Quake 2 Just Got a “Surprise” Remaster
Sometimes a game gets a sudden release that nobody was expecting. When Metroid Prime Remastered was shadow dropped onto the eShop earlier this year, it set the internet on fire. Similar excitement came when Nintendo dropped Pikmin 1 and 2 during a Direct presentation a couple months ago. Sometimes though, a surprise release is less of a surprise, and more of an inevitability.
That’s the case with Quake 2, which got a “shock” remastered release on Switch, Xbox One, Xbox X|S, PS4, PS5, and PC yesterday. We put shock in quotation marks because it was probably one of the worst kept secrets in gaming, with months of rumors and leaks all pointing to the remaster’s existence.
Quake 2 has had a huge overhaul for its release on modern platforms, with new content, some massive visual upgrades, and online multiplayer all present. It was developed by Nightdive Studios, which as a studio has extensive knowledge porting old games to new platforms, having previously worked on the first Quake, Doom 64, Turok and Turok 2, and Powerslave Exhumed, among many others.
Bethesda says that Quake 2 contains the original soundtrack by Sonic Mayhem, but pretty much everything else has been overhauled and improved. There’s now widescreen support, restored content, both expansions that shipped with the original game, and an all-new expansion created by MachineGames.
A huge surprise included in the release though is Quake 2 64, which had a new plot and an entirely new set of levels. The Nintendo 64 version has gotten the same treatment as the rest of the package, with all the same enhancements and improvements, which is great news for fans of the N64 game.
In case you’d forgotten too, Quake is owned by id Software, itself owned by Microsoft these days, which means it’s available on Game Pass on PC, Xbox One and Series X|S, and Cloud for any Game Pass subscriber. If you’re not on Xbox, it won’t cost you much more anyway, coming in at a cool $9.99 on all platforms.
