Quake (video game)



Quake is the first game in the eponymous Quake series, and was released in 1996. It began development as a free roaming RPG, but it switched to a First-Person Shooter, like Id's previous series, Doom.

The game has the Heroic Mime Protagonist (called "Ranger" in Quake III Arena) going through 4 worlds collecting lost runes in order to fight against an Eldritch Abomination after a military experiment into teleportation went awry and caused an interdimensional demon invasion. The player, now the last surviving member of his unit, must single-handedly blow them all to bits. Of course, the story was once more than just a basic framework for an adrenaline-packed onslaught of vicious monsters to be blown apart.

As id Software's follow-up to Doom, this game is another big step forward in their graphics capabilities. The game's engine was renowned for its ability to create a fully polygonal three dimensional world, populated with enemies and objects constructed using the same polygons and all animated smoothly, at a time when most games still used sprites in some fashion, such as for enemies or pickups. Built for modding, id freely distributed scripting, design and mapping tools that spawned a practically infinite stream of fanmade content (including, notably, Team Fortress, which went on to spawn two sequels). Quake is also notable for jump-starting the phenomena of speedrunning and Machinima (Diary of a Camper).

Coming on the heels of Quake was QuakeWorld, a mod which contained basically the first networking code designed specifically to combat the types of lag caused by Internet play and pretty much created online gaming as we now know it. All of this put together has made Quake one of the longest-lived games ever made.

Two mission packs for the game, Quake: Scourge of Armagon by Hipnotic Entertainment and Quake: Dissolution of Eternity by Rogue Entertainment, were released.


 * Quad Damage
 * Rocket Jump (also the Trope Codifier)

"Thou canst not kill what doth not live. But you can blast it into chunky kibble."
 * Advancing Wall of Doom: With spikes!
 * An Axe to Grind: The player's Emergency Weapon.
 * Armor of Invincibility: The Pentagram of Protection makes the player invulnerable (the health meter in the console just reads 666).
 * Armor-Piercing Attack: Lava nails in Dissolution of Eternity. Against players, armor absorption is halved but it does the same amount of damage. Monsters take extra damage instead.
 * Ascended Glitch / Good Bad Bugs:
 * The Strafe Jump, also called "bunny hopping", which was a glitch in the game's multi-player. To the point of including a tutorial about it in Quake Live. Along with the Strafe Jump, more abilities were there to be discovered by the player. Not really an issue that divides the Quake fanbase: they've accepted it, unlike the members of similar games or spinoffs.
 * Astral Checkerboard Decor: The Wizard's Manse has this.
 * Attract Mode: Demos of many levels start playing in the menu screen.
 * Awesome but Impractical: The Thunderbolt. It's the game's most powerful weapon by far, but it's hard to aim properly, ammo is very scarce, and in spite of its mass-kill of underwater beings, doing this shorts out the weapon, killing even the player if he's not invulnerable. Even if he survives, all the ammo is gone.
 * Awesome Yet Practical: The Laser Cannon in Scourge Of Armagon does away with most of these flaws in exchange for a slightly weaker damage output and non-hitscan projectiles. Just refrain from shooting it too much in tight spaces...
 * Beneath the Earth: Several levels are underground, including one called The Underearth, as well as the game's final level.
 * Blatant Item Placement: Health packs, ammo and weapons abound for no reason at all.
 * Blob Monster: The Spawns are a particular annoying version.
 * Boring but Practical: The double-barreled shotgun. Not only is it very powerful at close range (it can even gib certain enemies) but ammo for it is plentiful and it's available in almost every level.
 * Boss Arena Idiocy: The first chapter boss completely immune to all damage apart from two adjustable columns that can shoot lightning between them. The final boss is impervious to everything except a floaty teleporty doohickey. Neither of these unique architectural features can be found anywhere else in the game.
 * Boss in Mook Clothing: Shamblers and Vores. Both appear at junctures in the game where a boss would be expected (the end of an episode) and are quite deadly.
 * Brutal Bonus Level: The Underearth and The Nameless City are extremely difficult (the latter has something like 95 kills) and will probably eat up all of your ammo by the time you finish them.
 * Call Back: The Vores appear as bosses in the second episode, and then as regular Mooks in 3 and 4. This is similar to the Barons of Hell, the bosses of the first episode of Doom.
 * Chunky Salsa Rule: Zombies aren't normally killed by bullets or nails (since they're already dead, natch) and must be blown up with grenades and rockets. The Quad Damage also splatters zombies as well.

