For those few of you who have never heard of Quake (very few indeed), I will give a quick breakdown of the game. It is a first person shooter where you are a space marine sent to stop the alien race known as the Strogg who have been giving Earth quite a lot of trouble lately. The basics are, you blast your way through levels of modified humans and Strogg all while completing your mission objectives.

Now let's talk about the game itself. First off, in the regular game mode I found glitches galore. After destroying your enemies, their bodies are supposed to explode, leaving behind only a spray of blood and their head, but every once in a while I would blow someone up and laugh at how their disembodied head would hang in the air till it disappeared. I also found some enemies who would walk into a wall and would be unable to free themselves, allowing me to turn them into chunks without breaking a sweat. Another problem I found had to do with the load/save areas. Load/save areas are always enclosed areas between two doors, and sometimes while walking out of the area I would be shot back into the set perimeter forcing me to go through the load/save menu again. The normal loading of levels does not take too long but since the Playstation can not handle entire levels you will find yourself quickly tiring of the many set points where it must stop for a few seconds to load the new sections, slowing down the flow of the action. There are more complaints, but I think you have heard enough about the gameplay flaws.

The graphics were watered down but not as much as I had first expected. As are all computer ports to Playstation, the polygon count is significantly lower than the original, meaning less detailed character mapping, first evident in the hand and weapons of the marine you play. And don't expect those detailed evil grimaces we have come to expect from the enemies; instead we are treated to a blur that looks more like paper bags with eye holes. The walls all look a bit ugly, but in this game I think that can work as an effect rather than a huge problem. But I can't really blame Hammerhead since they are porting a highly detailed computer game to an aging low memory console. In fact I would say that they did a decent job with what they had to work with.

Of course, no Quake would be complete without a multi-player mode. The games you can play are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Versus. You are able to change the number of kills needed to win, the time limit, and the gravity level, just like the original. The arenas themselves are incredibly small and it is easy to kill and be killed, unlike the arenas Quake fans tend to create and use in huge LAN deathmatches. You can have up to four people playing if you are one of the few to own a multitap, but it is just not the same as the fun matches you can have with loads of people in a fight on the computer.