Quake

Title: Quake
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: June 22, 1996
Date Played: 2001
Time Played: 10 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 4/5



Opinion:
Quake is a revolutionary game, its engine (although heavily modified) is still used today, and masterpieces such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare series, and MOHAA used it.  Even Valve's own Source Engine, which powers all of their games is based on the Quake Engine.

Without a doubt Quake was yet another revolution of the FPS genre brought to life by ID, it was unfortunate that I didn't get to experience it until after playing other games such as Half Life, and Quake 2 that raised the first person shooter bar. I didn't play Quake until years after Quake 2 has been out and so I was naturally not very impressed by what it had to offer.  

At its core Quake's gameplay is similar to that of Doom 1 and Doom 2, except it is rendered completely in 3d (without sprites) and has crazier weapons. 

Quake is sort of a founding father for modern games. Its robust engine defined game development for decades. It has an unprecedented number of mods from additional maps to incredibly complex conversions.  A notable mod called Team Fortress was born as a Quake mod, and has since evolved into an incredibly popular game Team Fortress 2, which is enjoyed by millions every day. 

At this point Quake has been greatly surpassed by modern game design and technological evolution (even of its own engine) and there is no reason to play it other than for legacy purposes.  I feel that it would just feel archaic at every level. It even started to feel that way 10 years ago when I played it for the first time.

For those that want to check it out anyway there are plethora of options.  Quake has been ported to almost every platform imaginable, and with mods numbering in the thousands you could get it to run at super high resolution with anti-aliased and up-rezzed textures and modern lighting systems.

Quake will forever stay in history as a defining FPS, and can be easily obtained through digital distribution such as Steam (currently $9.99)