Recent reviews by THEBaratusII

One of the best chaotic multiplayer games next to Blood!

Deathmatch Classic is a nice underrated gem to play if you have a gathering of people or friends. Think of it as Valve's love letter to Quake multiplayer. If you join a server that uses DMQ2 (pro mod), the experience gets a bit better.

If you are the type of player that likes to enjoy the aesthetic mix between Quake and Half-Life (or just likes obscure games) then give this a spin. Otherwise just stick to regular Quake.

"R.I.P. Quake II" - Gamesmania
24 years later...
"R.I.P Unreal" - Epic Games

https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/epic-is-turning-off-online-services-and-servers-for-some-older-games

Played this game via WinQuake since childhood, and it's definitely worth playing for both singleplayer and multiplayer. The gunplay is like Doom's in a way (considering it is made by id Software), there's also the singleplayer community making custom singleplayer maps/episodes/mapjams that put you in for some playtime.

This and the Quakespasm source port is my go to versions of Quake I play on modern-hardware. Aside from making Nightmare difficulty less faithful to the original release, It's definitely worth buying even on consoles (as long as more addons keep rolling)

Here are the pros/cons for the remaster :

PROS :
- Higher-quality visuals and a toggle to restore the original visuals
- Includes the mission packs, Dimension of the Past/Machine addons out of the box
- Multiplayer network code is optimized for online-play! Original Netquake was not made for online-play in mind, hence why QuakeWorld was a thing back then. (Might not work well in other countries like Poland for instance)
- Includes Quake 64 addon thanks to the Addons menu, which also can be redirected to another mod database (PC only) thanks to the Quake community.
- You can play custom maps/mods you download off the internet but it varies depending on which mod you play.

CONS :
- Nightmare difficulty is not 1:1 to the original, it was changed to cap the health to 50 and monsters don't always fire so essentially it's basically Hard difficulty but with a health cap. Best bet is to find a guide that restores the original nightmare difficulty. As somebody who has played on both original and remaster Nightmare difficulties, remaster's Nightmare difficulty is just cheap and should've been a toggle or another difficulty if anything.
- The intros can be annoying, so it's best to remove/skip the intros

I do recommend this for players wanting to get into Quake, but you can always play the original if you wish, just throw in a sourceport like Quakespasm and your good to go.