was exhausted. So they said, "Hey, let's just make it like Doom," and everyone said, "Okay!" This is from the book "Masters of Doom," which you should all read: "The decision to abandon Romero's designed for Carmack's technology created incinerating pressure. The company was in perpetual crunch mode trying to get the doom style shooter done by March." "Carmack, feeling like he was the only one running the ship, decided it was time to turn up the heat. For weeks he'd been working out in the hallway to keep an eye on everyone else. But now he suggested they tear the walls down." So they did. Which to be fair is fucking crazy. But Romero wasn't really happy. See, he probably liked the original idea of a guy with a special weapon, venturing around time and space, and different worlds and stuff. Everyone was exhausted, so they put this game together. Four episodes of "whatever this is gonna sell. Look at this baby: It's full 3D! Quake starts with a difficulty selection map. Yeah, that was weird. And since this is Pro Quake, we have to select the hardest skill. It's hidden in the Episode 4 entrance, right here. Yeah, we'll see that. Episode 1: the one everybody played cuz it was a shareware. Every episode starts in a brown tech base full of shotgunning zombies and mean Rottweilers. And in later episodes, zombies with laser guns. And each of these spaces ends with the Slipgate that takes you into a new world on the first level you start with an axe Get a good look cuz you're never gonna see it again a shotgun Which you won't see too much either because you get a double-barreled shotgun in this level, too [QuakeGuy Hup] [Shotgun boom + pump click] [Time to put Ol' Yeller away] [Which you can not pet in this game] [Dog Death Yelp] And the nail gun it's not a machine gun Look at those sweet 3d projectiles and the Nine Inch Nails reference on every box ammo same as doom health armor Monsters and the very first appearance of the famous quad damage powerup So famous and emigrated over into doom 2016 does exactly what you think it would do. It's great [Quad-Damage GRRRR] [Ammo Pickup noise] [Alert Noises] [Marine death G'argh!] [Marine Death G'argh!] [This isn't Champ] Marine death "G'argh" I always miss one of these switches while I'm doing this [Marine Death G'argh!] [Doggo Down] [Marine death G'argh!] [Doggo is Frighten] [and gets gibbed in the process..] [Marine death G'argh!] [Marine death G'argh!]
[Marine gibbed] [and another marine gibbed] [ammo pickup] [Health pickup] [ammo pickups] [Double taps Marine to make sure] [ammo pickup] The mega health gives you 100 HP, but not like in Doom. It ticks down gradually for some reason. In these other worlds, well... It's a lot of castles, tombs, dungeons. The second level is creatively titled "Castle of the Damned", and first things first: meet the Ogre. He has chainsaw and a grenade launcher. This is an early game enemy and he has a fucking grenade launcher. And on Nightmare - unlike on lower skills - he spams grenades at you pretty much endlessly. You can force him to melee you if you go in close, but good luck with that. Four Super Shotgun blasts...or some nails, or when you get a grenade launcher or a rocket launcher, two shots from those and the Ogre drops a backpack. Wait, what where did he get that? Anyway, he drops a backpack with two grenades. Grenades and rockets are interchangeable, don't worry about it. Explosive weapons in Quake were a little more important to the core gameplay. See, the player doesn't take as much splash damage as you'd think, which led to the popularization of rocket jumps - you'll see those later. You think I'm gonna do a Pro Quake episode without rocket jumps? Yeah, right. We haven't gotten the grenade launcher yet. We're still on level two. We gotta talk about the new monsters - most of the monsters in Quake are introduced in episode 1, and all of those by level 3: Scrags fly around and throw projectiles at you but are weak nailgun fodder, Knights rush you and melee. They hurt but also are pretty weak. At the end of level 2, There's a monster that gets a special introduction: Yes, the fiend! Fast, deadly, leaping towards you and cratering your health. I remember these to be in the first monsters to really give me trouble, with their low-poly body that has spikes for hands and the fact that they'll tank two grenades to the face. Hitting them will stop their charge usually but, ohhhh... Now, Quake is generally easier than DOOM. One reason is