Quake III Arena

Episode 1 of The New Eurogamer Podcast, featuring Quake legend Sujoy Roy, is now available to all. This took a little longer than expected due to faffing with RSS feeds, but you should now be able to find it in all the places you podcast. If you can't, please let me know below.

Also, yes, the Eurogamer Podcast is back! But it's slightly different to what we've done before, with a new host - me! - and a new direction. I've decided to move to an interview format instead of a chat show because that's what interests me most. I like sitting people down and hearing about their lives. Some of my best work on the site, in all the many years I've worked here, has come from doing it, so that's what I'm going to be doing here.

My first guest is Sujoy Roy, a name you might remember if you were a part of the Quake scene in the 90s. It's the scene Eurogamer originally grew out of, by the way, so it's a fitting place for a new series to begin.

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DOOM II

Switch-owning fans of demon murder (who somehow still haven't played id Software's legendary Doom saga) are in luck; as part of this year's QuakeCon, id has announced a five-game Doom Slayers Collection for Nintendo's console, which is available to purchase now.

The reveal isn't too much of a surprise - US retailer Best Buy successfully managed to leak the Doom Slayers Collection for Switch earlier today ahead of its official reveal - but the game's immediate post-announcement launch most certainly was, and Switch players can now enjoy some demon-hued FPS japes all in one bundle, featuring seminal 1993 original Doom, Doom 2, Doom 64, Doom 3, and 2016's sort-of-rebooted Doom.

Notably, that's one more game than was featured in the Doom Slayers Collection for Xbox and PlayStation, which released toward the end of last year minus Doom 64 - a pleasant treat for Switch owners, based on Digital Foundry's previous enthusiasm for the port.

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Quake

Exactly five years ago, Digital Foundry Retro was born! At the time, it was an experiment more than anything else, focusing on just one version of id software's Quake - the astonishing Sega Saturn version, built from scratch by Lobotomy Software. It was the port that John Carmack reckoned couldn't exist, but somehow a talented team found a way. A half-decade on from the release of that video, DF Retro returns to Quake, this time covering it in its entirety: the game, the technology, the ports and the legacy.

Quake itself began as nothing more than a mention in some text blurb in Commander Keen, but even then, there were hints of a game that exceeded the technological limits of the hardware of the time. Building on the mega success of Doom, the first time gamers got to experience Quake was in the release of QTest in early 1996 - a Deathmatch test with three supplied maps. What was obvious was how demanding the game was. Id Software debuted with a software renderer that tapped into the strengths of Intel Pentium processors, running like a slideshow on older 486s and non-Intel processors.

The shareware episode launched in June 1996, with the full game arriving a month later. With its dimly lit corridors, abstract geometry and industrial soundscape, Quake certainly delivered something special. It was a deeply atmospheric, fast paced action game. Quake features vast, complex levels showcasing 3D graphics unlike anything the market had seen before. It builds on the artistic influences which served as a foundation in Doom while introducing dark industrial and Lovecraftian themes. It's chaotic but it works. The technology was phenomenal, but gameplay is king. In the years that followed, games would attempt to push interactive narratives and expand design possibilities but few remain as engaging as Quake.

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Wolfenstein 3D

No, you read that right, there's now a fan game combining Super Monkey Ball and Wolfenstein 3D. It wouldn't be the top of my list for potential crossovers, but somehow, it works.

Made by Nickireda and published on Itch.io, Return to Castle Monkey Ball is a free browser game that lets you smash Nazis in a hamster ball to your heart's content. So yes, it's the perfect antidote to last week's news. The fan game has the classic Super Monkey Ball timer, goal and banana collection mechanics, but smacking into Nazis can earn you extra time... if you can avoid getting shot by them first. You only get three lives to make it through the stages, but there are health item pickups along the way to help you through.

I gave the first few levels a go and it's a truly bizarre collision of worlds, while moving around the maze can be rather trippy. My main tip: don't let those Nazis box you in.

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Quake

Ah, Quake. Id Software's hugely popular PC first-person shooter came out in the US on 22nd June 1996, courtesy of publisher GT Interactive. And now, as Quake approaches a quarter of a century of existence, owner Bethesda is giving away the game that started it all free to anyone who signs in to its launcher from now until the end of the QuakeCon at Home event.

Yes, the Bethesda launcher is yet another launcher for your PC, but this is Quake. QuakeCon at Home ends at 3am UK time on Monday 10th August.

In a Quake retrospective published in 2011, Jim Rossignol discussed the influence of Id's game.

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DOOM II

What should have been a beautiful piece of retro fan service didn't quite work out. Last year, fresh ports of the original Doom trilogy arrived across a range of devices and while Panic Button's Doom 3 port hit the target, Nerve's conversions of the original Doom and its sequel left a lot to be desired. Incorrect lighting, broken music, stretched aspect ratios and other issues impacted what should have been a joyous celebration of a genuine gaming phenomenon. However, it's all changed now: while not quite perfect, I can highly recommend these revised ports and in fact, this is one of the most significant game patches I've looked at during my time at Digital Foundry.

