Quake II VS Unreal

Which of these titles had the best single player?

I'm playing both in turns for period retrospective. Video games are very serous.

Quake easily.

or do you mean original Unreal?

Yes: not Unreal Tournament or 2.. Quake II, not Quake I.

Still Quake II. Unreal was more about graphics.

"Look at the perspective correcting textures!!!"

aaahhh those were the days

I notice in Quake II enemies duck and shoot you while incapacitated. Some blankly fire while there head has been blown off before snuffing it.

AI doesn't seem to have evolved much: most modern shooters seem a step backwards.

Hmm, kinda interresting topic.

I would go with Quake II over Unreal, although it is fairly even for a large part.

Unreal did have npcs, but ultimately very floaty in movement and for some reason it took a bucket of hits with near any weapon to kill anything, It felt slow and tedius in bigger battles, but atleast the World it took place in showed alot of diffrent settings, and tryied to tell a story through the setting aswell.

Quake 2 (also the better mp game of the two). was more straight farwards, combat was heavier and faster, you would run more, guns did more damage and was more effective allround.

The setting in Quake two was far less interresting with some parts being nearly nonsensical.

But it had a much better focus and exection of combat, and traps.

I think Quake 1 with mods is better than both.

Ah, Quake 2. I still play it on my netbook and old laptop. I also have Quake somewhere. But, Quake 2 was the first in the series to have standard 3D acceleration. My Quake CD is still SVGA and required additional files to enable 3D acceleration (GLQuake).

I also have my Unreal CD somewhere. But, unlike Quake 2, it was more flaky to run with later Windows OSes. Unreal Tournament is much more robust.

Quake 2 will run on just about any platform.

Never played Unreal but hopefully one day I will but I did enjoy Quake II. I wish there was a new Quake right now.

In general, I wish we had games like these. Specifically the map design. Key hunting, secret items/levels, getting a gun early for bothering to explore the map.

Walking in a straight line is abit shit.

Quake II for sure. So many fond memories.

I really liked Quake II. Haven't play Unreal though.

Yeah I agree. That's why I hate modern shooters today because they are too short and nothing more then a shooting gallery, also these modern shooters hold your hand to where you go instead of finding the path by yourself.

I think thats part of why ID are shit now. They can't make the kind of maps they use too: the marketers wont allow it because it doesn't appeal to modern gamers sensibilities. Every game (made by ID or otherwise) carrying a ID brand name has been console pish.

People are saying good things about Doom 4 it wont have large maze like levels: it will probably pin down the shooting and have flashy graphics but that will be about it.

If you just want plain old shooting without the intricate level design, companies like "flying wild hog" already cater to that.

This thread makes me happy :-) I miss the early days of FPS - the first times running around in Doom and Quake and Unreal were wonderful fun (and back then the visuals were quite something). One of my fondest gaming memories, although years later, was finding and destroying this notorious camping sniper at a UT '99 LAN tournament who had been untouched and taking people out for several years. Felt like I'd accomplished something in real life :-P I wonder if I've still got my copy of Hexen around - that was an interesting game too (although not my favorite)

Unreal's one of the best single player shooters I've ever played and I get the feeling most people saw it as just a graphics benchmark which is a little sad. I think it offered something Quake II lacked - a sense of place. I had great fun playing through it 2 years ago.

Pros:

• Every fight's a challenge without being bullet-spongy; hitting and dodging your opponent's the challenge which I really enjoyed.
• Amazing soundtrack.
• Lengthy.
• Epic, colourful and varied grand-scale level design.
• A dark, brooding, exotic, alien, mysterious, lonely vibe. It's otherworldliness and your role as an interloper in the middle of a conflict made the game very fun to explore. It had that in-the-moment immersion of Dark Souls.

Cons:

• Dated graphics.
• Archaic storytelling.
• No more worthy sequels!

Unreal was better, but neither is very good.

Right.

I am glad that you realize I am right. :)

Remember, these games came out around the same time as Half-Life. HL is way better than both games and is a true classic that is still impressive to this day. I was not impressed with either game when they released, but HL blew me away.

I just finished playing Half-Life 2 and man did that game age very well. I'm still shocked that game came out around 2004. Plus I also finished F.E.A.R. as well which is also another great game. To bad F.E.A.R. 3 looked like crap. I hope Half-Life 3 doesn't end up like that as a shitty modern shooter. I really miss old school fps.

Quake 2 for me wasn't nearly as good as quake 1 which was one of my favorite online fps ever. I would have to go with Unreal if its vs Quake 2 and not Quake 1.

My friend:; it was sarcasm.

Halflife is my favorite game as a whole. However; a game being different; does not make a video game bad, neither does a game being better.

Retrospectively: having played all the way through it again; finishing it just yesterday, the level design of Quake 2 has craftsmanship that puts modern shooters to shame. In certain regards; it is objectively better than Halflife.

"true classic" seems to imply Quake isn't. Without Quake; we wouldn't half-life. Likewise Quake 2's was revolutionary in it's own right; multiplayer began to (and still does) supersede single player long before Call Of Duty arrived.