that there are fewer enemies, because of how putting 200 monsters in a map would affect the performance. Another one is the abundance of power-ups. The biggest reason, in my opinion, is the fact that all the monsters still have wide hitboxes They make them open to attack when they're behind a wall. You'll get a grenade launcher in Level 3, because you need it to deal with the zombies who need to be gibbed to stay dead. Quake's gibbing is simple but satisfying; just that weird sound I can't describe, that "Blllggglggglgg" And since we're playing on Nightmare we also get to see the Shamblers! Giant and possibly fuzzy monsters that shoot lightning at you, are resistant to explosions, and on Nightmare, can kill you even quicker because of some weird thing where it fires twice as fast and there's an invisible second lightning beam. So yeah. [Nailgun firing, Shambler and Scrag attack noises] [Continued strafe firing at Shambler, Scrag still struggling to also be dangerous] [Ranger takes a hit mid-strafe run] [Scrag dies; Shambler and Ranger continue to trade fire] [Double barreled shotgun blasts, still more Shambler lightning] [Shambler slaps Ranger with lightning moments before death] The Nailgun is good for them. The Super Nailgun you get in the next level is way better. It looks like only one nail comes out but it fires two. And starting on Level 3, Quake does get a little spicy, and casual players will probably die a lot from this. I mean, the end of Level 3 throws a bunch of Fiends at you, followed by a Shambler! You could walk right past them, I guess, but what fun is that? Level 4 is sunken dungeons and rotten traps. [Ranger yelps from damaging liquid (acid, probably)] [Super Nailgun fire and angry Ogre grenade tossing] Yeah, and if you want to go to the secret level, you got to get in both of those rooms and hit a switch. Once you've learned enemy patterns, most of them are easy enough to avoid. The Ogres don't telegraph launcher grenades too well in Nightmare But that doesn't matter, because: just assume they're always shooting grenades, because they are. A secret cave opens to bring you to a secret level: Ziggurat Vertigo. The gravity is low. This can be helpful because Ogres can't aim at you properly, and while it's a pain to control your movements in the air, you will pick up the Rocket Launcher a little early. What you'll *really* need to learn is power-up management. We've already seen the Quad Damage.
Aside from that, you get a biosuit, which isn't important. It just lets you cross or swim in harmful environments. There's also the Ring of Shadows that makes you invisible, until you hit something. Here's the Pentagram of Protection, because Satanic shit snuck into this Lovecraft-influenced game. I assume John Romero and Sandy Peterson were fighting one another during the design. The Pentagram shields you from damage but it's not exactly invincibility: When you get hurt, your armor takes damage, but not your health. So you might come out of it with no armor left. [Ranger leap] [Pentagram of Protection activates] [ambient noises] [Ranger jump, rocket fire at attacking Scrag] [Super Nailgun fire at Shambler, who reciprocates with lightning] [Shambler succumbs to the hailstorm of nails] But that's boring. Here's the Rocket Launcher. If there's a standout weapon in Quake, this is it. Not the most powerful, I guess, even by the standards of rocket launchers and monsters in Quake can be a little spongy to account for not being able to put 500 of them in a level. The rockets travel fast, hit pretty hard And since ammo is plentiful, it could easily turn into your main weapon. You don't usually get it til the next map, but now that I have it... The door to Chthon... or however the *fuck* that - Shathan...Chathan Cathon...no. One of the first really dark, foreboding levels in Quake. A lot of this is still pretty impressive coming after DOOM; all these moving parts and sequences, all the simple stuff that a fully-3d engine allowed for, all the fun places you can hide secrets that allow you to go on a quad rampage... You may end up super dead in this one trap on Nightmare, based entirely on if you have armor. It boxes you went on a narrow platform over lava, and a Shambler spawns over here with zero cover to hide from his lightning attack. Don't worry, there's only one more goddamn Shambler to deal with after that. The house of Chthon - I'm glad he's gonna be dead soon so I can stop trying to pronounce that - turns out that I'm good at this level to a fault. You have to run around the arena and hit these two switches on the side to lower these things. I'm so fast, I get to the middle switch before the other things are done lowering so nothing happens. No, that's fine. This game really suffers from not having actual bosses. You'd see this guy in the shareware version and then find out there's no bosses in the other three episodes, not even a big damage sponge easily conquered with circle strafing. Episode 2 starts off with a tech base that you can easily skip most of, but we won't do that because we can get a grenade launcher here. The game at least gets frantic - and frankly even hard sometimes - What with the endless ogres and infinite grenades. The Ogre Citadel, believe it or not: Fucking *full* of them. And this gauntlet with the Quad Damage here, it's good, I enjoy it, even though I saved the Quad for when I have to deal with this Shambler. The Crypt of Decay is where the game introduces the Death Knight, who's like a regular knight with more health and this weird, easy-to-avoid attack. What really sets this one apart: this madness, toward the end here - a straight line of rampaging monsters, including two Shamblers. I suppose I could have picked up this "HIDDEN" Quad Damage, but nah, whatever, it's fine. We gotta open the secret level in this room towards the end, which opens a secret gate *inside* of a secret over here, which is connected to THIS secret Ahh, there he is! The Underearth is one of the harder levels, as your secret level should be. Remember to go on a Quad Rampage. And also, shoot all these gargoyle panels to open an Easter egg with the initials Tim Willits and Theresa Chasar. There's some fine architecture and level design in the game, and some traps that will catch you off-guard because of grenade spam. And some rooms that are just ball-busters...unless you get this Quad Damage right here, then it's fine! This level also gives you the Thunderbolt, finally. The classic lightning gun, which isn't BFG powerful, you know, unless you try to use it in water. It eats up your cell ammo, which you'll have kind of a lot of by the time you get it in any episode, because these guys here drop five per backpack, and the ammo pickups themselves give you about a quarter of a second to use per battery. It's, uh, it's more useful later. It's great for Shamblers - for some reason, Shamblers aren't immune to their own attack. The final level has this set up with a bridge in the center, which you can probably skip right to the end. I'm not going to, I want to stock up on ammo and such. Once you get there, you meet the speedrunner's bane: this elevator, which takes forever, and it's so happy to spawn Shamblers that one telefrags another but at the bottom: The Vores! Imagine if the Revenant was tougher and had a projectile that was good at homing in on you. Really, Really, *REALLY* good at it. You have to take some pretty tight quarters to avoid a Vore missile, and on Nightmare they're pretty much guaranteed to have a reaction time low enough to toss at least one before you kill them, unless you immediately forced them into a pain state with a Thunderbolt. Technically the bosses of this episode, and the next one too. Okay, 2 runes down. "The Rune of Black Magic throbs evilly in your hand - *evilly*. Yeah, okay, John. Quake doesn't have story, It has text intermissions like DOOM. When you get the Rune you learn the inmost lore of the Hell-Mother, Shub-Niggurath - Who is actually an Outer God in the Cthulhu Mythos - The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, who I am fragging to *pieces*. You now know that she is behind all the terrible plotting... Okay, that's just TOO easy, moving on... Episode three opens with another brown tech base called Termination Central. Whoo hoo. I gotta mention how the super shotgun can gib enemies in this game, it's wonderful. There really isn't a lot to talk about in most Quake levels because it's a lot of the same most of the time. The levels are mostly shorter than something like DOOM, maybe necessarily so to keep the performance up. The vaults of Zin, apparently named after a Lovecraft location - *yay* - fakes you out with a key and releases zombies. I think episode 3 had a lot of demonic influences, these all being American McGee's levels. This episode has more tight spaces and lava. Hold on, be right back. You ought to remember: Shamblers are explosion *resistant*, not