As I was going through my Xbox Game Pass today looking for something to play, I noticed Quake. Now we all know it’s an old game first released mid to late 1996 if I recall correctly. Just for kicks I decided to load it up with the thoughts of playing a level or two just to see the old game in action again.

I was impressed. Really impressed. It’s an old game, with I’m going to guess a highly optimized game engine at this point in time. I have an Nvidia 1030 video card in my older Windows PC and man the game was SOOOO fast. It was so fast and rock solid I ended up going through 3 levels before I even knew what was going on. I instantly got immersed back into the game and the super-fast gameplay made it super fun. It instantly reminded me of Ultrakill, if that’s a title you’re familiar with.

Anyways. For nostalgias sake I’m glad I downloaded and installed Quake again after all these years, legally of course, because though I did complete the game some 25-30 years ago, it was just the first few levels that were released for free, or under the old shareware license or whatever. Now that I have access to the full game and extra episodes, I’m going to go through and complete them all or until repetition forces me to stop. I’m already needing to redo the first 3 levels because I didn’t find all the secrets. Plus, as enemies don’t continually respawn once I’ve wiped out a level of its enemies, I’ll have plenty of time to go through all the areas completely to find the secrets I missed.

So, if you’re feeling nostalgic and are considering playing an older game, go back to Quake and play it some. The historical progression of fist person shooters went something like Wolfenstein, Doom, and then Quake. That’s not a set order but pretty close. Quake showed us what could really be done with a 3D engine and ushered in the new era of first-person gaming. So, if you have an Xbox Game Pass, or other platform where you can download games for free or at nominal cost, this should be a no brainer.

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