Quake II

The Good
Single player is nice, considering this was Id's first attempt to put a story in a game (Doom 3 just happens to be the second...).

Although, by todays standards, the AI may look very weak, it was impressive at that time, and those Stroggs were just tough! The guns are the definitive FPS standards. In other words, almost every generic FPS will have equivalents to these ones. They cover the all of most simple and generic weaponry needs in a game of this type.

The multiplayer, the only thing that Id really tries to care besides the engine, is said to be awesome, but I never really cared about it, so I can't comment.

Graphics? Were all good by the time it came out, so... They don't need to be discussed. (Nowadays, it's plain weak.) Sound is nice, and I really love the musics...

The Bad
For a game that should correct Quake's "brownness", this one is quite "Brown" too. The weapons lack muzzle flashes for some odd reason, and it just wasn't packed with any multiplayer maps (they come with the patches). Considering multiplayer is always Id's main target (except for Doom 3) this is pretty weird.

Id could have used a better plot than the Cybernetic alien invaders and it lacks a bit of level theme variety too.

The Bottom Line
While trying to create another multiplayer blaster and another massive licensing engine, Id happened to forget about game design when they came out with Quake 1. Not that the levels were crap (Building levels is something those guys are good at) but they never fitted together and the "story" was plain Doom, with barely no changes.

Quake 2, while being nothing different from number 1 in objectives, is clearly, an attempt to say "We're sorry" and make a real plotted game.

It doesn't fail in doing that, but it happened to come out right at the end of the times for the Weak Story driven FPS (not that they don't keep coming out, but they don't get as much attention as before).

In the end, one can easily say: It's good old Id style FPS. Fun, Violent and Empty.