Incline Quake II enhanced re-release by Nightdive Studios

[430am]

I tried running 25th Anniversary Collaborative Unit on this, it works perfectly. Weirdly enough though you need to place new game paks/maps into the save folder, not the game folder itself.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Semiurge, ds, and others interested, here's a comparison of the main theme (Night Dive also mixed up the track titles): https://mega.nz/file/eEMxzTTK#w9JU5ARIerhpdW3P7qSSFDqb90_mYqTHLQXIJTSyS0s

Damn that's beyond noticeable.

But i guess this should be a simple matter of replacing their ogg files with rips straight off the CD audio.

Yes, there shouldn't be any problem with replacing the files and it's a separate problem from the way the Kex Engine's mixer might affect the audio.

This doesn't concern Quake II music, by the way. The files in the remaster sound the same as the original CD rips do.

Ho.

Then what the hell is going on.

 

[schru]

Semiurge, ds, and others interested, here's a comparison of the main theme (Night Dive also mixed up the track titles): https://mega.nz/file/eEMxzTTK#w9JU5ARIerhpdW3P7qSSFDqb90_mYqTHLQXIJTSyS0s

Damn that's beyond noticeable.

But i guess this should be a simple matter of replacing their ogg files with rips straight off the CD audio.

Yes, there shouldn't be any problem with replacing the files and it's a separate problem from the way the Kex Engine's mixer might affect the audio.

This doesn't concern Quake II music, by the way. The files in the remaster sound the same as the original CD rips do.

Ho.

Then what the hell is going on.

As I wrote above, there is an assumption circulating on the Internet that Trent Reznor applied pre-emphasis to the music tracks on the first Quake's CD, and so the tracks need to be run through a de-emphasis filter to make them sound correct. This seems to have originated from one distributor's issue of Quake CDs, on which the tracks did contain pre-emphasis flags for CD players, without actually having this technique applied to them and differing in any way from the standard issue.

At some point much later, someone who wanted to upload Quake music for others to use must have owned one of those discs with pre-emphasis flags and assumed that this was the case for all the releases, and that the way Quake's music was supposed to sound was with de-emphasis applied to it. Tracks with such processing have been recommended to Steam owners in the configuration guides for years.

I might be able to obtain a link to a forum thread in which people compared various releases of Quake, establishing that their CD tracks normally didn't contain any pre-emphasis flags. But it should be sufficient to use Nine Inch Nails' own remaster from 2020 to confirm that Trent Reznor did not intent for the music to be processed in any such way.

As for Quake II music, it seems like none of the CDs ever had such a thing, so fortunately no one tried to modify the tracks in the remaster.

 

[schru]

Maybe i'm just imagining it i'll try it again tomorrow can't crank the audio right now it's kinda late.

I've recorded comparison files for Quake (DOS), Quake remaster, Quake II, and Quake II remaster: https://mega.nz/file/bNsQkI4J#nHAt6YqND7tGdR8zrH3m68ZZMDU8w6qAVu6fTJScrgo

The music in Quake II is a little loud, while the remaster has separate volumes for sound effects, voices, and music, so some difference in perception will be due to the latter's being set to different levels by default. I suppose the CD drive player in contemporary systems would also have had some external way for adjusting the volume of the music.

 

[Junmarko]

No one makes soundtracks this good anymore.

 

[Bad Sector]

Too bad that Doom 3 and Quake 4 let go of the infighting tradition.

I don't remember about Quake 4, but Doom 3 certainly does have monster infighting, it is just that the AI is smarter about it. However you can easily trigger it with imps' fireballs or machinegunners that do not care what is in front of them (in fact in some cases it is a decent way to get rid of a machinegunner as they are bullet sponges - in later levels when they often spawn near revenants you can have them kill each other, like in the level where you find the scientist that asks you to find some glowing thingie to fix a teleporter and there are two machinegunners and a revenant spawned the central hub with four doors).

 

[Zlaja]

I just got this and I opted to play it with texture smoothing off. I prefer the sharper texture look.

Also, lol at the CRT simulation option. Looks horrid.

PS: Super shotgun feels so good in this game.

 

[ciox]

Finished the main campaign and some of the Machine campaign, and the game feels great.

The biggest flaw of Quake 2 for me is the large connected levels without any useful landmarks or a map, which led to wasting time searching for the exit, instead of blasting through enemies. The new Compass is great at solving that issue.
Yeah I went there. A map would have been much better, but the compass still let me power through the campaign and actually enjoy the game and remember what was great about it. With no interruptions Q2 became almost impossible to put down.

The arsenal is pretty great, with constant clever "gun puzzles" like pointblanking with the super shotgun to get instant kills or 2-shot kills, knowing how much health enemies have so you can destroy them with the chaingun without wasting any ammo on their corpses, looking at the entire landscape in front of you so you can fire a BFG shot for maximum damage, moving around to make the slower enemies collinear so you can railgun them, taking out the Hyperblaster if the enemy is either slow or has become stationary/stuck.

Enemies have good variety and nearly all hitscan enemies can be dodged by strafing, which surprised me, it seems strafing was so effective that the remaster tried to control it a little bit.
The enemies also regularly create infighting scenarios that are even more fun than in Quake 1, as they can propel each other into death pits or an underling can start ducking under a big guy's attacks like "NO, I WON'T DO IT AGAIN BOSS."

The levels have interesting components that you saw later in games like Half-Life, vents, wind turbines launching you into the air, water currents, laser tripwires (tripmines much?), puzzles, etc.



