Respect the Past, Don’t Ray-Trace It
Yesterday’s favorites shouldn’t be showcases for future tech
QUAKE II IS THE LATEST in a long line of games to get some retro love, with Nvidia releasing the RTX rendition of the id Software classic. This remastered version adds ray tracing to the firstperson shooter, and transforms its limited gray, beige, and brown palette to a slightly lighter gray, beige, and brown. There are a few mirrored surfaces to stare briefly at, and a smattering of upgraded models, but largely it’s the same game from 22 years ago, with nominally prettier visuals.
And it’s a complete waste of everyone’s time.
Not only does it not look particularly inspiring, and therefore completely fails at its primary goal of selling real-time ray tracing, but it doesn’t play particularly well either. Gameplay has come on in leaps and bounds in the last two decades, and this just feels like an old game that has been bettered multiple times over. If you want a first-person shooter, then this is not the game you’re looking for. It also runs terribly: 22fps at 4K on a 2080 Ti in RTX mode, as opposed to 997fps using the OpenGL driver.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved QuakeII when it was originally released. I have a lot of fond memories of playing it back in the day. And, indeed, playing through the first few levels again, I even managed to recall where the hidden areas were. But I’ve no real interest in playing it through again. None. Been there, done that. This attitude sums up my feelings for
Worldof WarcraftClassic, too. I played it at the time, and don’t need to play it again. If you were too young or too old to enjoy it back then, it’s a great experience, but simply going back and doing it again now holds no interest. I’m much more interested in moving games forward than revisiting how good they used to be and seeing if we can take them in a different direction by constantly revisiting them and asking the same questions.