If you've ever played user-created levels for a game, you know there are huge gulfs in quality between them. One level might look as good as the real deal, and the next might look like a teenager gave up halfway through making their school. Coming off of Quake II and The Reckoning, Ground Zero is a real shock to the system, not in how it looks but in how it plays. And there's no amount of polish that can make up for how low its lows are.

Turns out that every chapter in the Quake II story starts the same way, with your hard-assed marine's drop-pod getting clipped by something and ending up where it shouldn't. This time you get ditched into an underground mining facility, which you'll need to escape to take out a gravity well generator that has the human fleet trapped over the Strogg homeworld. Just like the rest of the series, this means battling through units of interconnected levels to accomplish goals and proceed to more important locales.

Ground Zero starts promising enough, with colorful, atmospheric caverns and mining complexes. There are exploding crystals you can shoot, mine carts to ride, and excavators to Kool-Aid Man through walls. The pack vomits guns at you almost immediately, setting you up with half the arsenal not two levels in. Your foes are varied and scattered, with an unusually heavy emphasis on fliers of all kinds. All the elements are there for a different, interesting Quaking experience.

Then you reach a point where you've killed everything on the sizable level and don't know where to go. Maps in Ground Zero use a lot of loops and alternate paths without clear landmarks, making it hard to tell if you've even been somewhere before if there aren't bodies littering the floor. There's very little logic to the layouts of each area, with most designed first to slow your progress with meandering paths and second to provide an adequate challenge. The F1 mission objectives do nothing to help either, giving only vague orders to proceed to a new map or defeat all resistance.

By the time you reach the Tectonic Stabilizer you'll have spent a good bit of time wandering aimlessly through depopulated levels. It is here that you will be tasked to destroy sixteen small capacitor-looking things mounted on walls around the map. Sixteen. Afterwards, you must flip three switches, which triggers a 45-second countdown to escape the map. If you fail, you die. This all takes place on a dark cave map with multiple loops and crossing paths and indistinct chambers.

I was not kidding earlier, it is legitimately shocking how painful some of the levels in Ground Zero are. The Stabilizer isn't the only one with instant deaths, either. To even reach it, you'll have to brave a number of cave-ins in the proceeding levels that can crush you dead in an instant. Every single thing you do requires scrambling around winding paths to push a button that lets you get a key that opens a door to another path, and most of the time the goal is just to get to the next map.

Don't expect the new enemies or weapons to redeem this, either. There's a neat ceiling-crawling spider foe but the other additions are reskins with obnoxious gimmicks and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ceiling turrets. The new rifle and mines feel very low-impact and situational compared to the base arsenal, and ammo for the expansion gear is far more prevalent than regular ammo, forcing you to make them work over keeping to your standbys. Weapon moderation is part of the challenge here, but the real challenge is sticking out the annoyances introduced.

Honestly, I couldn't get more than halfway into this one. Ground Zero is aggressively bad. It will go out of its way to waste your time with overly twisting levels, tedious backtracking, and instant death out of nowhere. The new enemies and weapons bring nothing to the table, and even the story is so much thinner than that of its predecessors. Fans of Quake II, I implore you, finish the base game and The Reckoning and then seek out community maps if you must. This just isn't worth the hassle.



Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them at https://goldplatedgames.com/ or on my curation page!

Remember one thing when playing this expansion.
Sentry Turrets! Sentry Turrets! Sentry Turrets!
The game its self is good, but with those sentry in every corner it's nearly impossible to pass the game on Hard. Who needs bosses when you could just add 100 Sentry Turrets!!!

Do you hate turrets? You will.

Ground Zero is an astonishingly awful expansion for Quake 2. Ground Zero fundamentally misunderstands every single last aspect of Quake 2's original design. It has bad level design, poor pacing, boring environments (even moreso than the original quake 2!), terrible enemy balancing and placement, and a general lack of interesting new additions.

The new weapons are not very interesting. The most worthwhile additions are the mines and the proximity bomb launcher (which is just a reskinned grenade launcher), which are still pretty boring and can be niche. The nailgun from Quake 1 is back, but it is far less powerful and is nowhere near as satisfying to use. A lot of the new weapons are not bound to keys on your keyboard, so you have to cycle through your inventory in order to use them.