""Deathbringer rode Fluffy's rocket.""
 * Color Coded for Your Convenience: Green armor is the weakest kind, followed by yellow (medium) and red (strongest).
 * Convection, Schmonvection: There's lava all over the place, which is deadly if you fall into it, but simply walking over it on a grating is fine.
 * Creepy Cool Crosses: So much it borders on Sigil Spam.
 * Death Trap: Many levels feature spike shooters, crushing blocks, trapdoor floors etc.
 * "Claustrophobopolis", one of the Deathmatch levels, is the home to several Beginner's Traps involving switches, lava, and teleporters.
 * One of the final levels of Scourge of Armagon traps you between two Advancing Walls Of Doom.
 * Dead Character Walking: Typing "give health" into the console will cause the player to assume a bizarre undead state where they're lying on the ground as a corpse, yet can still jump, look around, shoot and even kill enemies.
 * Death World: The entire universe. Lava, chemicals, explosives...
 * Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: Dissolution of Eternity adds lava nails.
 * Descending Ceiling: Several times. In one level, it is played straight with the ceiling moving to crush, then subverted where the ceiling descends, splits into two parts and retreats into the walls before the elevator brings you to the exit.
 * Degraded Boss:
 * Vores first appear as a Dual Boss at the end of the second episode, then as regular enemies in the latter two episodes.
 * The Fiend also appears with boss-like drama the first time it shows up, but becomes a regular enemy later.
 * As little as a few seconds later on 'Hard' or 'Nightmare' skill; two more will oh-so-generously make themselves known and teleport in the moment the first one kicks the bucket. And then a Shambler. Hope you still have some Nails.
 * Drone of Dread: The very creepy soundtrack of the first game, provided by Nine Inch Nails.
 * Easter Egg: Everywhere among the secrets!
 * The Cameo: The DopeFish appears in a well-hidden secret room in one level.
 * Eldritch Abomination: Many of the enemies, especially in the later levels. Shamblers are giant bear-like creatures with huge claws that can shoot lightning and have no eyes. Vores are GiantSpiders that shriek and throw balls of exploding matter at the players.
 * Enemy Civil War: The monsters seem to hate each other almost as much as they hate you.
 * Enemy Mine: The Horn of Invocation in Scourge of Armagon, which allows you to invoke the last enemy you've beaten up.
 * Everything Fades: One of the early attractions of Quake's polygonal graphics was the prospect that you'd now be able to look at corpses and guns from different angles (which was new and incredibly cool back then.) Unfortunately, the rapid increase in performance requirements brought on by Quake-style graphics would ultimately bring about the ubiquity of Everything Fades.
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: Except for the health packs, there is nothing but monsters and booby traps as far as the eye can see.
 * Exploding Barrels
 * Eyeless Face: Many of the enemies.
 * Faceless Goons: The Enforcers from the Earth base levels.
 * Forged by the Gods: The Mjölnir hammer in Scourge Of Armagon.
 * Freemium: The first episode was available as shareware, but the latter three had to be purchased.
 * Frickin' Laser Beams: The Enforcers fire them.
 * Game Breaking Bug: The thunderbolt explodes if discharged into the water. However, an early version (1.01) had a small window where a player would enter a non-respawning zombie state if he wasn't gibbed by the explosion (e.g. 6 cells with 100 health). In a multi-player game, you needed to disconnect from the server. While it was fixed in version 1.06, the expansion packs (1.07 and 1.08) re-implemented the bug.
 * Game Mod: Trope Codifier in the FPS Genre. Doom was designed with a few features that allowed user made levels, but Quake was probably the first major game purpose built for modding, especially with its "Quake C" scripting language. In fact, many modern games owe their roots to mods developed for Quake. Several of the mods (Capture the Flag, Rocket Arena) have also became standard modes in subsequent games. Team Fortress became its own game series.
 * Gatling Good: The Super Nailgun's barrels spin just like a Gatling's. Its rate of fire isn't any faster than the Nailgun's, but it fires 2 nails at a time.
 * Giant Mook: Shamblers. Death Knights and Ogres are also quite intimidating.
 * Giant Spider: The Vores are a cross between this and some sort of demon.
 * Grenade Launcher: The Trope Codifier for the "bouncy grenade" type.
 * Guilt-Free Extermination War: The entire premise of the game.
 * Have a Nice Death: By way of death messages:


