Quake II

aka: Q2, Quake 2
Moby ID: 405
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

A sequel in name only, this follow up to id’s 1996 Quake, is a first-person shooter revolving around the Earth-Strogg war. The Strogg alien race threatens the Earth, but Earth has launched a counter-offensive, Operation Alien Overlord. Overlord takes the battle to the Strogg homeworld with the ultimate objective of securing their capital city and killing their ruler.

As a FPS, Quake II contains a variety of weapons including the fall back Blaster, the Railgun, and the secret BFG10K. Health, armor, and ammunition pick-ups can be found during levels, as can the classic Quake’s Quad Damage power-up. Game play involves mowing down alien opponents as the player progresses through levels, completing in-game objectives. Quake II also comes with multiplayer support for Deathmatches.

Spellings

  • 雷神之锤II - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

43 People (40 developers, 3 thanks) · View all

Manual Design
  • JACKHAMMER - Dallas/TX
Programming
Art
Level Design
Business
Ending Cinematics by
  • Blur Studio - Venice/California
Environment models for Introduction Cinematic by
Assistance with environment design by
Sound Design by
  • Soundelux Media Labs
Music Composed and Produced by
  • Soundelux Media Labs
Music Composer (additional music)
Level Music by
  • Sonic Mayhem
Quake II Theme Song
Climb
Voice of computers by
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 87% (based on 44 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 301 ratings with 15 reviews)

Shoot, Strafe, get the power-up, repeat; Q2 has a certain kind of mindless gameplay I wish they left out with Quake.

The Good
For a mindless shooter, it's excellent; good graphics, weapons and enemies. But other games like Half-Life and Deus Ex are way ahead of it, and it's about time id grew up and made a complex one player game with mission objectives or something, besides find-the-key gameplay. Still, Q2 is a classic, though not as good as lets say, Half-Life. BUT, Q2 has awesome multiplay, and it adds some much-needed replay value.

The Bad
Mindless gameplay that makes you always Shoot and don't ask any questions.

The Bottom Line
First person shooter in a sci-fi setting.

Windows · by Dragoon (106) · 2000

Tight As A B!

The Good
In 1996 Quake came out changing the way we see shooters forever or at least until Half-Life Came out then a mere year and six months later Quake 2 came out oddly enough this game has nothing to do with the original Quake other than in name and quad damage is back.

Instead of the original Quake where you played as a marine in other dimensions stopping strange creatures you, still a marine (What’s with id in Marines?) who are on a operation called Operation Alien Overlord against the Strogg an alien race that attacked earth and the operation is to retaliate for that but when heading to the planet Stroggos you crash land in an escape pod on the planet with most of your comrades dead you search the planet to carry out your orders.

The graphics with 3d acceleration used to look amazing back in 1997 but now are only bearable by the standards of games like F.E.A.R., Half-Life 2, and Quake 4 and the sound is pretty good with gun sounds and alien sounds with good ambiance and the music while there isn't much the music in it works well rob zombie does the theme so I’m told.

Gameplay consists of running through the level killing enemies and accomplishing goals provided to you by your personal computer each section has a number of objectives before moving on to the new area and each new area has a scene telling you what the next area is and the main objective in it and there are 8 Areas in all.

Multiplayer rocks Action Quake is one of the best things to happen to this world.

The Bad
Now considering this is a Quake game it’s not as satisfying as the original or as fun and not quite what we expect from Id and certain areas have way too much backtracking the weapons could of used some work like the only weapons suitable for close quarters is the Shotgun and Machine Gun pretty much.

The Bottom Line
All in all this game is a fun shooter while it lasts and now you can get a pack called Ultimate Quake with Quakes 1,2, and 3 all updated for new computers.

Windows · by Classic Nigel (108) · 2006

A blitz of near non-stop action, Quake II is an old school classic.

The Good
Quake II a wonderful specimen of what it is. It's an old school first person shooter: light on the thinking, heavy on the reflexes.

The action is hot and heavy from the very beginning, as you land in an alien base with nothing but your side-arm and start making the Strogg pay the price for attacking Earth. All the while a thrashy metal soundtrack pounds at you almost in a rhythm with the furious pace of the action.

The enemies in Quake II are great from the beginning. The Light Guards that you first encounter are well balanced, being both weak enough to take down with your side-arm and yet tough enough that you take satisfaction in defeating them. They even sometimes pull off a sort of from-death's-heart-I-stab-at-thee maneuver, firing a last futile volley before finally dying. This kind of little touch is the kind of detailed design you can expect throughout the game. This game may indeed be essentially running around shooting things, but id made sure to serve that gameplay with exceptional quality.

Sound effects are average for the most part. What is great in the sound department is the above mentioned crushing metal soundtrack. It's the kind of spittin-nails soundtrack that cranks a game like this up a notch from furious to insane.

