Day 9 - Quake II and Max and the Magic Marker

QUAKE II

I've played a lot of Quake in my day, and Quake 1 was a little too early for me, and I didn't play much beyond the shareware version, but I spent many hours playing Quake 2 online. All that, I'm ashamed to say, was done with a less than legitimate copy of the game, so I was happy to give this another go, for nostalgia's sake.

Quake is an ugly game, no doubt. Even the addition of OpenGL didn't help that much, and it wasn't until Q3 that color was added to the pallet. Still, the game is the same old fast-paced action-fest it's always been. I opted to start a new single-player game on hard, which is a higher difficulty than I typically take, but I felt anything less would be an insult.

There isn't much to say, really. I would go out and suggest you play Q2 if you don't have a solid reason to. It's a corridor shooter, that is insanely fast paced, and has no storyline to speak of. Yes, there are a few cutscenes, and this title actually gives you mission objectives, but I ignored all of it and it didn't change a thing. The weapons are satisfying, the enemies are challenging, but not absurd, and the levels give you the freedom to pass through using multiple paths.


I may decide to come back to this game and finish my playthrough, as there I definitely hold a soft-spot for this game, but we'll see. Singleplayer was never the strength of the Quake series, and there's only so many brown corridors you can shoot your way through before it gets old. If I do opt to continue the playthrough, I'll definitely lower the difficulty so that I can breeze through everything. What can I say, I'm lazy!

Max and the Magic Marker

Physics-based puzzle games are quite popular these days. Max and the Magic Marker takes on the genre but gives it a kid-friendly spin. Gameplay is basic platforming with one exception, your magic marker. As you play you'll collect ink orbs, which allow you to draw with your magic marker. Anything you draw becomes physical, and can then be interacted with. For instance, earlier puzzles have you making a basic plank bridge, nothing fancy. You'll make a lot of steps to climb things as well. You can retrieve ink from an item at anytime, so puzzles are more based on your effective use of the available ink, and trial and error is encouraged.

There's a few interesting challenges, but nothing too difficult. I managed to get the majority of the collectables that I could find, and only really got blocked in one instance, and orb that was just slightly out of reach with the amount of ink I possessed. Checkpoints are littered all over the levels, which is good because death is instantaneous if you touch one of the many hazards that Max hates. Each checkpoint also saps all your ink, making each checkpoint a unique challenge that's not dependent on your success or failure in previous parts of the level.

I don't really care for platformers or physics-based puzzle games, so I don't foresee myself playing this game further than the 47 minutes I did today.

Notes

I keep wanting to play more Cities in Motion. I considered making it one of my games to beat, and even started a new campaign with the intention of progressing through it. Unfortunately, the game has proven quite unstable, and lacks an autosave. I can't seem to play the Tokyo map for more than 5 minutes without a hang, and I spent an hour working on the Munich map without saving when it froze on me. I'll do a bit of research, as if I could make it stable then completing a campaign would be a lot of fun.

Album: Steam Challenge - Day 009