I grabbed this on a Fanatical bundle since I recall they recently remastered the game via free patch, and the results are damn impressive. I remember liking Quake II when I played the shareware version back when that was still a thing that existed. I played the original vanilla version for about an hour to refresh myself and it holds up well, but the remaster is a serious overhaul.

Enemy models look much more detailed while still retaining that retro aesthetic, and more importantly their AI and animations have undergone significant tweaks. While playing the original a lot of enemies would go into what looks like a "cower" animation, just stopping and hunching over for a second, raising their arms over their head. If that animation still exists it now looks more like they are staggered from the pain of being shot, and it goes a long way to make the gunplay feel impactful. The death animations are also very detailed and satisfying as they were in the original, often with enemies trying to squeeze out a final shot before bleeding out. These canned animations are a very convincing illusion and something many modern shooters could learn from. On the AI front, enemies are much more aggressive, some sporting attacks that simply weren't in the original, and their pathfinding is much better, so you'll have a harder time running past them if you're trying to play more defensively.

If there's one area that suffers it's the level design which is largely unchanged. I find the maze-like key hunts of 90's shooters tedious all these decades later, especially when these older games are so light on story to contextualize things. Last year I was ripping my hair out trying to enjoy Turok for this very reason. Quake II was released a year before Half-Life revolutionized the genre which is probably why Quake II hasn't had the staying power of Doom. The good news is there's now a compass feature providing arrows on the ground to your next objective. In a modern shooter I'd call this lazy, but it's a good compromise to make an older title more playable and less frustrating.

I've played a lot of the newer retro shooters like Dusk and Amid Evil, but this remaster of a game from over 25 years ago has provided significantly more excitement for me. There's currently a bundle that includes Quake I on fanatical so I may have to revisit that one as well. A big hand to id and Nightdive Studios!