Just like Quake 1, if you already own Quake 2, the enhanced version is available as a free update. Although unlike Quake 1, Quake 2: Enhanced is also available on GOG day 1.
In addition to visual updates, there’s a new episode “Call of the Machine”, Quake 2 N64, a pass to the enemy AI which changes a few behaviors and attacks, removes machine gun recoil, a new infinite use item that shows the player where to go next, and a number of other qol and accessibility options.
Anecdotally, I find the addition of Q2 N64 very appealing. It’s a mish-mash of pared-down maps from vanilla Q2 and the expansions in a strictly linear fashion - no backtracking. Of course, there’s also changes to the lighting and a new OST by Aubrey Hodges. Being able to control the game from keyboard / mouse is a godsend. I played the game in emulator with a modern gamepad and it was barely, barely doable, even when I could manually set deadzones and sensitivities and the like. It was awful.
Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Bit disappointed that it doesn’t include the RTX functionality, but still really excited. Always loved the first three quakes (even if Unreal is better) and this has been a great opportunity to run through the game again while waiting for AC6.
MurrayL@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’ve seen this sentiment in a few places, and feel like I’m going nuts over here. Am I really the only one who thinks Quake 2 RTX looks like absolute ass?
It’s got nice real-time shadow effects, obviously, but everything else is a washed out mess of stretched textures and normal maps that make everything look like it’s made of plastic.
This is one of the official screenshots used to promote it and it looks like a 2007 tech demo.
Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If you think that is a 2007 tech demo then… You clearly don’t remember 2007
But yeah. It isn’t a flagship use of ray tracing (… actually, it is, but that speaks more to the general lack of ray tracing in gaming). But it is a really cool nod to history (since quake 2 was one of the earlier games to have dynamic lighting) that does a good job of making quake 2 look like what we remembered quake 2 looking like (same as you remember 2007 looking like that).
The dynamic lighting never looked ANYWHERE near that good but… in our minds it did.
And it also kind of became a weird time capsule of what ray tracing was. When the two big early examples of RTX were… Minecraft and Quake 2 (Control existed but the specs were already high enough for most folk before you popped the toggle).
Mostly it is just a bit disappointing that something that exists and was mostly official isn’t part of the re-release. But I suspect there are some shenanigans with how nvidia licensed that and so forth.