Quake II
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
Groups +
- 3D Engine: Quake II
- BPjS / BPjM indexed games
- Covermount: Fullgames
- Game feature: In-game screenshot capture
- Gameplay feature: Drowning
- Gameplay feature: Recordable replays
- Games with Dopefish
- Games with officially released source code
- Quake series
- Setting: Space station / Spaceship
- Total Entertainment Network (TEN) multiplay platform
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Credits (Windows version)
43 People (40 developers, 3 thanks) · View all
Manual Design |
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Ending Cinematics by |
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Environment models for Introduction Cinematic by | |
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Sound Design by |
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Music Composed and Produced by |
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Music Composer (additional music) | |
Level Music by |
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Quake II Theme Song | |
Climb | |
Voice of computers by | |
[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 88% (based on 45 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 302 ratings with 15 reviews)
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
The Good
After downloading and installing the patches, it played without a problem. I enjoyed the realistic rebounding of grenades. The AI actually worked. The game played ok.
The music could be disabled.
Later in the game, the story started to take on some depth. You found yourself working more towards the Strogg center, and the building design reflected that.
The Bad
The dismal colors. The repetitive game play. Shooting, running, more shooting and running. The sound displacement wasn't very good. The repetitive use of sound effects and graphics became boring. The nonsensical mission briefings.
Unreal came out at the same time. In comparison, Quake II paled.
The Bottom Line
A piece of history. A lot of great games like Anachronox and Heretic II were based on the Quake II engine. You're better off playing one of those.
Windows · by Scott Monster (986) · 2005
The Good
Quake II wasn't all bad, there were some very big improvements over the first installment, even if the game as a whole didn't live up to its predecessor.
For one the graphics engine was phenomenal. Again we're treated to fantastic graphics that run extremely fast even on poor systems of the time. It amazes me how fast and smooth the game would run, while just about everything else out at the time looked worse and ran half as fast.
The single player was a big improvement. Enemy AI was much, much better, the story (although lacking by standards of the time) was better than the first installment, and the level design while not as good in my opinion, offered a wider variety of colors and environments over the first. Furthermore, the lighting effects were much, much better than the first and the character models far more detailed (but we'd expect that with a newer game).
The Bad
Unfortunately everything else is lacking. While Quake 1 gave us fantastic multiplayer action while failing to deliver on the single player campaign, Q2 is the opposite. The single player is decent, but the multiplayer was atrocious.
The state of the online community surrounding Q2 reflected this. This was a game that outsold its predecessor, but still there were fewer ladders, competitions, and online servers.
Some designer got the bright idea that the rocket launcher in Q1 was too powerful, so they dumbed it down, they nerfed it BIG TIME. Not only did the rocket launcher produce a minimum amount of damage, the rockets traveled so slow after being fired that it could take 4 or 5 seconds to reach your target. Not only that but the blast radius was so small that only a direct hit would really do anything, but even so that was dumbed down as well and it would take multiple direct hits on an unarmored opponent. Worthless.
But then they introduce the rail gun. A one shot instant fire, instant kill weapon. This wouldn't be so bad because many FPS games have a weapon of this sort, but to shoot themselves in the foot, the designers slowed player movement to a crawl. The result is everyone using rail guns; the instant kill weapon while players move around at a snail's pace. The result is that newbish, unskilled players are now on level playing field with seasoned veterans, and the game comes down to excessive camping with those that have the faster computer to get into the level first usually ending up the winners.
The multiplayer was slower and buggy. There were crashes, and super low pings were less common than in the first installment. Lots of activity in game would cause slow down, even if your machine is 10x the recommended specifications. The DM was slower, required less skill, and there were fewer customizations available to the end user.
Furthermore, the multiplayer level design was not as good as the previous installment, and the game generally lacked the hard core multiplayer experience that the first offered.
The Bottom Line
If single player goodness is what you're after, and you feel that the original Quake failed to deliver, then this one is for you.
If you're a hardcore multiplayer competitor, then you're out of luck with this title.
Windows · by D Michael (222) · 2007
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:
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Operation Overlord
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Rage
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Kill Ratio
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March of the Stroggs
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The Underworld
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Quad Machine
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Big Gun
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Descent Into Cerberon
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Climb
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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 +
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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 +
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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 30, 2024.