The level design is possibly the biggest deal-breaker here. Levels are even more corridor-heavy than in base Quake 2, and environments are hardly mixed up in the slightest. Enemies that are so powerful that they counteract nearly your entire arsenal are placed around corners with no way to see them coming. Crossing a corner without the right weapon equipped (typically the minigun or the railgun) will often force you to reload a save. Secrets are rare and almost never contain worthwhile items, making them far less interesting and worthwhile than usual. Visually, the game is rather boring and uninspired, with the most interesting visuals and ideas being in the mines at the beginning of the expansion.

The terrible level design goes hand-in-hand with the terrible enemy design. While most of the enemies from base Quake 2 are fine here, the new enemies are some of the worst I've ever seen. The worst offenders are the turrets, which do an insane amount of damage (piercing armor, too!) and are placed in incredibly cruel places. What this means is that the game devolves from a movement shooter to a "tactical" shooter, where you need to slow to a halt to check your corners whenever you enter a room (because if not, you're guaranteed to lose most of your health in one shot!). The other awful offender is the new medic enemy, which summons hitscanners (potentially higher tier ones!) so ridiculously fast that you generally won't be able to kill it without the minigun or wasting a ton of resources. A lot of the other new enemies are less offensive, but they're typically extremely tanky reskins of enemies from base Quake 2, so they're very boring.

Please don't play this! It is absolutely painful. I like Quake 2 more than most, and this expansion simply doesn't get what made the game enjoyable in the first place. Running and gunning not being viable in a Quake campaign is utterly sinful. This expansion offers you less than nothing, and you'd be better off saving your money and playing a free mod or simply replaying the main game.

Ground Zero was the second mission pack released for Quake II. This pack had a lot of new features as well as some new level designs, but most of all new single-player missions! Buy this for more single-player missions in Quake II.

Synopsis:


Quake 2 Ground Zero is a expansion pack for the 1997 Smash hit Quake 2. The expansion pack adds new bosses, weapons and new Stroggo's to slaughter. The new weapons leave something to be desired. For example the ETF Rifle which is basically a clone of the first Quake's nail gun is mediocore at best, especially on the high difficulties. Poor bullet velocity but average damage. The Proximity grenade launcher is pretty much exactly the same as the normal grenade launcher but attaches grenades to walls which explode if you or a enemy comes close, The rest of the other weapons arent worth mentioning.

The new enemies in general are fun to dispatch and not to difficult even on Nightmare difficulty. However a new enemy was introduced namely "Wall Turrets" which are little security guns which fire as soon as they see you, And worst of all the wonderful map designers though it would be great to put these in the crappiest places you almost never look at. I lost count of how many times i would enter a door way only to get shot in the back of the head due to a turret mounted directly above the door frame. This was probably my biggest gripe with this game.

Then come the bosses. Oh God the bosses.... If your playing on nightmare difficulty you will learn a lesson in sheer frustration. My only word of advice is ensure you use ammo sparingly at all times and save up all the Cell packs you can.

My final thoughts are that while this expansion pack was enjoyable, but the difficulty spikes can really push your patience limit.

I've never thought I would end up not suggesting a Quake game but here we are... I have lot to say about this expansion but I am so exhausted by its silly issue, I'm fed up with it. It took me such a long time to finish it not because it's hard, it rather pushed me away every session I attempt to play it. Its map design actually is quite cool, Rogue Entertainment obviously tried hard to make big, complicated maps with many entrances, exists, paths. BUT, from the 1/3 of the game, the player kept being bombarded by sentry turrets, over and over and over... I am still astonished by amount of sentry turret for no good reason; this is not a short expansion pack even for its day, I just cannot comprehend the artificial and unfair challenges the player is forced into...

If you want more Quake 2? Keep away from Ground Zero; there are countless SP mods, just pick one of them; I find Quake II: Zaero quite cool for example.

Oh, lastly; don't bother to play the game with vanilla release. Get a modern source port to have modern features like high resolution, wide screen, 64 bit, music support, etc...

Yamagi Quake II:
https://www.yamagi.org/quake2/

Quake 2: Ground Zero is the third part of the "Quake 2" Saga which began with 1997's masterpiece, Quake 2, and was continued with the frustratingly inconsistent Quake 2: The Reckoning. Finally in August 1998 the third and final official installment was released... and from what I read most people find this to be "by far" the worst of the three... but I actually find this to be much better than The Reckoning and comes close to be of similar quality to the base game it expands upon.

