Quake 2 is everything Quake was, but better in many ways. It is like Doom II to Doom. A major upgrade in every metrics. The story, the level design, the enemies, the weapons. Everything, in my opinion, got better. The action was cranked up to 11; the music was just one neverending rush of adrenaline and testosterone. The goals were clear; the rage was real; the gun was in our hands, and we wanted blood.
Yeah, you can outright see that Quake 2 had a much bigger impression on me than Quake had. Well, what can I say? I’m a sucker for futuristic atmosphere and all this fusion of metal with flesh. That’s something I loved since I was a kid and when I saw it in the game, I was just too excited to hold back. Besides, while Quake wasn’t a big part of my childhood, Quake 2, on the contrary, had a weird place in it. I never owned it, but played a lot at my friends’. Somehow they all had a copy of Quake 2 and whenever we were hanging out (or rather our parents were hanging out and we as kids were busy doing our stuff) we didn’t have much to do. We either played Counter Strike 1.6 (Eastern Europe, people, we were serious about Counter Strike already back in 00s) against bots, or played Heroes of Might & Magic 3 (I’ll write about it some time later, but it was the only game we had where we could play all together at once and not in turns), or we played Quake 2 on the highest difficulty to make things fast and challenging.
I had my fair share of playing Quake 2. Even though I didn’t know the story back then and the reason behind all the action and why enemies look like evil robocops, but I knew a good action when I saw one. And it was a damn good action. I never beat it, though. Hell, I never got past the first two levels, but I knew first level by heart to a point that even decades later, I just knew where to go and what to do. Pure instincts and muscle memory to a point where it gets scary of how automated it all is. Like Jason Bourne, only in bad shape and with a set of useless skills.
So, twenty-something years later, when I beat Quake this December, I instantly went for Quake 2. It was a no-brainer to me. It was a continuation of the series, and it also was adapted for the new systems, so the choice was too easy. Besides, I actually recalled that I never beat the game and wanted to see what happened after the first two levels. And I did it, and I beat it, and after almost six months since that day I finally have something to say.
Let’s start with the plot. The plot is surprisingly much better than Quake, and even gives you cinematics (only two, at the beginning and the end of the game, but cinematics nevertheless) to follow the narrative. Seems like guys finally got tired of basic stories and decided to expand a little bit and make everything more consistent from start to finish. Like they already had a concept of the full game instead of episodic chunks that somehow were put all together.
The plot goes like that. There’s a race of space-cybernetic-nazis called Stroggs who conquers planets and transforms its dead habitants into fuel for the needs of an ever-growing army of cybernetic assholes. Those who are less lucky turned into the cybernetic assholes (the process is graphic, inhumane, and was shown in Quake 4) during the process called Stroggification. The Stroggs attack Earth to do the same things they did all along – conquer, assimilate, turn into fuel, and stroggify the locals for future wars. Only they weren’t aware that attacking Earth meant they pissed off the US of motherfucking A and turned marines as their personal enemies, and marines don’t give a shit.
We’re playing as one of the marines sent to Strogg’s home planet Stroggos to give them the taste of their own medicine, kill their leader, and introduce totalitarian alien machine to bitter-sweet taste of democracy and some good old Semper Fi, motherfuckers. Obviously, the operation doesn’t go as planned because some idiot never learned to fly and rams our hero’s shuttle somewhere around the stratosphere. Thanks to this asshole (said unironically), our hero crush-lands somewhere on the outskirts, evades the capture, and has to make it all the way to the capital.
That’s the beginning of the plot, and basically after that you’re playing. You start with a punny handgun, which is barely useful against the basic enemies, but quickly change for a shotgun that does some serious damage. In the beginning, you’re fighting former humans who run around, scream, and die. Since it is sequel to Quake, they already took into attention the enemy’s response to getting shot and made cool animations where some enemies after getting killed still try to shoot at you out of last breath.
