Ah my old Love... Quake II!

Back in 1997 Id software released a truly wonderful gaming experience known as Quake II. Hot on the heels of Quake, this game bore little resemblance to the previous entry's hell and heaven overtures.

Quake II was set in a futuristic Sci-Fi environment. Humanity had just been devastated by an attack from an Alien force known as the Strogg. Naturally we were pissed... and so we sent our best knuckleheads to the Strogg's home planet to kick some ass.

As the game opens, a giant space cruiser heads toward the home planet of the Strogg, packed with Marines. The player is in the shoes of Frank Bitterman, a marine who upon the launch of the attack in pods (one per marine) suffers a collision from another pod, and falls behind the platoon.

As Bitterman tries to regain control of his pod, he becomes aware that the attack suffered heavy consequences killing practically everyone who took part. Surviving a crash landing, Bitterman finds himself in hostile territory and completely alone on the Strogg home planet.

This was one of the first games to have deformations on character models, where damage could be seen visually. Neat little touches like downed enemies using their last moments of life to fire one last blast off really added to the atmosphere as well as the one enemy who continues to fire his machine gun in a spasm even after his head has been blown off!














Take that you Strogg b@$!@&ds!

Yes this game was brutal for its time, it didn't pretty up the war aspect of the game. Throughout many marines would be found impaled on spikes and worse. Better yet was the meat processing factory where the Strogg sliced up dead humans and reassembled them to function as Strogg soldiers.

One of the most loved features in the game is its fantastic soundtrack. Sonic Mayhem created a heavy industrial metal music that truly gave the game an awesome additional kick and many still highly regard its soundtrack that is even rumoured to have at least one track partially made by Rob Zombie.

Today the graphics don't look like much, but back in the day this was the creme de la creme. Lighting effects and a cool laser trail that illuminated the corridor as it travelled through it were among some of the highlights. The engine that ran the game was pretty powerful and is still alive and well today in the form of Counterstrike.














Ah... the fantastic laser trail!

This game was one of those experiences that was plain awesome at that point in time, but today is an old and dated one, but still a classic nonetheless.