Quake: The Offering

I missed the Quake mission packs when they first came out. I played the original to death, deathmatch, custom maps, the whole deal, but the expansions just slipped by. Then The Offering shows up, bundling both Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution of Eternity with the full game, and I figure it’s time to fix that.

Scourge of Armagon alone is a riot. The new weapons are nuts. The Proximity Mine Launcher throws motion-sensitive mines onto walls, ceilings, floors, you can booby-trap a hallway and hear the explosions two rooms later. The Laser Cannon fires a disintegrating beam that bounces off surfaces; in tight corridors, that thing is pure chaos. And then there’s Mjolnir, Thor’s actual hammer. When you slam it into a hard surface, it scatters electrical charges in all directions with a thunderclap loud enough to make you jump. Forget stealth, this is for making an entrance.

The power-ups get weird and wonderful. A Horn of Conjuring summons a random creature to fight for you; sometimes it’s helpful, sometimes it wanders off and you accidentally blow it up. The Empathy Shield splits damage between you and the attacker, which is brilliant in a firefight. And the Wetsuit protects against lightning and lets you swim faster, handy when you’re low on health and fleeing through flooded tunnels.

But the best thing in Scourge is the Gremlin. This little freak steals the weapon right out of your hands and runs off cackling, then uses it against you. The first time it happened, I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to chase the thing. It made off with my laser cannon and I just stood there, amazed. Worth the price of admission right there.

The Centroid is a robotic scorpion with dual nailguns for claws. Dangerous as hell, and you do not want to get caught between two of them. The environmental hazards, falling rocks, lightning traps, spike mines, keep you constantly on edge. Spike mines wander the levels looking for something to skewer; turn your back on them and they attack faster. Trick them into hitting other monsters if you’re clever. The deathmatch maps make heavy use of all these hazards, and they’re primo.

Dissolution of Eternity adds more vicious weapons. Lava nails. Yes, lava nails, armor-piercing, setting people on fire. Then there are multi-grenades (five at once) and multi-rockets (four at once), covering huge blast areas. The Thunderbolt gets new plasma cells that create a ball of lightning exploding into tendrils on impact; perfect for clearing rooms.

New power-ups in Dissolution are the Anti-Grav Belt and the Power Shield. The belt cancels gravity and lets you make insane jumps, suddenly every ledge is reachable. The Power Shield cuts incoming damage and lets you ram other players in deathmatch, which is sure to turn heads.

If you still have Quake on your hard drive, The Offering is a no-brainer. You get dozens of new single-player levels, heaps of new deathmatch arenas, a pile of weapons, and enemies that are actually memorable. The Gremlin alone is more creative than half the creatures in modern shooters. This isn’t just more Quake, it’s Quake with a sense of humor and a thunderous punch.