The difficulty goes rapidly and even on the easiest difficulty you can feel the damage from the enemies, especially when you get past the first episode and meet more advanced enemies who armed with heavy machine guns or just run at you and smash (talking about the crane-armed motherfuckers who have no chill and take a damn box of ammunition to go down). The game is actually much more difficult than the first one, I must say, especially when you get closer to cell weapons like plasma chaingun (I know it probably has some different name, but it reminds me of plasma) and BFG10k (which is basically the same gun as BFG9000) since enemies are also armed with ones and I must tell you the damage is real even on the easiest difficulty. Obviously you get a thing to counter it which Power Armor, the shield stuff that protects the character and consumes cells (the ammunition for chaingun and BFG) when hit. This is a must have on the later stages because otherwise you’re going to be sorry.
I’m probably not going to do the honor to the weaponry since I barely remember anything besides the shotgun, the assault rifle (which reminded me a lot of pulse rifle from Aliens), chaingun, plasma chaingun, BFG10k (cool stuff, never used it), and that’s pretty much it. I bet there was also a grenade launcher, rocket launcher, and something else, but I don’t remember. I knew I used all the weaponry because at some points the ammunition was scarce and you had no other choice but to use whatever was at your disposal, but those weapons I’ve mentioned are my favorite.
While you progress the levels, you also progress the plot and visit many points of interest that show how fucked up Stroggs are. You visit their prisons where they keep your still alive comrades, and those guys are not in shape to do anything after tortures they went through, you also visit refinery factories where they transform your still alive comrades into bio-fuel for their army by squishing them or tearing apart, or even burning alive. Stroggs are some serious war criminals. It’s like they don’t even want to have any redeeming quality, so the only option to deal with them is extreme prejudice and abnormal levels of violence.
You also visit those levels one of the first in the game, so it just helps to fuel enough hatred and concentrated malice for the rest of it. And believe me, you’ll need it. The further you go, the more damage you have to deal. You to destroy Strogg defenses, kill its leaders, sabotage their factories, and other crucial facilities to a point where you’re changing the course of the war single-handedly. Power fantasy, but deserved, since even on the easiest difficulty you’re getting no slack, and have to fight for real to get where you need.
The funny detail is that majority of the game, I would even dare to say 90% of it, you’re going through dark factories, claustrophobic metal corridors, warehouses, caves, and gloomy facilities. Not very often, you have to see sunlight or visit large open spaces. I think it was made on purpose, so when you finally reach the palace, the final level, you just feel overwhelmed by all the light, luxury, and pompousness. Strogg leaders surely know how to live like kings.
Anyway, the palace is a nice place for the final showdown where you meet the mastermind behind the invasion who is just some robot with cannons for the arms and face and named Makron. To deal with him, you have to shoot him a lot and dodge his projectiles. Surprisingly, he wasn’t very tough on easy difficulty. In fact, all bosses (all four or five of them) weren’t particularly much. In a one-on-one environment, with your speed and precision, they have little to no chance. Maybe on the higher difficulties it is different, but not on the easiest one.
And talking about movement, I have this feeling that it is faster than in Quake, however, less precise. Maybe it’s just me, but when I had to go through the jumping sequence on the moving platforms in later stage of the game (I think it was either power-plant or factory) I just couldn’t stop falling. I don’t know, maybe I am just a bad player, but jumping on moving platforms was almost impossible for me and I think I managed after a third or fourth try.
After you’re dealing with Makron, you have to escape before the self-destruction protocol gets activated and you jump on one of the escape pods. According to the final cinematic you fall somewhere out of the city limits and the hand of the hero clenched in fist shown to tell us that he’s alive and still pissed. The end.
What happened next? Well, I got curious and googled and apparently the main character of Quake 2 got caught by Stroggs eventually and they turned him into their personal guinea pig. To a point where he got even faster, stronger, and dangerous. Also, apparently he looks like a low-polygon version of Bruce Willis. Which is kind of cool, I guess.
Besides that, I don’t think I can tell much more. I know I wrote much more things about Quake, but Quake 2 is just much bigger and complex and I guess one playthrough wasn’t enough to capture and memorize it all. Nevertheless, it is a cool game and even though I never played DLCs (and there are some), I heard they are pretty rad, too. For now, this is it, and if I were to remember something, rest assured I would promise to write about it and then successfully forgot about it. Thank you for reading and see you tomorrow. Bye!