The only thing preventing him from losing himself completely is the lingering memory of Annie, kept alive in the image of an old photograph kept tucked away in Ranger’s armor. In that time he’s killed and died more times than he can remember, and he’s begun to lose track of himself. Ranger has been stranded in the never-ending maze of Quake’s battlegrounds, fighting one enemy after another for two decades (fun fact: Quake hit the video game scene in 1996). It also doesn’t hurt that Ram V has spent more than his share of time in front of the aforementioned TV screen, gaming system running hot, and shouting “fortune favors the brave!” at the top of his lungs (okay, maybe not that last part, but check out the intverview after my review for a look at the man’s gaming cred…). Translate that concept into a story, make Ranger a soldier determined not to become the mindless killing machine, and you’ve got something a little more interesting. He’s a cypher, a blank slate that serves no purpose besides that of empty vessel for a player’s vicarious thrills. The gamer doesn’t really care about Ranger or his past. So how does Ram V take that most basic formula (“Shoot, Reload, Repeat”) and make Quake the comic something more than a gratuitous gorefest? He brings the focus down to its main character, Ranger, to explore his deeper motivations and drives. If you can pull off a truly impressive “killing spree” in front of an appreciative audience, you can ride high on the wave until your next death. It’s not a dig, because anyone who’s ever spent countless hours in front of a screen, running and gunning, you know that the fun isn’t necessarily in the plot. These games are all about shooting stuff, blowing stuff up, and pretty much just creating as much chaos and mayhem as possible without getting fragged. Not to abuse the words of Shakespeare, but “the play is the thing”. Anyone who’s played any of the classic shooters (Quake, Doom, Duke Nuke’em, etc) knows that the “lather, rinse, repeat” formula of the game transcends the need for a deeply layered, cohesive story. Game over.Īs far as most of the original first person shooters goes, that story right there is fairly comprehensive. Failure means that the final boss’s evil forces will have nothing to stop them from sweeping through the Slipgate and into our world. When all of the runes are collected, the final level opens up and the epic shootout against Shub-Niggurath begins. As each episode is successfully completed, the player collects a magic rune. The long and short of it is that the game’s protagonist, Ranger, has to fight through four “episodes”, each divided into its own series of levels. The story behind the game is the barest of plot threads, with no real purpose beyond giving a player the motivation needed to push through thirty levels of gameplay. No disrespect at all to one of the pioneers of the First Person Shooter genre, but let’s be honest. Trained to kill, scavenge, survive and locked in a never-ending gauntlet of bullets and bloodshed, only one of these Champions shall prevail…Īs with many video games, the job of wringing a comprehensive story out of something like Quake makes getting water out of a stone seem downright plausible. Now, that same Marine finds himself wandering a strange but familiar landscape, where grim fighters from the far reaches of the hellverse battle through monstrous dimensions in search of subsitence and salvation. Trapped in these realms ever since, time and delirium have eroded his resolve and even his name. Two decades ago, a lone Marine stepped through the Slipgate and into a world of nightmares.
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