Annihilation: Twenty years of Quake

On June 22nd, 2016, id Software’s Quake turned twenty. Not only did this event make gamers from my generation feel just a little bit older (hint: you should have been at least 10 years old when you played the original in order to feel the effects of said aging), it was a reminder about the rapidly evolving technology used in video games. Quake’s game engine showed the world something it had never seen before: everything in the game was rendered in real-time 3D, with the game sporting support for the now-forgotten phenomenon of “3D Acceleration” using OpenGL. Initially, the game supported only software rendering, but I can still remember the day I fired up GLQuake to take complete advantage of a 3dfx Voodoo card I owned for extra crispy 3D graphics.

Rocket-jumping polygonal madness

_Prepare for sweaty games if you’re jumping into Quake Live_

I don’t think I fully got to grips with Quake’s movement system. My earliest memories of the game always seemed to involve me falling to my death in a pool of lava while backpedaling. But then I remember the Nailgun—the idea that a weapon which didn’t shoot bullets, rockets or laser projectiles and yet, could be so devastating was pretty exciting. The weapon set, overall, was not as diverse as Doom’s, nor do the weapons pack the punch of some of its predecessor’s, but the gameplay is just so claustrophobic and fast-paced with moments of multilevel rocket-jumping polygonal madness that it simply didn’t matter.

Heavy hitting

The soundtrack is another talking point, with Quake featuring music from Trent Reznor and the Nine Inch Nails. It proved Reznor’s music could be a soundtrack to anything—I listened to the Quake OST while I was writing this story, and I was able to draw parallels to his and Atticus Rose’s work on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Ranging from industrial rock to ambient and atmospheric, the Quake soundtrack is often considered one of the best game soundtracks of all time. I do have a soft spot for Sonic Mayhem’s straight-up instrumental metal OST for Quake 2 as well, however.

Unfortunately, Quake’s visual style does not hold up. It doesn’t look as good now as it did back then; a characteristic it shares with us, its aging players. It might have been groundbreaking tech for the time, but the blocky polygons, which looked a tad bit off-putting then, look borderline comical now. Add to this the movement, animation and weapon design, and you’ve got a game which hasn’t aged quite as gracefully as Doom; a universal problem with games built on nascent technology (but you can make it look better with this 2011 HD mod and spare your eyes). However, one cannot take away Quake’s contribution to both 3D games as well as something far more significant, in my opinion: the emergence of mouse and keyboard as the primary input choice for PC games in general and shooters in particular.

_Quake hasn’t aged well graphically, but mods can make it better_

WASD

If Doom pioneered the first-person shooter genre, Quake took it to the next level from a competition standpoint. While competitive gaming existed in various forms previously, be it high scores at arcades, Nintendo games and fighting games, it wasn’t until Quake that players and general public started taking shooters seriously. Always at the forefront of the electronic sports movement which swept the world in the late 90s and early millennial years, Quake and its sequels were responsible for QuakeCon, the largest LAN events in North America at the time.

_QuakeCon was home to North America’s largest LAN events in the nineties_

I mean, Dennis “Thresh” Fong is probably the first eSports celebrity (if the name sounds familiar to League of Legends players, now you know where it came from). Who can forget his glorious victory at 1997’s Red Annihilation event where he took home Quake designer John Carmack’s Ferrari as the prize? The other global eSports celebrity, Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendell was also a Quake III Arena player. Heck, I bought a Creative Sound Blaster sound card because this guy endorsed it.

Quake laid the groundwork for its sequels, Unreal Tournament, and subsequently, Counter-Strike to explode on the competitive gaming scene. The mix of mechanical skill, decision making, and later, teamwork required to succeed (early Quake tourneys were only all 1v1 Deathmatch) drew tremendous interest from players.

The successors

It wasn’t until Quake 2 that I semi-seriously began playing shooters in a player-versus-player environment, and the muscle memory and basic learnings from that game stay with me today. It was Quake 3 Arena, however that set the gold standard for multiplayer shooters at the time, prompting players to get into the game professionally as well as media outlets to broadcast gameplay (in the late 90s, I remember watching Q3A tournaments in India on a short lived British TV channel). Quake 4 holds up pretty well, and is a game which is still enjoyable today, both in terms of campaign and multiplayer (you’re not likely to find too many players online, so you’ll have to LAN party it up).

Arena shooters have been replaced by team/objective based shooters like Counter-Strike since, but they could be making a comeback with recently announced games such as BossKey Studios’ LawBreakers and Bethesda/id Software’s Quake Champions.

Play Quake now

In celebration of Quake’s 20th anniversary Wolfenstein developer Machine Games has released a new episode for the game a full two decades after its release. You can download it at this link (installation instructions are included in the archive). You will need a working copy of the original Quake from either Steam  or GoG.com . I should point out that the Steam version is presently on sale for the throwaway price of Rs.184 in India.

Quake Live is another way to whet your appetite for destruction. Initially released as a free-to-play game which worked in your browser, it was re-released on Steam as a paid game. Quake Live is the primary competitive game played at QuakeCon tournaments since 2008. Be warned and prepare to get stomped, however, because Quake Live players have had nearly 20 years of practice and you’ll run into only the most hardcore Quake players in online lobbies.