quake part V: quake vs. duke nukem 3D: whose is bigger?

zaoral family (cadvision.com):

In Quake they mooched sounds from Duke Nukem 3-D and ROTT. The Chainsaw Dudes in Quake sound just slightly like the Pig Cops in Duke, and the ricochets are somewhat like the ROTT ones.

adam williamson (adam@scss.demon.co.uk):

Wow! Excuse me, but exactly how is it possible to make one ricochet NOT sound like another? The Chainsaw Dudes sound very slightly like Pig Cops -- oh no, disaster! And the grenade exploding sounds a little bit like an RPG hitting a wall -- arrrgggghhh! SUE SUE SUE SUE SUE SUE....

jako malan (jako@iafrica.com):

Some sounds of the Soldier Cats (or whatever, I am not a Duke fan) sound 99.9 percent like the sounds in Hexen emitted from a ETTIN.

Quake's sounds are extremely well done. I cannot see any relation between Duke's and Quake's sounds.

master bates (HKBF37D@prodigy.com):

The music's really not that great, but the game is awesome. It kicks the shit out of Duke Nukem 3-D. I'm gonna edit an awesome level for this one. It may be worth it to buy the shareware version for the soundtrack, but don't buy the complete version for that reason. (I really wouldn't pay ten bucks for it, either.)

allen dickerson (exarch@ix.netcom.com):

Just went down to my local bookstore and picked up a copy of PC Gamer since it had an article on Ultima 9 and a review of Quake. Dan Bennett reviewed it, and he pretty much said every bad thing he could about the game. Every paragraph has a negative comment in it. Here are some choice comments:

"Quake is a bit of a disappointment."

Whatever, Dan.

"There's nothing in Quake that chills the blood the way a bellow of a Baron of Hell could in Doom."

The shrieking of the Vore is chilling -- besides if you want that bellow, go put it in via Quake-C....

"Personally I'm a little disappointed; when I first heard of Reznor's involvement, I had images of blowing away bad guys to the ear-bleeding beat of a tune like 'Closer.'"

The music fits the game perfectly. Why the HELL would you want to listen to "Closer" while playing Quake? Methinks Dan's only NIN exposure has been MTV....

"It lacks the variety of a head-to-head section of Duke 3-D."

Um, ever heard of Quake-C? We already have most of the Duke weapons and can easily make the others. Besides, I never did like the weird Duke weapons.

"In fact, there's less variety here than in Doom."

Ever heard of Quake-C?

"In terms of technology, Quake is no earth shaker...we've already seen some or all of these features in games like Descent II, Terminator: Future Shock, and Duke 3-D."

This one speaks for itself.

"...I suspect that Quake's visual quality owes more to some very good work from artists Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud than to any great technological superiority."

What?!? Even most Duke fans admit that Quake has the better engine.

"You can't name your saved games; Quake just labels each save with the name of the current level and the number of kills you've racked up."

He thinks this is a huge problem; he devotes an entire paragraph to it. Last time I checked I could go to the console and save games with whatever name I want.

He gave it a 90 percent, but I suspect that's because he thinks PC Gamer would have been laughed off the face of the earth if he didn't give it an "A".... At least Computer Gaming Monthly sees the light; they are going to have a monthly Quake article from now on.

This isn't even the best part of it. At the end of the issue they print letters from their readers. All of the letters they printed were negative. It was like they were trying to prove to their readers that they were in the majority in thinking that Duke is better.

czar (czar@ripco.com):

What the hell was that reviewer talking about? I shit bricks when I had a Shambler pop up in front of me while being pursued by a Death Knight. Or the time I fell into a little moat and had two fiends trying to rip me to shreds. Maybe this reviewer was playing it on easy with impulse 9 and God mode on and whatnot.

