Beaten: Quake (One)

 While I try to beat one videogame from each decade every year, it's more of a guideline, so if I want to play more older games, I certainly can. Although I had played a 1990s Genesis game (Light Crusader) earlier in 2023, I decided to hit one more 1990s classic, the first-person shooter Quake.

Quake was Id Software's follow-up to their groundbreaking Doom games, expanding on that game's success with an eye on the emerging multiplayer shooter crowd. Quake was a very popular multiplayer game in those years, as evidenced by all the Quake players who I encountered in Ultima Online who were confused by all that roleplaying crap.

I was not interested in the multiplayer (even the XBox One remaster I played has it), but rather the single player campaign. Like Doom, Quake has the player running fast through multiple levels stuffed with monsters and secrets, rarely with more than enough ammo to make it past the next encounter. I got a taste of this old school simplicity a few years ago when I played Marathon: Durandal on the 360 and was wanting some more, hence Quake.

At first, I was not resolved to beat the game, but rather to try out a few levels as a change of pace from other games I was playing. I found myself having so much fun that, after finishing the first of four parts, I decided to keep playing to the main campaign's conclusion.

The gameplay was all that familiar refrain of running, shooting, searching, and dying, with a few variations like a low gravity level thrown in. One can save anywhere, so I developed the smart habit of not only saving frequently but of saving at the beginning of the level in case I wasted too much ammo and needed to replay the whole thing.

The music was provided by Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, and I am grateful that this XBox One remake retained that soundtrack, as it is moody and epic.  Differing from Doom, the final level had an interesting boss fight that took me a few days/attempts to figure out, but was really satisfying. Quake has its place in history, and I am glad I finally got a chance to play it and see why.