A few weeks back I found myself with a little extra cash (damn I wouldn't mind some now) and while I was in town I ended up buying the first official Quake2 mission pack by Xatrix. So I've decided to write a small review of it here. (I hope to start my own little regular feature called "Re-vooed: Stuff as scene through the eyes of a below-average teenager" once Xtro decides to be nice and write us newbies into the database.) So anyway, this pack starts of with your character, called "Joker" crash landing on Stroggos (strange how the only marines that survived were the ones that shouldn't have) after smashing into an asteroid on the way down. He lands outside the defensive laser perimeter of the Stroggos city and has to find an alternative way in. From there, you must find the location of the Strogg counter fleet and disable it, which takes you to the local starport, onto a freighter bound for the moon (and killing the crew of course) and finally destroying the moon base. And of course our friend the Makron pops up again for a second showing. There are only two new baddin's: a strange little robot thing, harmless in itself, but has a habit of reanimating dead Strogg after you leave the room (and also seems to have a preference for tanks), making them rather annoying. The second are the Gekks, which are something to be concerned about when they are in packs. Heres a few of them worshiping an airstrike marker:  Gekks have a notably different AI to the other monsters. They can swim, and are capable of surprisingly large jumps out of the water to right in front of your face. They can spit acid (bright yellow version of the blaster bolt) and leap towards you with a melee attack. On the plus side, they gib VERY nicely, see below:  For some reason I find that reminding me of Unreal. And heres another nice touch: 
The gibs glow! All your favourite enemies return as well, and some are now improved, with many of the old baddies upgraded to "beta class". There are three new guards - one with a blue hyperblaster, one with a Ion Ripper (see below) and the nastiest has a red laser. Also upgraded is the Iron Maiden, now with heat seeking missiles; the Gladiator, now with a Phalanx Cannon and power shield; and amongst many more, the Brain Beta is very nasty. It is now fitted with a long range laser attack and the tentacles can now reach you across the room and pull you into range of it's claws. And get used to fighting the SuperTanks.. Beta of course, now fitted with power shields! Of course, no quake mod or addon is really complete without some new firepower to play with. The Reckoning has three new guns to satisfy the urge with: The Ion Ripper. The Ripper uses cells (about two per round I think) and they fire a boomerang shaped thing that bounces of walls. It's only really useful in this fashion against tanks, as they take forever getting around the corner. The new guards have these and they make your life miserable with them.  The Phalanx Cannon. Think of it as kind of a cross between the rocket launcher and super shotgun. It fires two weaker explosive projectiles, the right one just after the left. This way if you strafe left or flick the mouse left as you fire you can get them going in a straight line. The projectiles are slow, and this weapon is really only good for SuperTanks, tanks or still targets. It's a tad too unwieldy for close combat (splash damage) and the rate of fire is low. On the plus side, it has it's own form of ammo (magnesium slugs), you get two rounds for every one slug, and the projectiles look flashy in OpenGL.  Trap. The last weapon is a trap that turns enemies into food. (I don't have a screeny for it because I didn't have time). It's of rather dubious effectiveness... you press the button and put it on the ground. Then move away. You get some pretty particle display and any bad dudes that get too close are sucked in. (be careful, I got myself sucked in one time!) Any bad guys come out again in the form of a strange pellet that restores health and the manual says it tastes like chicken. I've used it successfully on guards, and I've tried it on a Supertank. All it did was prevent the tank from moving or firing for about two minutes, and didn't do much else (I was trying to avoid the OTHER one). So far I've only found three of these things in the entire game. Also, there is a brand new kind of powerup. Called the Dualfire, it's similar to the accelerate tech in CTF, in that it doubles your rate of fire. When it came down to fighting the good old Makron again, I flicked on the quad, flicked on the dualfire and went to work with the super shotgun. He went down pretty quick! As far as maps go, they seem to have gone to some length to keep the look of the ID ones consistent. The maps, to me, feel like "quake done by someone else" and I'm pretty much right (duh!). Also the beginning cinematic wasn't as good as the original, the ending was about the same, but the inbetween unit cinematics were better - same vein, but more detailed and speccy looking. There are some very nice touches though; exploded walls look better; on one level earthquakes help you out by opening new passageways below you and turning stalactites into steps by shaking them off the ceiling. I was particularly impressed when I saw a Human ship being chased by a Strogg ship, which fired and destroyed the human ship. Some good baddy placement - in the screen shot below, upon entering the water a s*%#load of Gekks appear out of nowhere all over the cliffs and jump into the water after you (which is bad because Gekks can swim faster than you!).  Anyway, the game does get hard... Easy skill is pretty much where hard left off in the original Quake2 missions, and hard does get hard (expect constant attacks from above, usually by Gunners dropping grenades and those bastard guards with the Red Lasers!) It breathes new life into the old Quake2 single player game but I'm not quite sure if it was worth the $50 price tag. Perhaps wait a bit till it drops to about $30-$40 dollars. |