Not only that, with Quake-C we can have jeeps and aircraft and any other vehicles people can think of. The president of 3D Realms talked about having aircraft that you can climb into and fly and walk back out. The controls would be similar to Descent. Well, too late! It's being done for Quake!... The reviewer bashes the game, then gives it a 90 percent. He should stand by his review.... This reminds me of my Genesis console-gaming days. I used to read GamePro, and all of their reviews were biased.

james sodano (jimnsb@america.com):

In PC Gamer's last issue (maybe the one before that), they had a big write-up on Duke -- think they voted it "game of the year" or something. Now a month later they're looking very behind the times as Quake is stealing all the headlines. Seems like they hitched their wagon to the wrong horse and are regretting it. Not that I take much of their reviewing seriously; they had a Packard-Bell rated as "best system" (maybe "best system at Wal-Mart"). Kind of hard to talk sense with your tongue stuck in your advertisers' sphincters.

mamabzard (mamabzard@aol.com):

Allen mentioned disagreeing with PC Gamer's review of Quake because it mentioned several shortcomings in the game. Many, many gamers agree that these are shortcomings that should have been addressed or included by Id BEFORE the game was released.... Yes, the game is highly modifiable, but what percentage of people who play Quake are going to have the time or knowledge to do this? I would say a small percentage of die-hard Quakers are able to program. My feeling is that Id should have finished the game first instead of relying on the user community to finish it for them.

e. clayton (eclayton@cc.curtin.edu.au)

The writer showed a true sense of not knowing what one's talking about in the review. Mentioning that Duke had better "head-to-head" and that he'd rather listen to "Closer" (which he could do if he changed the CD) than the better-than-perfect ambient music Trent included just proved that he shouldn't have reviewed the game. Maybe he just wanted some attention by bagging it, instead of doing what most other reviewers will do and loving it.

Since when do you need knowledge to download a patch from a place like Stomped and read a little bit of instruction? (Of course, this assumes YOUR kind of user knows how to make a directory.) No need to program anything; there's a large chance that someone else has already programmed the effect you're looking for -- and if they haven't, then it's only a matter of time.

Id DID finish the game. The engine is pretty much spotless. Show me some other game that runs on the same speed and level (lighting and realistic shadows -- even though monster shadows isn't there -- and such) and then maybe a comparison on what a finished game looks like can be made.

The fact of the matter is that Id built the engine to a point where extra tweaking wouldn't alter the gameplay, and made it so that people could add their individual little bits themselves (or download them, as I mentioned earlier). If Id wanted to put EVERYTHING in it, it would never be released, and we would be waiting forever.

On a final note, PC Gamer needs to fix up its reviewing methods if it's going to publish any more reviews. You think the game's unfinished -- how about unfinished reviews?

dave r. (orionx@mindspring.com):

This is what I think: If you guys really wanna see who is nipping at Id's heels, check out Unreal by EpicMegagames.

3D Realms programmed a good game (with Duke), but there was much to desire from it. It had sprites -- that is old news. That is what separates Doom clones from Quake. I just can't believe that someone would have piled the time into DN3D and let the sprites stay. I would say that they just haven't gotten their programming skill up to par yet.... The sprites really sucked, I thought. There just isn't a comparison to the poly-monsters in Quake. And the sound isn't even touchable. I don't see T. Reznor doing anything for DN3D or anyone else.

Quake, on the other hand, has some of the most talented programmers working on it. Anyone who talks shit about Quake's graphics is a fool. They must have no idea who Michael Abrash is, or Carmack, Cash, or Romero. They must also have no concept of what it takes to program a video game of that calibre. More than you can dream, I assure you. All this competing shit going on...hell, if I could, I would vote that all the badass companies listed on my home page get together and create one AWESOME FUCKING game with everything you could ever dream of in it. But we all know that will never happen.

All you guys bitching about which is better...WHO CARES? No one's making you play either game...just choose which is best for you and play it. But don't feel bad if you pick DN3D and are shooting toilets for the next year, while all the Quake players become Masters and crush you when you finally realize it.