Some quick notes on remastered monster behavior:
Berserker was either patched or its leap AOE never did any damage to begin with, you will grunt and get pushed around but take 0 damage, so it's not as bad as it seems.
"Brains" can now tractor pull you right into red laser beams for an instant kill, which seems extremely intended.
Bosses are less strafe-able, you will need to either change direction or jump in order to be safe from some attacks.
The mutant "fiend" still has a ton of trouble pathing to you properly, and will often die without getting close, especially in vanilla levels.
The fishies still have bugged animation frames where they are invulnerable and attacks pass through them.

 

[Valestein]

I always had a quad-damage and/or invulnerability on hand to cheese the bosses.

 

[Morenatsu.]

The biggest flaw of Quake 2 for me is the large connected levels without any useful landmarks or a map, which led to wasting time searching for the exit, instead of blasting through enemies. The new Compass is great at solving that issue.
Yeah I went there. A map would have been much better, but the compass still let me power through the campaign and actually enjoy the game and remember what was great about it. With no interruptions Q2 became almost impossible to put down.

quake 2 levels are small and easy to navigate

 

[DemonKing]

flaw of Quake 2 for me is the large connected levels without any useful landmarks or a map, which led to wasting time searching for the exit, instead of blasting through enemies. The new Compass is great at solving that issue.
Yeah I went there. A map would have been much better, but the compass still let me power through the campaign and actually enjoy the game and remember what was great about it. With no interruptions Q2 became almost impossible to put down.

Yeah have to admit I've used the compass a few times when it's not actually clear where you have to go next or backtrack to a previous level. I think it's a good addition which respects the player's time.

The sound is so good in this game. The music always gets you in the perfect mood to unleash hell and the environmental cues are great with the heavy breathing or sword-sharpening giving you some warning about what's ahead of you (and usually prompting me to get the nade launcher out and lob a few exploratory shots around the next corner).

 

[Ash]

Imagine getting lost and needing assistance in Quake 2 lol

 

[DemonKing]

Imagine getting lost and needing assistance in Quake 2 lol

I don't remember having any trouble playing the original back in the day but there's a lot of backtracking required in the Remaster expansions so far and it's not always clear from the text description what it is you're supposed to be doing next.

The compass isn't on by default but it's useful to have on the rare occasions the way forward isn't clear. If you're an edgelord that feels they have to finish everything without assistance then good luck to you, but if you're time poor it's a useful addition to ensure you keep in the action.

 

[DicLupa]

Compass is good. Q2's level design is decent and pleasant looking most of the time, but there is a sameness to many of the locations and not a lot really sticks out as a memorable setpiece to remember backtracking to. I'm basically playing Q2 like Q1 in space, so fuck me I guess, but I often forgot the specifics of any of the game's objectives because I was in it for the runnin' and the shootin'. It would be less of an issue if the environments felt more legible and purposeful ala Half-Life. But I liked that the compass gave me a clear route to the main path so I didn't waste minutes searching for a way forward in a dead-end map.

Q264 was superior in this regard. The direct level progression trimmed the pointless exercise in making 'meaningful', extended exploration in a Quake game. Fine with secret hunting, but I can skip the needless doubling back. Keep maps tight and repayable.

 

[Morenatsu.]

cope

 

[Valestein]

cope

I wish i could use compass IRL.

 

[Morenatsu.]

cope

I wish i could compass IRL.

But how would you know what objective it'll lead you to?

 

[Zlaja]

(and usually prompting me to get the nade launcher out and lob a few exploratory shots around the next corner)

Shame the regular grenades are fucking useless. I either just waste them or kill myself with them (don't have the GL yet).

 

[Morenatsu.]

regular grenades are amazing in deathmatch

 

[Eisen]

cope

I wish i could use compass IRL.

Global Positioning System

 

[DemonKing]

The new campaign is really good, makes great use of verticality and loves to throw massive hordes of enemies at you that would have melted my Pentium II back in the day.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I went ahead and finished the new content: the N64 port and the new ep.

Q2-64 is just utter ass, unfortunately. Small, simplistic levels that are neither interesting to explore nor to look at. I guess making this crap run on a cartridge based console for little weaboos was a pretty big achievement in itself and it's nice that they made it available to grown people for historical reasons. But as an actual content, this is absolutely skippable.

The new ep was fine... -ish. I mean, the levels are OK design wise and are pretty impressive visually at times, but I swear to god, between this and the new Q1 eps it seems like it was done by one person mashing ctrl+c and ctrl+v with his forehead, as a lot of these levels feel extremely samey. Also, the mid part tileset where it seems like you're going through a basement of a soviet apartment block looks very out of place and doesn't feel like Q2 at all. The biggest and most interesting change it brings are the enemy counts and how many you often fight at the same time, which offers an interesting shake-up for the weapon usefulness, like railgun piercing actually meaning something.

Still, my final thought after finishing it was pretty much exactly the same as with the new Q1 content: I think I'd prefer if those eps felt more like the original ones, but they actually made effort to introduce new enemies, bosses and weapons. Particularly the latter would be nice in case of Q2, as the guns from the official expansion packs are rather lame.

 

[Nutmeg]

The biggest flaw of Quake 2

Are the retarded enemies in the second half of the game. It's all about getting the big fuckers stuck in doorways and shooting them while they can't do shit about it.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Still, my final thought after finishing it was pretty much exactly the same as with the new Q1 content: I think I'd prefer if those eps felt more like the original ones

Thank you for the summary. In regards to the new content for Q1 at least I thought that Dimensions of the Past felt very much like the original Quake whereas Dimensions of the Machine is entirely it's own thing. I haven't played Call of the Machine yet so I have no opinion about it.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I'm a yuge vanilla Q1 fag. To me, ep1-3 atmosphere (ep4 and final confrontation are definitely a noticeable dip in quality) is absolutely amazing and unparalleled in any of the following official or unofficial content. Not that a lot of the unofficial community maps aren't gr8, mind you.