PlayStation Game Recommendations | mariteaux

[#] Quake II (Activision, PlayStation, 1999)

Great port, average source material.

I was in the mood for a PS1 FPS, and among the pack, Quake II stood out for lineage alone. That said, I was pretty underwhelmed by the PC version of Quake II, a decently built and yet unremarkable, overly-long blastathon through too many grimy metal corridors and the occasional human torture chamber. Fun enough while it was on, but really kinda boring next to the first one. One thing that attracted me to the PS1 port is that it's half the length, featuring an abridged version of the campaign with five out of the ten areas from the PC version. Turns out, for a game with so little variety, shorter is better!

The default controls suffer from the game being released pre-Halo. While the analog sticks are supported, it's not "one moves, one looks"—both move and look, just on different axes. This would make the game unplayable if not for the wonderful fact that the PlayStation Mouse is supported. In mouse mode, the sticks aren't supported, but the D-pad moves, left shoulders switch weapons, and the Mouse aims, shooting with the left button and jumping with the right. It feels completely natural even with the one-handed DualShock grip you'll need to use. (The stiff D-pad does mean movement still isn't as fluid as the PC version, however, and even on Easy, the game likes to spring enemies on you, so definitely crank the difficulty down.)

As for the port itself, it's damn impressive. The framerate stays very respectable about 95% of the time with few concessions on graphics from the software-rendered PC original, even adding lens flares on lights, and minimal texture warping. There are routine chamberlocks for loading chunks of the very split up original levels, but these are so quick, I really didn't mind. Things aren't perfect, mind you. You can only save at designated loading zones (where the PC version lets you save whenever you want), and it can be weirdly buggy, with stage buttons and menu options not registering and the like. (That could be DuckStation acting up though.) On the whole, Quake II's PS1 port is as great as Quake II itself is average.