Top Secret Magazine - QuakeTheOffering

You reach the top of the spiral staircase and see an open doorway that leads to a very large room. You peer inside nervously. The room is empty. It looks safe. You take two steps inside and then hear a faint clicking sound come from behind you. You spin around just in time to see a large gate slam shut across the doorway you just entered. Now you hear a rumbling noise off to your right side. You look over and see an entire wall of the room you're in, slowly raise towards the ceiling like the curtain in a theatre.

As the wall goes up, the first thing you see of your enemies on the other side is their feet, lots of feet, and you say to yourself, "This... is going... to be bad."

Welcome to the world of "Scourge of Armagon.". It's one of the two mission packs included in this three game offering. The other mission pack is called "Dissolution of Eternity", and the original Quake( with the Open GL enhancements) comes in the package to round out the trio. Die hard shooter fans may already own all three of these games, but if they don't, they should. This is required playing for veteran fraggers.

Quake, of course, is the source, its the reason why recently released and soon to be available games like Sin, Shogo and Half-Life even exist. The single player game, for all its in-your- face viscera, is a little dull. Multiplayer online deathmatch is where Quake becomes seriously addictive.

The two mission packs are collections of extra add on levels made by talented designers who obviously love this type of game. The single player experience in these is a lot more fun than in the original game and the layouts of these dungeons and castles are truly inspired. "Scourge of Armagon", has as one of its designers a guy who goes by the name of Levelord and as his name implies, he is really good. You're constantly fearful of what lies around the next corner; the architecture of the buildings is intricate,

These gremlins are actually 'kinda cute. Open fire!

Two shamblers decide to get jiggy with it.

sometimes confusing and always just plain cool. "Scourge.." also introduces some new bad guys like the Gremlins. These little guys make a noise that sounds like a hyena cackling and they go around feeding on rotting corpses. They like to travel around in packs and they'll steal your weapons from you if given a chance. They're easy to kill individually, but when you have six Gremlins swarming all over you, all it takes is for one of them to grab your nail-gun, open fire and Poof! You're kibble. And let me just add that its a little humiliating to be killed with your own damn gun.

The second mission pack is one of the most challenging sets of levels I've ever played through. I usually play at the Nightmare difficulty mode, but in "Dissolution...", I was forced to ease off. Its just nuts in there.

The music in these games is really well done. Quake features Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails doing his thing and "Scourge..." has some crazy classical / hardrock mixes that add to your confusion as you navigate Levelord's labyrinthine hell pits. Audio effects are a little muffled though. The shotgun blast still sounds like you're stomping on a bag of chips.

Graphically, well, you have to remember that these titles were originally released more than a year ago, so they don't have all the eye-candy now present in today's games. The graphics are good, but don't expect any fractal water effects or large outdoor areas. Visuals are not what determines whether a game is any fun to play anyway, so it shouldn't concern you.

If you only recently started playing first-person shooters, you may have been turned off of them by their ungodly system requirements (*cough* Unreal *ahem*) or by the focus on pretty pictures instead of fun. If that's the case, you should try out Quake:The Offering to see why this genre became so popular in the first place.
For veterans who may have missed one or more of these games the first time around: go get this.

Company:
Activision
www.activision.com

Category:
First-person shooter

NOTES:

Interest: 90%
Control : 95%
Graphics: 80%
Sound : 80%
Originality : 85%

TOTAL : 86%

Requirements:

Operating System:
Windows 95/98

Processor:
Pentium 75MHz or better

Memory:
16 MB of RAM

Hard Drive:
80 MB

Sound Card:
Soundblaster compatible sound card

Video:
Open GL 3D accelerator for GLQuake.

Stefan Lister

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