Reviews / previews
Quad Damage, Activision's full-body scan of Id's
Quake II canon, reiterates the two basic facets of
this well-regarded first-person shooter.
First, the multiplayer is elegant--and rarely more so
than in the passel of inventive "mods" on the
included Extremities: Netpack 1. QWar2's real-time
strategy variant--you're in charge of a whole army of
Strogg--remains a particular favorite, though it may
take a little while to
learn (it's not a
shooter) and to find
a game.
But the
single-player
mode, while
initially invoking the
Doom conceit of
levels that feel like
places, ultimately comes off as a run of bland,
dusky warehouses and sewage treatment plants,
and the two single-player add-ons here don't
persuasively contradict the parent game's banal
soldiering.
To be sure, the levels are expansive, with some
well-constructed
battles and the
odd flash of
cleverness--Rogue's
Ground Zero with
a Quake II version
of Doom II's
Revenant and
Xatrix's The
Reckoning with a
lost-in-the-woods
mood at the outset and a nice little story.
But, in the end, neither really rises above its
foundation nor adjusts the way we think about action
games.
That's a high expectation. Id has encouraged high expectations. Ritual's
Scourge of Armagon transported Quake out of its slaughterhouse puzzle
rooms and gave its levels the familiar tang of the real world.
Three single-player add-ons later, it's beginning to look like a fluke.-- Peter Olafson / GamePro
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