To begin, it's worth pointing out that while the new update contains a wealth of new additions and fixes, not every feature is brand new - the game's first patch already managed to correct a selection of the more egregious issues. The incorrect lighting levels in the original release were fixed months ago in the 1.03 update, the mandatory Bethesda.net login requirement was removed and the speed and quality of the audio was also improved. Patch 1.03 basically delivered the game we should have experienced at launch and to be fair, Bethesda could have left things along at the point. However, the decision was taken to further refine it - and this is where things get interesting.

A crucial addition is support for additional WAD content packs. In its current state, both Doom and Doom 2 receive the WADs created for Final Doom while the original Doom also receives John Romero's Sigil with Doom 2 benefitting from Nerve's own No Rest for the Living. This is a huge bonus feature as these additional WADs are all of very high quality, bringing a lot of extra content to the game for no additional cost. According to the patch notes, the team is also curating additional WADs which will become available in due course. While the PC original has no restrictions on what WADs you can run, it's great to see extra content arriving for the console platforms.

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DOOM II

Bethesda's sizeable Doom 1 and 2 re-release updates - which were announced at the tail-end of last year, and add the likes of 60fps support, as well as free community created add-ons - are available now on Xbox One, PS4, Switch, mobile, and PC.

As Digital Foundry reported last summer, Bethesda's recent Doom 1 and 2 re-releases had more than their fair share of teething problems at launch. Since then, the publisher has issued a number of updates to improve matters, but today's offering is the most significant yet.

Once their respective patches have been downloaded, Doom 1 and 2 will see a frame rate boost from the original games' 35fps to 60fps on all platforms, and receive various quality of life enhancements, as outlined in Bethesda's latest patch notes.

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Quake II

Quake 2 is over two decades old and yet the id Software classic is one of my favourite games of this year, radically re-invented from a visual perspective thanks to the ray traced remastering from Nvidia's Lightspeed Studios (based on original work by Christophe Schied). It's one of the most impressive examples of hardware-accelerated RT and thanks to the new 1.2 patch released a few days ago, a phenomenal game now looks a whole lot better.

One might think that Nvidia would simply move on from the Quake 2 project and concentrate efforts on the ray traced upgrades for other titles that are being worked on behind the scenes, but the improvements to the 1.2 upgrade are quite profound - and the most noticeable change comes from upgraded art assets. While the original Quake 2 RTX launch used physically-based variants of Quake 2 XP textures, not all of them appeared to receive the same level of love and attention. A key focus for the 1.2 upgrade has been to re-assess many material properties and get them looking just right.

Metal and how it interacts with lighting has changed immensely. The original release had metalwork that appeared to lack much in the way of specular properties, so even with the hyper-realistic path traced lighting, the material looked more like stone than metal. It's all change in 1.2, with art changes that dramatically change and improve many scenes. There are micro-level improvements too. For example, the original remaster's shotgun shells in ammo boxes use matte materials that show little differentiation between the box material and the shells themselves. Version 1.2 now sees individual cartridges exhibit metallic sheen and emphasise the coloured metals on the jacket.

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2019 年 9 月 6 日
Quake III Arena


Welcome to another week of Five of the Best, a series where we celebrate the overlooked parts of video games, like hands! And potions! And dinosaurs! And shops! They're the kinds of things etched unwittingly into memory, like an essential ingredient of a favourite dish you could never put a finger on. And I want to spark discussion, so please share memories as they flash into your mind. Today, another five. The topic...

Health pick-ups! Oh how very specific - but I need to be. I'm not talking about health systems but the things you pick up to heal yourself. Used to be all games did it this way, but then Halo came along with its recharging health and all of a sudden everyone wanted the same. Now that feels like the norm.

But there are old-fashioned health systems out there (and they'll probably take offence at being called old-fashioned, so I'm sorry, I don't mean it in a bad way!). I still see Overwatch health packs when I close my eyes at night, and potions, which I've written a whole Five of the Best on, are a dime a dozen in RPGs. They're still out there, still crucial to how we get through games.

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DOOM II

Ah, Doom 64. In the absence of a PC, my console-fuelled video game childhood was left with Doom 64. But, improbably, Doom 64 was great.

This 1997 Nintendo 64-exclusive Doom game was not a port of the original Doom, or any of the other Doom games. Nor was it meant to be the 64th Doom game (although by this point will it be?). Rather, it was a sequel developed by Midway that took place after Doom 2.

I remember Doom 64 looking fantastic to my teenage eyes, and the music was properly atmospheric. You spent a lot of time shooting demons, of course, but there was a real horror feel to the game. It felt like Doom 64 was as good as Doom could get on Nintendo's console and, as someone who hadn't played Doom before, it also felt fresh.

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