REACTION - Quake 2 is a jam packed release, but we’re worried about ping
Coiled serpent required.
By Jonathan Garrett
11/08/23
Sniffing the tail of that absolutely dreadful Red Dead Redemption re-release, Bethesda have dropped what might be the most generous and feature rich reimaging in recent memory. Quake 2 boasts an entirely new campaign expansion, all previous single player and multiplayer maps, and adds cross play, 4K support, and 8 (!) player split screen.
Upon a cheeky boot up via Game Pass, I dived straight into a public deathmatch. Menu’s are appropriately functional and retrotastic (read: charmingly bare bones), but when I made it into a round, I was immediately struck by the latency generated by high ping. Now, I could have just been unlucky, but every game seemed to have 100ms+ ping ratings and they felt slugglish.
Quake 2 is a lightning fast old school shooter that leans into that slightly flappy and reactive style of shooting. It became an immediate barrier to entry, and not something you want defining such a lavish package.
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
