Quake

Well, Well, Well, Well, Well, well - it's here. Sort of Quake - aka 'The Game Of Our Dreams', aka 'We're Not Worthy', formerly known g as 'Spooge II: Yamming g Great Continents Of Spooge' - has finally arrived. Okay, okay, it's just a three-level network-only game demo, released for bug-testing purposes. And okay ostensibly, it has no monsters, very little in the way of supercomplex architecture, nothing at all to offer as a singleplayer game, and runs very slowly on anything less than a Pentium, but it's a taster. And not just a brief dollop on the tongue of expectation, but a whole facial of the game they're already calling Marriage Breaker, Son of DoomBachelor.

This sketchy blueprint of things to come gives us a good indication of what Quake will be like, how it will look, what it will contain, what it won't contain, how the things it will contain will make the things it won't contain er. containable, how it will play, and how it will work. Rest assured: Quake is guaranteed to leave computer keyboards and monitors all over the world frosted with spooge.

First Impressions

Well, it's a first-person perspective game, which wouldn't break the Trades Description Act if it was subtitled "Doom III". It's you. a bunch of serious hardware, a variety of enclosed environments (castles, dungeons, bases etc). monsters, blood, and Jots of Satanic imagery. This sn't really that surprising coming from iD, who have uilt their success on games hich basically involve powering around a level nd shooting things'.

Where Doom used flat 2D sprites. Quake uses fully 3D polygon-rendered characters. Where Doom's levels were essentially clever 2D. Quake's are fully 3D with ramparts, turrets, tunnels, and multiple layers of scenery. Quake does look light years beyond Doom, but gameplay-wise despite new effects like looking up and down, jumping, and swimming, they're not dissimilar.

Obviously, this is an early sneak preview and it would be wrong to build up too much of an impression of the final game, but right here, right now can tell you that it not only looks like the best first-person perspective blaster ever, but also the multi-player game of the millennium. Read on and spooge.

Quake Rally Mod

While most games have curled up and decomposed by now, a year down the line the almighty Quake is still going on. Its open-architecture and spinny-rotatey™ engine has fathered a spawn of 'amateur' add-ons and soup-ups to the original game. A casual go on the Internet can bring you all manner of new textures, new weapons and new levels as well as the much-applauded Total Conversions, where groups of hardcore amateur game designers, programmers and artists create entirely new games out of the blistering Quake engine.

One such work of art is Quake Rally, a complete multi-player racing game which bolts seamlessly onto the Q game.

Coded by Ryan 'Ridah' Feltrin of the Aussie team Impact, it adds everything you would expect from a drive 'em up. It has the gruesomely realistic handling of RAC Rally, the look of Carmageddon, the speed of Screamer II, the architecture of Super Mario Kart, and all the showers of pancreatic fluid we love and respect from deathmatch. "Yummy yum yum," as you should be saying.

Check this feature list out seven different cars (including a stock car and a BMW - woo); skidding, headlights, reverse steering and leaning into curves; chase camera; different surfaces (mud, water, bitumen, and dry dirt); huge iiber jumps across scary, lava-drenched chasms; and a big blaring horn. Plus you get seven roof-mounted weapons to mess around with too. The Repulsor is an electric chassis-stroke-forcefield which pinballs any colliding cars into oblivion and protects you from whiplash damage on badly taken corners. The Sprazer bullets laser bolts in a spread, while The Detonator piles frisbee-shaped bombs behind you. For Quake aficionados, the super nail-gun is still included, as is the rocket launcher, of course, which has been obscenely upgraded with heat-seeking abilities.

The four levels on this month's cover CD are just a hint of what's to come. Pay careful attention to the Mining Station (QRALLY02), an awesome level, part toboggan run, part residential street. We also recommend you gasp and sweat over Cliffside Carnage, with its warren of secret shortcuts, chicanes and little assault courses (not to mention the 'secret' boss level at the end of the demo).

The steering system takes some getting used to. Even the start location where you choose your game type is a bitch to navigate at first (they really do drop you in at the deep end), but a few minutes practice with the mouse and in-camera views will stop you toppling headlong into the lava and spranging off the walls.

You'd be fools if you didn't try it deathmatch either. It's hilarious. Imagine eight people on the grid, revving impatiently as the clock counts down. They all pile furiously forward, butting each other out of the way, screaming around comers, taking stupid risks to collect the out-of-the-way weapons, smacking into walls, toppling into lava, and flipping their fellow drivers into the air with one flick of the rocket launcher. You can play a straight multi-lap race, you can do time trials, or you can do deathmatch in an enclosed arena.

It all started as an 'experiment in mathematics' apparently, and now, seven months down the line, has proved that a) Quake 'rulez' and b) hard work, talent and imagination can create pretty stunning results. Later versions of Quake Rally (due any time now) will have computer-controlled 'bot cars to race against and some new maps. There's nothing better, it would seem, than having a 3D CV. Ridah and the Impact team have been signed by Marvel Comics to do an 'X-Men' version of Quake, called Ravages Of Apocalypse, due very very soon men. And if it's even a quarter as good as Quake Rally, then it will be rather shiny and spiff. Anyway, go play the demo on the CD.