Introduction
Quake is deserted. You wander the desolate world, comrades nowhere to be seen. All of the slipgates you find seem to lead to castle after castle within Quake. Finally, you learn of a remote mountain base that holds your only hope to escape this place and rejoin the forces in their new campaign on Stroggos. Contains a start map, the main course and a secret level.
Review
The level flows fairly smoothly during its short length as you navigate from room to room fighting off enemies and find that after picking up a key, it is only a short walk around the next corner to return to the locked door that you have passed by moments earlier. Supplies are pretty moderate with just enough ammo and health around to get by, whereas the combat side of things will consist of only three enemy types. The Grunts are the more dangerous foes when compared to the others as they can easily wreck havoc on your health, especially in large groups, height advantage and the ability to nip you from a distance. They are likely the be the enemy to become a burden, while the Enforcers aren’t much of a problem as long as you don’t get caught between many of them. Both these and the dogs are simply around to distract you from the bigger threat.
Design makes use of a new texture set, going for a corroded metal base theme and allows it to come across as an abandoned location and this is pretty much it for the visuals as a whole, while including additional details to enhance the scene with decoration such as pipework running through the interiors, some slime pools to work as a brighter contrast to the colour scheme and several spinning fans to keep the place ventilated. General construction is however on the average side, but where the problem mostly lies is the simplistic use of the textures and lighting. The texturing honestly looked like it was placed on the architecture while not doing much to it, causing areas to feel plain, or at least appears to lack any depth possibly due to the monotonous look of them. The dark and rather static lighting is also an area that doesn’t seem to help matters and makes a scene feel a bit underwhelming, though there are a few nice visuals which are mainly found in the outdoor sections, the exterior of the base having the better side to texturing.
Conclusion
Although the design is mostly on the average side due to plain texturing, the gameplay works as it is with a neat flow yet can be a little tough due to the large groups of Grunts lurking around the base, becoming the more dangerous threat.
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Part of a Series
Rubicon | Rubicon 2