@uninspiredcup: I know what you meant and I used your reply in my favour. Lol. Sure, Quake 2 had good MP, but that is not what we are discussing. Also, not discussing Quake 1 (which is better than 2, IMO). I have not played Quake 2 in many years and I have no desire to play it again. I remember having very little interest in the campaign. It was all futuristic and industrial. All the environments looked the same and lacked any colour or personality. I preferred the gothic/medieval feel of the first.

@cyborg100000 said:

Unreal's one of the best single player shooters I've ever played and I get the feeling most people saw it as just a graphics benchmark which is a little sad. I think it offered something Quake II lacked - a sense of place. I had great fun playing through it 2 years ago.

Pros:

• Every fight's a challenge without being bullet-spongy; hitting and dodging your opponent's the challenge which I really enjoyed.
• Amazing soundtrack.
• Lengthy.
• Epic, colourful and varied grand-scale level design.
• A dark, brooding, exotic, alien, mysterious, lonely vibe. It's otherworldliness and your role as an interloper in the middle of a conflict made the game very fun to explore. It had that in-the-moment immersion of Dark Souls.

Cons:

• Dated graphics.
• Archaic storytelling.
• No more worthy sequels!

Unreal felt more meditative than typical action fodder; I think this is what partly turned people off.

Personally: I like the sparse story-telling as well. It indicates that stuff is happening and has happens in the world rather than spelling it out with a bunch of obvious bombastic cutscenes like Gears Of War. Just because we have better technology doesn't mean little isn't necessarily better.

When every game is trying to become a Hollywood movie; in the end you become numb to it.

I have more memories of Quake 2 than Unreal. I felt the Quake story line was great.

I didn't notice much story beyond "you are marine man stranded; kill everything get to end".

Which is fine.

Unreal had better graphics, but Quake 2 had much better gunplay. Overall, I preferred Quake 2...

Having finished Quake 2 I'm glad to report age wise; barring ugly brown graphics, it has aged exceptionally well. The level design in particular, is impeccable.

The expansion pack as well (one of two I am working through) "Ground Zero" also has great map design and nice additional features.

It's interesting that "Ground Zero" had average/decent, but not exceptional reviewed at the time. Today, it would probably be considered an excellent expansion due to the drop in quality and quantity.

I'm looking forward to finishing the next expansion pack afterwords and then concluding with Quake and it's mission packs (which I never tried). All in all, good gaming times.

This thread has got me wanting to play some old school shooters. I too miss the old level design where areas were designed to be fun first and foremost.

If you touch Quake 2 I'd recommend turning "auto run" on; the pacing feels closer to Quake 1.

Frankly, I don't know why it's turned off by default; it undersells the game.

I know, right?

Having started Unreal; I'm quite impressed by the Ai. They use elevators, will jump over bridges are actively dodge (and generally be quite hard to hit).

Both games got me back to repeating them over and over just for the action since both had their pros and cons from a different perspective.

The level design isn't as good in Unreal imo, relatively straight forward in comparison.

Ahh.. I like both about the same. BUT I REALLY enjoyed Quake III and UT 2004.

The level design definitely lets Unreal down; Quake 2 is vastly superior in that regard.

Awesome thread TC. Having finished both Unreal over Quake II (Quake II over a decade ago and Unreal half a decade ago after playing through it for several years) Unreal easily comes on top. I still have the Unreal box. It has RIP Quake II as one of the quotes from a game magazine lol. Unreal had a vast open environment that is varied that is filled with various colors. I will never forget how awesome the opening was in Unreal main menu where the camera pans through the castle. Peoples jaw dropped to the floor when it came out. It was the Crysis of 1998 and had similar qualities like Crysis, both open world games, both pushed technological boundaries. Although Quake II did but no where near as Unreal.

This thread made me go back and play Quake II Mission Pack The Reckoning and just finished a level. I can tell you that Quake II had a very industrial feel to it where the surroundings were brown. I will say that Quake II is certainly more challenging finding the buttons and pathways.

Interesting to note. It took Epic 4 years to make, usually games that goes through several rivisions, engine upgrades and re-writes often turns out like crap but Unreal re-wrote the rules on it's head.

@cyborg100000 said:

Nice! Remember this, I believe it was towards the end of the game. Also, Unreal had varied enemies unlike Quake II.

I playing through The Reckoning. Were you able to get the music working?I got Quake II and it's expansion when I brought Quake 4 DVD Special Edition version. Not sure why the music isn't working.

Check the community hub, both Quake I//II and all the expansions have mods in the guide section.

Just a quick question. Are you using mods? If so, does that dramatically improve the graphics from vanilla? I wonder how much "upgrade" they did to the graphics for expansions that came out in 1998.

I believed I used this.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/2320/guides/#scrollTop=500

I thought Unreal had some great levels in the first half. Whereas, Quake 2, for me, was very bland and circuitous in those early moments. (i never finished it)

Unreal gets like that towards the end, but the variety and general design I found more appealing.

Quake 2 was so awesome back in the day. I spent way more time with that on my Compaq desktop!