explosion *proof*. Aww, goddammit. A Shambler guards the Thunderbolt here. It shows off how he might have a little trouble of vertical aiming, thankfully. Honestly this episode doesn't get interesting until the secret level, accessible from the obvious tunnel at the end of Satan's Dark Delight. Love these level names like: Tomb of Terror, Azure Agony, The Grisly Grotto, The Painful Piss Tank, The Comfy Cabin, the Alliterative Abattoir and, of course, The Haunted Halls. My favorite secret level cause it's brutal, claustrophobic. It's a good time, even if it's almost wrecking you. Short and sweet and a welcome challenge. Next is the gimmick level: The Wind Tunnels, which I mean - does this belong thematically? Isn't this air current stuff kind of clunky? I don't know. It just seems primitive and oversimplified - which I guess can be said of most of Quake - though usually as a complaint because of how simple the gameplay itself is. I mean, there's no use key. There's NO USE KEY! Carmack fought for that. Chambers of Torment, the last level of Episode Three should tell you where this game is going, because when it's done trying (and usually failing) to challenge you legitimately, it'll throw a bunch of vores at you. I cannot stress how many grenades fly on nightmare, holy shit! Or maybe right before the exit, it'll trap you on a bridge and spawn a fiend in front of you AND behind you, is that fun? That's fun, right? Episode four starts off with - you guessed it - The Sewer System. Fuck The Sewer System. *You* know why. Now you're into the Elder World which would be my favorite episode. The atmosphere is dark and foreboding, the enemy count is higher, the traps more interesting. I mean Tower of Despair has this little gem with a Vore right at the start, and if you jump down here there's a Shambler, but I know where the secrets are, so I'm invisible. And then... That feels really good, especially with all these fucking Vores. They're not the worst, because in the next level You meet the cruelest monster ever put into an ID game: worse than the Arch-Vile, worse than the Pain Elemental, worse than whatever-the-fuck monsters were in Rage 1, I only barely remember that game. I'm talking about the Spawns. They are THE worst. They bounce all over the place unpredictably. They lie in wait in dark corners. All you hear is [Spawn wake noise] and you have maybe a few seconds before they start going nuts slapping you around. Yeah, I mean "slapping". That's what they sound like: They sound like somebody chugging a dick. And when you kill them, they explode, usually right in your face. And there's nearly a hundred of them lurking around this episode on Nightmare. Groups are easy enough to take out if you get 'em early, but if not, have fun. They're fucking bullshit! Romero said they came up with them late into development and they were too tough, so they couldn't use them much, meaning that the 30 times the bastards how up on Easy doesn't count as "too much". *One* is too much. After the second level and excluding the Palace of Hate, this episode is fucking full of spawns, especially in the last two levels: The Pain Maze and Azure Agony. These two maps are the most torturous in the game. Spawns everywhere. Oh, yeah, and they refill the room with Spawns when you come back. That's why I saved the Quad Damage here. Gotta abuse those power-ups. There's a Pentagram in this secret here, and you bet I'm gonna run with it to this room. You see that? That's death. Not to mention the Unholy Altar, the Vores, the Fiends, the Spawns-oh yeah, the Spawns! I'm gonna take a step back to the secret level which has an exit hidden in the map Hell's Atrium, which in itself is kind of a pain because of...yeah, that. And the secret exit is basically inaccessible if you hit this silver key button because it starts to close. Then you're in the Nameless City, which is, for the most part, Suffering. A confusing layout, this jump here where it practically forces you into lava - I've made this jump before, but the bars are there, and I swear to *fucking* god Sandy, you-Yeah, all but the sewer level was Sandy Peterson. He nailed the Lovecraft atmosphere. Too bad his levels are full of friggin' Spawns! Let's get back to the agony - Azure Agony is the last level before the, uh "FINAL BOSS". Starts off how you think, with a Shambler droppin' on you, and there's a Spawn there too - maybe you can't see him, but I saw a pixel of his fucking silhouette! [Super