Quake is easily one of the greatest and most important games of all time.
Quake's graphics were revolutionary at the time. It was one of the first, if not the first game to use a full 3-D environment. It had state of the art lighting and effects which made this game one of the most graphiclly advanced games for it's time. The framerate usually remained steady and everything looked good, but even with the 3-D environments and state of the art lighting the graphics didn't really take a giant leap over other games with awesome graphics in it's time period. The sounds of Quake were done pretty well overall. All the guns sounded really good at the time and still sound pretty decent now days. The screams and grunts of enemies was done pretty well, though it could of been done better. The rockin' music in the background was pretty cool, presumably being Nine Inch Nails. It fitted the game very well. Everything in the sound department was well implemented into Quake and fit it very well and sounded great for its time.
There was a lot of value to be found in Quake as it was one of the first games to have an online multiplayer component that boasted one to sixteen players. The singleplayer didn't last too long, but this game definitely made up for the singleplayer with its online deathmatch game mode. Quake's online as one of the first that used the full internet not just a local network didn't get old. It was fun every time you played it unless you lossed even then it could be fun. Quake is still rather exspensive these days as on id software's website its still thirty bucks, but it still is on occasion enjoyable to play if you can ignore the outdated graphics.
The gameplay of Quake was very similar to Doom's gameplay and seemed to be a clone of it to many people. The gameplay was pretty much the same as in the singleplayer where you had to progress through each level shooting anything hostile. You also had to collect keys and other items to progress further into levels. The singleplayer was in the end a bit of a disappointment to many as it seemed to be too similar to Doom's singleplayer. That all said Quake was still had an enjoyable singleplayer campaign especially for people who didn't experience the Doom games before it. The multiplayer deathmatch part of Quake is where this game set itself apart from Doom and every other first person shooter before it. Quake supported up to sixteen players in one match as it was the first game to utilize the whole internet rather than local networks that you could only get three or four people in a match at once. Quake boasted a multiplayer like none other and was one of the most fun gaming experiences of my life. Running around with all the interesting weapons blasting other people was really enjoyable, and for the first time you weren't against computer AI you were playing against other people just like you. Knowing that made it that much more enjoyable. All of the weapons that you could run around and pick up were awesome especially the nail gun and rocket launcher. Those were my favorite guns in the game and probably my favorite in any game since. Quake's singleplayer had people wondering what the hell went wrong with it, but when they got around to the deatmatch online against people across the globe is when they realized that Quake was no disappointment.
Quake combined a good enough singleplayer with an unrivaled multiplayer to become in my opinion the greatest game of all time. Quake revolutionized the way games look being the first game to make everything in full 3-D. Quake also revolutionized the gaming industry by adding multiplayer over the internet. Other games have expanded on it since such as World of Warcraft, Halo 2, or Half-Life, but as the first game to have the online multiplayer over the internet makes it greater than any of them, not necessarily better though. Quake in my mind is the greatest game of all time, but I haven't played all the games out there, so I'm going to stick with the greatest game I've ever played.