It makes sense that MachineGames was so successful with their recent Wolfenstein reboot -and since id doesn't seem interested in doing a proper Quake title to follow up Wolf and Doom, DOPA makes me wish that id would hand it off to them. This was an excellent effort from MachineGames' J.F.Gustafson -I can see the respect for Quake's original style and feel, and a lot of great level design. This was a really enjoyable episode, enough that I wish there was more. The maps are often visually pleasing and that's about the only merit I can give them.

The overuse of such a simple and uninteresting design throughout the episode and the lack of effort to obfuscate it shows a lack of creativity and makes the episode feel very repetitive. Most maps follow a very identifiable format that is as follows: player starts in a hub, player has two routes leading out of the hub to clear before finally being allowed access to the exit (some maps allow him to choose the order between the two routes, some maps don't), the routes are almost entirely self-contained and have little interaction with the rest of the map aside from giving the player a switch or a key needed to progress and looping the player back into the hub. Plenty of enemy encounters feel like the high enemy counts merely ended up prolonging them rather than presenting a greater challenge. Very repetitive, very little variety in encounter design, poorly communicated instant death traps, and the secrets are laughably easy (they do get better later on, but barely).

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