Nailgun fire] Half this level is a Quad Rampage. Once you get into the halls - Oh my god. It's fittingly brutal for the penultimate level. I think maybe you get too many powerups. So I mean this is Nightmare and I barely die at all. Finally, got the Rune! Despite the awful might of the Elder World, you have achieved the Rune of Elder Magic, capstone of all types of arcane wisdom. I forgot that "capstone" was an actual word. I always thought was "The Pinnacle of Entertainment Software", Legally distinct and not to be confused with Apogee, "The Height of Gaming Excitement". Blah blah blah, Let's go to Shub-Niggurath's Pit and end this episode like we do all ID games on this show: with disappointment. It's worse than the Icon of Sin. Kill some fish, a Scrag. Then some Shamblers, some Vores. And when this thing enters Shub-Niggurath, enter the Teleporter It's lame as fuck. I mean telefragging the boss is kind of cool but it's not like she does anything. I like this guy over here. He's just "Oh, you killed that powerful eldritch monster. Yeah. Fuck this, I'm out." Congratulations and well done! You have beaten the hideous Shub-Niggurath and her hundreds of ugly changelings and monsters. You have proven that your skill and your cunning are greater than all the powers of Quake. You are the master now. ID software salutes you. Yeah, sure, whatever. I'm not a master. I'm sure I'd get my ass kicked in deathmatch, which is what this game is remembered for. It's not like they couldn't make a better single-player campaign with all this stuff, but I barely play the quake mission pack So, uh, Arcane Dimensions is better. Go play Arcane Dimensions. SILENCE BOOMER Listen, I'm technically a millennial, which depending on your outlook, might be worse. The day is coming, Civvie. I know, I know - Duke Nukem Forever, I get it - I'd really prefer not to. The day when you and your miserable race succumb to US. We will stop you and earth will be free of your dark tyranny. Excuse me, no. All the guards are busy holding down quarantine, I haven't had my sack tazed in months, I'm not gonna have to play Borderlands 3 - all things considered, this is going pretty good for me. Katie, roll that "How'd I do?"
I seriously hope he does a Pro Arcane Dimensions at some point, that mod takes Quake to such a high level it's insane. It feels like the real Quake 2 in terms of feeling.
Also it has a triple barrel shotgun, and has some of the guys who are now making Wrack: Aeon of Ruin.
If I made Descent Iād be a little pissed that Quake gets all the credit for fully textured 3D even though it came out a year after my game.
Ahhh, Civvie 11. He's easily become one of my favourite up and coming YouTubers because he doesn't half-ass his criticism like Gman has before.
He gave Sigil a good review whereas Gman whinged about how the unofficial episode 5 mappack was too difficult and panned John Romero for only using stock Doom textures. Civvie also criticised Blood: Fresh Supply for some of the remaster's glaring flaws like the physics not working right, enemies not being weak to fire damage, graphical glitches, sequence breaks that weren't possible in the original game, etc, while Gman gave it a glowing review and didn't acknowledge any of the faults.
He's 1.7k subscribers away from playing Duke Nukem Forever on his channel. I sincerely hope that he crams as many clips of Gordon Ramsay saying "IT'S FUCKIN' RAW" as humanly possible, like he did with his Blood 2 and Hunt Down The Freeman videos.
To be honest, I never thought about Quake as critically as Civvie did. After this, Quake really does seem like a technologically revolutionary mess.
It now makes sense why I never quite liked it as much as I did Doom, Heretic and DN3D. Also, even though the game was impressive technologically, it would yet take years for actual 3D graphics to match the stylish sprite-based graphics of the build engine, Quake models and animations were quite poor (Q3A would be that point for me). The color palette of Quake was a low point too.
I really want to play Quake for the first time. I'm going on a retro-game binge, so next time they are on sale I'm thinking of buying the Quake Collection.
But my To-Do List is pretty massive, I already gotta do Doom, the Build Engine games, and others.
In the beginning of his video he said Darkplaces doesn't have model interpolation. I could have sworn that Darkplaces has had model interpolation for years.
will he do pro Wolfenstein ever?