REVIEW: Quake 64 1998, Nintendo 64
	By: Midway Type: first-person shooter Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Normal

Time for another conversion of a PC gaming cult favorite. And not just any PC cult favorite; Quake has managed to keep flocks of badly dressed violence addicts huddled around their monitors for hours on end, often with a towering phone bill as a result. However, that is all in the past. When transported to the N64, the game looks sadly passé and feels depressingly empty. That's not to say there's no good in this game at all, but it struggles nonetheless.

 
(left) Believe it or not, this place is the House of Chton. Of course / (right) Behold my impression of the gaint dancing hooker from Parodius

The manual describes a rather drawn-out kind of plot, which is actually hysterically funny since it takes itself far too seriously (and it involves something called Shub Niggurath. Honestly). What it comes down to, in the end, is a good dose of walking around eerie corridors, shooting ugly monsters who have bad conversationalist skills and getting hopelessly lost in 3-D mazes. There are entire mountains of these kind of games out there, so no points for originality, even if Quake was one of the first and most beloved games to do this kind of thing properly. That said, the main 1-player game is a pleasingly smooth affair to play, with the earlier levels displaying a lot of good, fast-paced action and solid design. Give the game a chance, and you'll find yourself having quite a good time during the first few levels. Ludicrously unfair monster battles, lots of marathon running through corridors, and a fair bit of puzzling are the order of the day. It's nothing you haven't seen before, but it works well and is enjoyable enough for a while. A few memorable moments stand out, such as the highly disturbing groaning zombies who fling parts of their own body at you. There's even a large number of secrets and hidden bonus rooms for you to hunto down. Cleverly, you're told how many of the secrets you've found at the end of each level, boosting the incentive to find the whole lot somewhat. So it's possible to like this game, but Quake 64 has a tendency to outstay it's welcome a little.

 
(left) A 'mine's bigger than yours' dispute grows ugly / (right) No-one ever taught him decent table manners

See, the sheen doesn't last too long, alas. After a few levels the thing becomes a bit too samey for it's own good, and the lack of variety will snuff a lot of the enjoyment there is to get out of the solo mode. The complexity of the later levels also means you'll get hopelessly lost and wander around in circles for ages, until you die of boredom. Basically, yes, there is a big and challenging game in there, but not one you'll desperately want to see every last bit of. The repetitive and sadly unoriginal nature of the levels will put most people off very soon. This kicks in about five or six levels into the game, when you realise that nothing new is going to happen from this point onward. Even one or two surprises such as an especially big monster or a level that does throw a nice, quirky new thing at you can't lift the overall depressingly déja vu tone of the game.

If I pretend I don't see him, maybe he'll leave me alone....just maybe.

The included two-player deathmatch mode might have boosted the game's lasting appeal considerably, but it has unfortunately gone horribly wrong. Already, with just two players, there's very little going on. Instead of frenzied, intense gunfights, your two blokeys are more likely to run around aimlessly, desperately lost in the huge and empty levels. You'll bump into each other once or twice by pure coincidence, hammer the fire buttons like mad and fail to hit anything whatsoever. Then it's back to more aimless sprinting through corridors. It's every bit as dull as it sounds, and you can't get a decent fight going even if you really try. Both your characters seem to be running on fast-foward speed all the time making it impossible to use any weapon with something approaching halfway decent accuracy -at all-. Aiming, firing and even just walking from A to B is a total hit-or-miss affair, leaving nothing but silly unintentional comedy value to commend the deathmatch mode. PC gamers worship 20-player Quake deathmatches over the modem, but on a console, with just a measly two players it was never going to work, even if it would have had decent controls and level designs.

Wave goodbye to the nice man, boys and girls

If you happen to really -really- like the color brown, then stop reading here, rush out and buy a copy of Quake 64. From beige to havannah brown, it's all there. In fact, there's hardly anything else but brown things in there. The never-ending combination of sepia-colored monsters on light ocre backgrounds, of course, will end up driving most people insane. One or two timid streaks of Vomit Green or Depressive Grey pop up a few times, but otherwise, the color brown rules over everything in the world of Quake. Besides the very limited, and really rather sickening color palette, Quake 64 doesn't have any real graphical treats in store for the player. The polygon models that make up the monsters are pitifully rough and blocky, with hardly any detail to them. They move well enough and have proper monster shapes, but the lack of detail on them makes them look as if they were carved out of raw potatos. The kind of thing Picasso might see in his nightmares. Add to that the awfully "square-tiles" look of pretty much all the background textures, the fact that blood, fire or any other bits of stuff that fly around take on the shapes of little blocks, and you have some big flaws that pretty much ruin an already unspectacular set of graphics. The okay-ish light effects and overall decent speed can't save the game's looks. Although not as hopelessly passé as Doom 64's visuals, Quake 64 looks sadly primitive in this form. Sounds are so minimal you'll hardly notice their existence, except for a few pleasingly creepy monster grunts.

 
(left) I knew a guy so fat his bum was this wide! Har har! / (right) Orson Welles sure has aged badly.

In a nutshell, it's Doom 64 all over again. Objectively speaking, it's not a -bad- game, and it stands a fairer fighting chance than Doom does against more modern shooters. The catch is that, when compared to any more advanced first-person shooter, Quake 64 seems so depressingly -bland-. There's nothing in there that makes it stand out, even if it has it's good moments. If the coders behind Quake 64 had taken the time to improve and modify this game before bringing it to the N64, it might have had a brighter career. As it stands, only complete Quake-junkies need apply. Anyone else can no doubt find a far better and more rewarding game to spend their pennies on. - Toasty 63%

[Key to the reviewing system]