 * Harder Than Hard: Interestingly, it can only be accessed via a secret area in the new game loading area, even on the expansions.
 * Healing Spring: There's a very convenient one in "The Palace of Hate", one of the hardest levels.
 * Hit Scan: Most projectiles, which makes the Shambler's lightning attack particularly annoying (and deadly), since it's impossible to dodge.
 * Homing Projectile: The Vores throw exploding spikey balls that track you, but they can be avoided by getting them to smash into obstacles and walls.
 * Particularly hilarious if you can position the Vore so it keeps throwing the spikey balls into a nearby wall or column. It won't realize the splash damage is hurting it and end up slowly killing itself.
 * Hub Level: The difficulty selection map, which could be used for deathmatches.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: The ogres are "cannibal monsters", apparently.
 * Invisibility Cloak: The Ring of Shadows, which renders the player invisible save for his eyes.
 * Kill'Em All: The game keeps track of how many monsters you've killed per level, with the ideal being 100%.
 * Lava Pit: Several instances, often under retreating floors.
 * Lightning Gun: The Thunderbolt Gun. It drains batteries fast, but kills enemies even faster. Just don't fire it underwater.
 * Lock and Key Puzzle: Many levels, although they're quite simplistic, with only two keys to find at most.
 * Lovecraft Lite: Many of the levels and enemies are designed as Shout Outs to his works. The "lite" bit comes from the fact that you're playing as a nails-tough Action Hero with a Hyperspace Arsenal that can make mince meat out of any abomination you face in less than ten seconds.
 * Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: In Dissolution of Eternity, the Power Shield powerup significantly reduces damage if you are facing its source (damage from lava is treated from the origin point in the map). If you're hit from behind, it's just a minor damage reduction.
 * Ludicrous Gibs: Whenever enemies are blown up with the rocket launcher or telefragged. Explosives are actually required to kill zombies, as attacks must inflict a minimum amount of damage to kill one.
 * Malevolent Architecture: Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom covered with Spikes of Doom? Check. Descending Ceilings? Check. Floors that open into inescapable Lava Pits? Check. And there's a lot more than that.
 * Muck Monster: Spawn. The expansion pack adds a variety that can duplicate itself indefinitely.
 * Nail'Em: The Nailgun and the Super Nailgun.
 * No Kill Like Overkill: All over the place. It's possible to take down knights or ogres with three rockets, and then there's killing the piranhas with the shotgun...
 * Noisy Guns
 * Palette Swap: Aside from Player Characters, not used until Dissolution of Eternity. The textures used on some monsters indicate that they are slightly different; yellowish ogres may throw multi grenades, green spawns will split apart, and a mummy (a white-colored zombie) is a hitpoint sponge rather than being Immune to Bullets.
 * Playable Menu and Hub Level: The non-standard difficulty and episode selection, which was slashed away in the console ports (N64, at least).
 * Point of No Return: Levels are usually designed so that you can backtrack anytime, but there are a few exceptions, such as one part of a level in which the lights behind the player turn off, somehow blocking the path.
 * Puzzle Boss: Both the end of Episode 1, and the Final Boss.
 * Real Is Brown: Subverted. The game's color palette is made up mostly of browns and dark greys, but it's not for the sake of realism; it adds to the dark atmosphere of the game.
 * Reality Ensues: Firing the Thunderbolt underwater is as unsafe as you expect it would be in real life, even going so far as gibbing the player and everyone else around him.
 * Save Scumming: You can save and reload the game at any time.
 * Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The game's monsters are attempting an invasion of Earth and cannot be stopped except by exterminating them all.
 * Secret Level: The first game had one per unit, including the famous "Ziggurat Vertigo", "The Underearth", "The Haunted Halls" and "The Nameless City". Scourge of Armagon pushes this a bit far, with "Military Complex", "The Gremlin's Domain" and "The Edge of Oblivion". (A Deathmatch level turned as an SP one, with loads and loads of enemies).
 * Serious Business: Tournament play moved from a pastime to a career for some, among them "Thresh", who won John Romero's Ferrari in a tournament.
 * Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: One of the main features of the AI is how easy it is to get enemies to attack each other, which can save the player a lot of work.
 * Shareware: One of the latest examples of this era.
 * Shock and Awe: The Shambler's main attack method is to cook up a stream of lightning and shoot it at you. There's also your own Lightning Gun, and several traps in the expansion packs are of the electricity-shooting variety.
 * Short-Range Shotgun: The shotgun has an incredibly wide spread which renders it useless at any distance beyond a few in-game meters.
 * Shout-Out: As mentioned above, many towards H.P. Lovecraft, such as the bosses being called Chthon and Shub-Niggurath.
 * Also, the Ring of Shadows.
 * Six Hundred Sixty Six: Appears as your armor count when you are invulnerable. You can't take damage when it is active, but your armor can still be stripped away.
 * Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom
 * Space Marine: id attempted to distance themselves from it in this game.
 * Part of Scourge of Armagon plays this straight.
 * Spike Shooter: Many of the wall traps.
 * Spread Shot: The Death Knights fire several rockets at once, although they're relatively slow and can be avoided.
 * Storming the Castle: Every level is about getting into the fortress, killing monsters and making your way to the end.
 * Tele Frag: Sometimes two or more monsters will spawn in place and insta-gib each other. It's possible to do it in multi-player as well, and
 * Teleporting Keycard Squad: The first Shambler appears before you the moment you grab a key (on the easy difficulty).
 * Happens several times throughout the game, actually, particularly in the fourth episode.
 * Title Drop: The final line of Dissolution of Eternity.
 * To Hell and Back: Episode 3 is designed with a hellish theme.
 * Visible Invisibility: The Ring of Shadows conceals everything but the player's eyes.
 * Weaksauce Weakness: The Shambler shrugs off most rocket blasts, but is weak against nails And lightning.
 * A Winner Is You: Each set of levels ends with a wall of text about the ancient knowledge you're getting from the runes. After Shub-Niggurath explodes, the game and its developers just congratulate you and thank you for playing.
 * Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Everywhere in the metatext.
 * Zombie Apocalypse: Many levels are full of zombies, which are lots of fun to kill. Make sure you have rockets, however, because they won't die any other way unless you have Quad Damage and can splatter them with lesser weapons.