Weapons are great, though you'll probably rely on the machine gun and the super shotgun most of the game, like I did. There isn't much in the way of new weapons, really, but even the same old stuff is done well. In addition, the weapons are well paced in the game so that you are neither dominating or being dominated purely on the basis of the weapons you do or do not have.

AI is pretty good for the era, though I'm not to much of a judge of that. Mainly, kudos should go to id for excellent enemy placement. There were definitely some nasty surprises in my play through the game.

The Bad
Well, the story.....um....what story was that? The story is rather sparse and while you have objectives in the game, they are not very well linked to a real storyline, relevant as they may be to the overarching story. But, then, is this game really meant to be like that? If you want a great story in an FPS, go play Half-Life (in fact, play Half-Life anyway if you haven't already. It's only one of the best games ever created).

Some of the hunt-n-fetch stuff gets annoying, but they were nice enough not to get too maze-like in the level design so you generally don't get stuck for long.

The Bottom Line
An excellent old school lock n' load shooter. Highly recommended.

Windows · by Steelysama (82) · 2002

[ View all 15 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Screenshots Geamandura (2326) Dec 10, 2009

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Quake II appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Action figures

In 1998, Quake II action figures were released to stores by ReSaurus. There was only one series of figures. The series was composed of: Marine (& Barracuda Shark), Jungle Marine (& Strogg Parasite), Iron Maiden (& Strogg Technician), Tank, and a limited edition Psycho Marine.

European version

The UK Windows Version Quake II CD has the following printed on it:

This product is intended for sale outside North America only and will not function on North American operating systems.

Upon testing this seems to be untrue, it works on every North American version of Windows tested. Assumedly this was to prevent people importing the CDs from the EU and selling them in the US.

German index

On December 20, 1997, the PC version of Quake II was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. The Nintendo 64 version followed August 31, 1999.

For more information about what this means and to see a list of games sharing the same fate, take a look here: BPjS/BPjM indexed games.

Language

This is the second time id Software has invented an alien language for use in their games (the first was in Commander Keen). Like Keen's Simplified Galactian Alphabet, the Strogg language in Quake II is a simple letter-by-letter cipher. Although no-one has ever made a Strogg font pack, you can decipher signs and messages in the game using the Strogg translator at id's Quake 4 site.

Release

The game was rushed to be ready for the very lucrative Christmas 1997. It shipped with a lot of bugs, missing features (no multiplayer maps) and multiplayer was almost unplayable on the net at first, but id fixed all these issues with numerous patches.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack, composed by Sonic Mayhem, features a total of ten tracks in CD-Audio quality. If you listen to the CD be sure to skip the first track, which is the data information.

The rest of the tracks are:

  1. Operation Overlord

  2. Rage

  3. Kill Ratio

  4. March of the Stroggs

  5. The Underworld

  6. Quad Machine

  7. Big Gun

  8. Descent Into Cerberon

  9. Climb

  10. Showdown

Source code release

On 22 December 2001, the full source code was released. It can be downloaded from the ID software website.

Zeebo version

On June 15, 2010, both Quake and Quake II were removed from Zeebo's wireless network, the Brazilian Zeebonet. Both games were offered for 10 Z-credits and each Brazilian Zeebo came with 35 Z-credits, so the games were sold virtually for free. They were replaced for Zeebo Extreme Rolimã and Zeebo Extreme Jetboard as free downloads.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • March 1998 (Issue #164) – Action Game of the Year
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #47 Top Game of All Time
  • Interactive Achievement Awards (Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences)
    • 1998 – Computer Action Game of the Year – Won
  • PC Gamer
    • April 2000 - #8 overall in the "All-Time Top 50 Games" poll

Information also contributed by Apogee IV, chirinea, Maw, Mike Quigley, PCGamer77, Sciere, Xoleras and Zovni

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Related Sites +

  • Bill Brown - Music Composer (additional music)
    Listen to streaming and MP3 music tracks from this title at the composer's official site including the intro and ambient tracks
  • Linux Quake HOWTO
    This Linux HOWTO describes how to get Quake, Quake World and Quake II running on a Linux Box
  • PlanetQuake
    One of the most comprehensive Quake, Quake II and Quake III: Arena sites, PlanetQuake is multiplayer-oriented and contains huge amounts of information, patches, maps, addons and just about anything Quake-related.
  • Quake II
    Official page on id Software's website
  • S&F Prod.'s Quake 2 Page
    Here you'll find a funny skin and more.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 405
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Brian Hirt.

Macintosh added by Corn Popper. Windows Apps added by Kam1Kaz3NL77. Zeebo added by chirinea. Amiga added by Kabushi. PlayStation added by Adam Baratz.

Additional contributors: Tomer Gabel, Cochonou, Adam Baratz, Unicorn Lynx, Frenkel, AdminBB, Dan K, Havoc Crow, Patrick Bregger, Titan10, FatherJack.

Game added November 10, 1999. Last modified March 12, 2024.