Xatrix Entertainment’s [i]Quake II: The Reckoning[/i] is, somehow, a meaner, angrier, redder [i]Quake II[/i], superior in a few significant ways, but with weaknesses that are all its own.
Despite id’s hoopla about wanting to create a more story-driven series than the original [i]Quake[/i], this first mission pack does little to expand upon the framework established by your first—and triumphant—visit to Stroggos. You’re again part of a strike force that’s decimated before it can set about its work, which here involves infiltrating a Strogg moon base and destroying it—the Strogg being a race of biomechanical monstrosities hellbent on war or the creations of that nasty Sid kid from [i]Toy Story[/i], depending on how you feel about the ugly designs.
I think it starts off well. You land on Stroggos itself, but in the wilderness that surrounds the facility you’re meant to penetrate. Given the extensively industrial nature of the planet, the Strogg’s influence on the land and its occupants has proven a profoundly negative one, polluting all it touches.
We got a brief glimpse of such mutant creatures in [i]Quake II[/i], but here we’re quickly introduced to the Gekk, a bio luminescent pack of semi-intelligent beasts lurking in the swamps that line the Strogg encampments. They’re the first thing to come at you, with the Strogg blasting at you from behind the safety of a laser grid.
It’s pretty fun, setting the scene nicely.
The structure of the game involves digging farther and farther into Strogg territory, with some twisting paths and dynamic objectives that cleverly utilize previous environments without feeling like you’re doing too much in the way of back-tracking.
The lack of a map still presents issues with navigation, though, and too much of your progression relies on poorly relayed goals and sometimes incomprehensible environmental details. It is both sloppy and clunky in this regard, which is sadly a feature of [i]Quake II’s[/i] general design.
The combat survives relatively intact, only it’s now much, much harder (or perhaps I inexplicably got worse between play-throughs?). I often struggled to conserve ammo and was regularly low on health, forced to scour each level as thoroughly as possible in the desperate hope of surviving the next encounter. There’s some really bruising moments here, especially when you encounter beefed-up versions of the original enemies coated in shielding.
There’s probably too many such “beefed-up” variants of original enemies and not enough in the way of “new”. The additional weapons are a bit of a mixed bag, which sees the inclusion of a second plasma rifle, another explosives launcher, and, the worst of the lot, a ‘trap’. When deployed the trap will suck enemies into its orbit, obliterating them—and you if you’re not careful. I like the idea behind it, but it’s just so haphazard to use as to be almost pointless. Too powerful for smaller enemies, too weak for bigger ones.
But as far as expansions go, you could do worse than [i]The Reckoning[/i]. It’s relatively lengthy and succeeds in being less repetitive than [i]Quake II[/i], with a generally stronger mission structure to hold it all together. It does hinge on you wanting [i]more[/i] of [i]Quake II[/i], though, and that, well...at £2.49, I say why not, but I was a bit exhausted by the end of it. I suppose you could just not play them back-to-back like I did?