The level design itself is, for the most part, excellent. It is compact, expansive, and uses the same hub structure that I found made the base game so successful and unique. Unlike The Reckoning, which was filled with long hallways and an almost obnoxiously linear structure (not to mention AWFUL enemy placement) Ground Zero feels, mostly, fair and interesting. One of the earliest levels of the game you are running through a mine while you have to exit the collapsing mine within 45 seconds. It is a adrenaline pumping sequence that tests your speed. And from there you are given two choices, take a newly opened pipe or exit the way you came. Depending on which choice you take you either get a secret extra level (which is my favorite level of the game) or you return to the beginning. Its little parts like that, that makes the game feel alive. Besides that one sequence there are segments later where you literally see a pod come crashing down creating a path through a level, and the aforementioned secret level where you are being chased by lava and you must make your way out. It spices up the level design seen in the base game in a lovably ambitious way. It feels like something from the base game while having its own flair.

The new enemies are pretty good. Of course I have to begin with the elephant in the room, the turrets that are scattered through the game. I find them, mostly, completely reasonable. Don't get me wrong, they aren't great.. and in fact they do intrude a bit too much... however compared to the unfair Laser Guards and overly defensive Iron Gladiators from the prior expansion they are an improvement. This expansion also has a spider type enemy, whose special attack (besides climbing on the ceiling) is playing dead. It honestly caught me off guard a few times and made me stay on my toes and be sure to gib those enemies before they get back up. This expansion also puts good use to the Medic enemy from Quake 2. An enemy who appeared so little in the base game I didn't know its ability for almost a decade after I first finished the game. In this expansion he appears multiple times and even has an upgrade which, while difficult, is certainly a fun foe to fight.

The final boss, without spoiling too much, is an improvement on difficulty (or lack therefore of) from the base game (as in you have to actually try to kill it) and is a MASSIVE improvement from The Recogning's blatant lazy recycled content. With its own cool attacks and a fair challenge, the new final boss in this expansion honesty is a fitting end to the official Quake 2 trio (of course there is Zearo, the 4th part... but thats for a different day)

Quake 2: Ground Zero may not live up to the base game 100%, however I feel as an expansion it far surpasses the Recogogning in both variety, level design, and originality. As someone who needs to get his Quake 2 fix I highly recommend it.

If you liked QUAKE II then you will like this mission pack! It took me 7 hours to finish too! It adds some new weapons and a new final boss! It isn't as challenging as the last mission pack and the turrets are annoying, but I got more enjoyment out of this expansion. There is even a secret you can find that disguises you as a strogg! If you liked QUAKE II then you should get QUAKE II: Ground Zero!
9/10
(If you can't launch this mission pack you will need to right click on QUAKE II, click properties, and click launch options. Then you need to type in: "+set game rogue" (without the " "). Then just launch QUAKE II and it should launch this expansion)

Short version: avoid this and play the infinitely-superior Reckoning instead. Long version: Rogue apparently thought they were still making Strife, which means that a Q2 mission pack somehow features confusing and maze-like maps with terrible backtracking elements. The new weapons range from passable to useless, with the reskinned splash-damaging nailgun being the best, and the chainfist being the worst, since you're required to get up-close to the average Q2 enemy to use it, universally-known as a terrible idea

And to complain about both, the level design severely-limits how you can effectively-use the rocket and grenade launcher, two things a Quake game should never have an issue accommodating by design. The cramped and compacted rooms and corridors make using both either suicidal or a total waste of ammo, as enemies will either be on hard-to-hit ledges, blocked by walls/poles/architecture, or too close to where you bathe in the splash damage yourself

And then the ENEMIES, every new enemy is a horrible pain to deal with, and not in the fun strategy-deducing way, but the projectiles-that-might-as-well-be-hitscan way, I'm looking at YOU, plasma-shooting spider-thing. The worst addition however is the fact that there are autotracking sentry turrets EVERYWHERE, you generally can't go a minute or two without running-into one, and they hurt, a LOT. They take forever to destroy due to the fact you have to be constantly-moving in order to avoid either their painful blaster shot, or usually-instagibbing rocket shot, and they have an ungodly amount of health for a fixture, so better make sure you actually hit them