The Nail-Spitting Game Quake Gets Re-Released During QuakeCon

The groundbreaking game that gave QuakeCon its name is back on modern-gen consoles.

The Dallas game studio Bethesda Game Studios re-released the fantasy, first-person shooter Quake during the 25th annual QuakeCon gaming convention held online last weekend. The convention's true 25th anniversary would have been in 2020 but the coronavirus forced Bethesda, now owned by Microsoft, to cancel the annual game gathering.

All three games from the Quake trilogy have been available for PCs and Macs thanks to online stores such as Steam and GOG, but the enhanced release of the first Quake game marks the game's first appearance on consoles since its cartridge release in 1998 for the Nintendo 64. The new enhanced Quake is available for consoles including Sony's PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One X and the Nintendo Switch.

The game was first released for PCs in 1996, coining a name for the longest-running gaming convention in the country and marking many milestones for the industry — especially for creator Id Software, the game studio behind other homegrown favorites including Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM.

Quake combined dark fantasy themes with a gory, metal-edged FPS game in which a nameless protagonist uses a heavy arsenal of flesh ripping weapons such as shotguns, grenade launchers and two different types of nail guns. The new game's atmosphere still lives and breathes like an Id game with its frantic action and unapologetic violence but in a new medieval dimension of twisted horrors. The original version was one of the first FPS games to use 3D graphics. It also marked the first partnership between Id and the studio Machinegames who'd go on to produce the acclaimed Wolfenstein reboot The New Order and the upcoming Indiana Jones game.

Quake also broke new molds for music in games. Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor composed the game's soundtrack as one of the first mainstream musicians to score a mainstream game. Reznor's soundtrack helps build the metallic, oppressive and harsh atmosphere of the world with his signature industrial rock sound that interacts with the world instead of just blanketing it.
Classics from the vault weren't the only announced games at the digital gaming con. The weekend also featured the release of trailers for four new games with four new IPs set for release later this year and in 2022.

Deathloop was first announced at E3 in 2019 but delays pushed it to a Sept. 15 release date. The new shooter made by Bethesda and France-based Arkane Studios has had a lot of time to develop and its unveiling at the last QuakeCon came in the form of a lengthy gameplay walkthrough.

The game's central story is a bit like Groundhog Day — if Quentin Tarantino sat in Harold Ramis' director's chair. Players take control of a mercenary called Colt who travels to an island called Blackreef in a never-ending time loop. Colt must eliminate eight targets to escape his chronological cell by repeating his missions every time he dies. When the inevitable death happens, Colt is magically transported back to a checkpoint (or the very beginning of the mission) adding hindsight as an active weapon to his arsenal.

Deathloop mixes stealth strategy with the kind of high-caliber action that made both studios famous. Colt spends a lot of time jumping and warping across rooftops and utilizing his surroundings to dispatch groups of enemies instead of starting a head-on firefight with them.
Bethesda is getting back into the world-gaming business with its newest space exploration game RPG Starfield, due for release in November of 2022.

Just like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4, Starfield promises players a vast universe to explore. This time, however, you get to explore outer frickin' space to unravel the mystery of humanity's existence. The trailer doesn't seem to have any gameplay footage (unless the game is so good that we can't tell the difference) but the cutscene of a space explorer readying for another mission from the face of the moon is impressive, detailed and breathtaking with its next-gen rendered graphics. Does this mean we'll finally learn what all of those buttons on spaceships' consoles do? Oh, and solve the riddle of the meaning of life. 
If Back 4 Blood failed to give you that long, lost taste of blood that only a four-player horror FPS can splatter, the Xbox Series X|S and PC exclusive Redfall looks like it might be able to make up for it.

Bethesda and Arkane Austin's new cooperative shooter drops players into the town of Redfall, Massachusetts, shortly after it's been overrun by blood-thirsty vampires with invisibility and transubstantiation powers. The story focuses on four survivors with unique personalities and styles (like a nerdy documenter and a dark warrior), fighting their way through the town's remnants. The weapons are complex and fun as they have to adhere to vampire hunting rules while also offering satisfying kills with wooden stakes and freeze rays. The four main characters also have unique abilities of their own, such as indivisibility and elevation. This could finally be the Stephen King FPS the world has wanted since Left 4 Dead 2.
The addictive, first-person coop Phasmophobia finally brought a great ghost story for the first-person game genre. Ghostwire: Tokyo feels like something that builds on that ghost hunting by giving you weapons so you can fight the spooks and specters instead of just dying from them.

This PlayStation 5  — set for release sometime by the end of 2021 — puts players in the body of a paranormal medium who can see and hear the evil spirits that have overrun Tokyo, and fight them with their own paranormal abilities. It's as if Ghostwire: Tokyo takes every Japanese horror story cryptid and throws it at you as you explore and, of course, take back a world overrun by spirits.