As with the rerelease of any game celebrating more than a decade’s worth of birthdays, I went into this remastered version of Quake; the iconic, important evolution of the first-person shooter, fearing it may have been dulled by the cruel swing of time. Thankfully, I feel foolish for ever doubting it. Quake still rules 25 years on.
For me, Quake was a big part of my gaming education. There was many a night spent gibbing zombies, ogres, and other players as Trent Reznor’s deliciously moody soundtrack crawled out of tinny PC speakers. Despite how different the sequels ended up being, that ritual was largely upheld for a good few years in them as well.
After id Software became PC gaming and first-person shooter’s poster child, solving how to follow up those delectable doses of hell was always going to be an intriguing question to answer, and that response was to create a truly 3D shooter that served as the next logical link in the chain for the genre’s continuing growth.
After the heavy metal sci-fi horror explosion that was DOOM, Quake was somewhat appropriately, industrial metal by way of Gothic horror. A grim fusion of medieval barbarity, Dark Fantasy, eldritch abomonations, and modern firepower. A game world where corrupted knights can be blown to smithereens by a rocket launcher and you wield a double-barrelled shotgun whilst roaming an otherworldly castle full of cosmic horrors. The story is loosely explained, but essentially the player is a dimension-hopping warrior, out to stop a great threat known as ‘Quake’.
Though the game gave players more places to keep an eye on with the move to true 3D, the relentless pace of DOOM remained. Modern Doom owes a lot more to Quake in that regard, with run and gunning – head on a swivel – battles played at breakneck speed (makes my neck hurt just typing that). That’s always been the core of the series, and here in its purest form, it remains a pleasing gore and bullet-filled buffet.
It’s a credit to what id Software created with this game (not to mention the work Nightdive Studios has done on this remaster) that it genuinely feels as satisfying to play now as it did when I first booted it up a quarter of a century ago. I must admit playing modern takes on the formula such as the excellent DUSK and Ultrakill only helped saturate my initial worry that going back to Quake would be a disappointment, but I think those games helped me appreciate Quake even more because they understand its qualities. It also translates pretty well to a controller, with pad-tilting motion control working in tandem with standard controls to keep up with the twitchy nature of its fracas-laden worlds.
There’s also a lot of things to go shoot, with a pretty ample package of Quake goodness stuffed into this remaster. The two expansions join the fun, multiplayer is present, and the 20th anniversary additional mission Dimension of the Past even makes it in there. Yet id didn’t let the recent 25th anniversary go uncelebrated either, as Wolfenstein and Dimension of the Past developer MachineGames have returned to make a new chapter called Dimension of the Machine. Both of these newer episodes are essential playing, and really do feel like a proper continuation of the original game.
At a time when many remasters/remakes try a little too hard to push away from the original message, with varying results, the group of development teams involved in resurrecting Quake should be applauded for retaining almost everything that made the game such a special thing 25 years ago and still managing to add to it with smart quality of life improvements and new things to play. About the only thing that couldn’t be recaptured was being a teenager again, but we can’t have everything now, can we.
Whether it be a return to the cosmic horror medieval worlds of the original, or another slog with the Strogg, I hope we get more new Quake out of this, because this remaster just emphasizes how timeless the underlying formula is.
Quake review code for PS4 provided by the publisher.
Quake is out now on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.