four

Being slightly younger than Quake itself, I only played it for the first time a few years ago and I did enjoy it quite much. I agree with some of your points, though I wouldn’t say that Quake is more slow-paced, for me it was even more dynamic, especially if you start using rocket jumps etc.

In my opinion, the visuals were not, as you put it, “boooring”. I liked the atmosphere and I remember there being more colors than just brown ;) But it’s true that in general it has a rather gloomy palette.

The level design, especially its cohesiveness in the world of the game, is something that Half-Life improved and paved the way for future games.

IIRC, the engine people play on right now is not exactly the original engine, so it’s a bit misleading to say that the new levels show what’s possible inside the engine as a comparison to the original levels. I’m pretty sure those levels would not run on the original engine and PCs of '98.

I just woke up and was sure those were chips and nachos lol

In a way all games are “hitting your head with a hammer”. Some just have different hammers and maybe hit harder. But all of them have obstacles, difficulties, things standing in your way, enemies wanting to kill you.

It’s just that some people got too used to the light hammers and look for heavier ones ;)

They found my swear jar, fuck