After 25 Years, Quake 1 Gets Major 'Horde' Mode Update

Ars Technica reports: Months after the first-person-shooter classic Quake got a major 25th anniversary re-release, its modern handlers have returned with an update that exceeds all expectations. Thursday's new 770MB patch on all platforms (Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, PC) adds an entirely new co-op combat mode, and it officially opens the game's mod floodgates for players outside the PC ecosystem.

The uncreatively named "Horde" mode works much like a mode of the same name in Gears of War. Instead of progressing through a level from start to finish, players are expected to hunker down inside a somewhat circular arena and then contend with hundreds of enemies spawning from all sides. Kill a full "wave" of foes, and your team will get a moment to breathe, replenish health and ammo (or argue over who gets to use it), and do it all over again.

For the sake of Quake's first-ever official co-op mode (beyond the campaign, which always supported co-op as an option), Bethesda support studio MachineGames has whipped up four brand-new battling arenas, which are pictured above. Each includes at least one "silver key" door, which is full of more powerful weapons and is gated until players earn a key by defeating a tougher "boss wave" of foes. Get through nine enemy waves, and your team gets a "gold key." You can either exit the level at that point or stay and keep fighting increasingly tough foes until your team dies.
In addition, Quake now has a new "add-on" menu, and this week's patch gives it an option for playing the foggy 2012 Quake mod "Honey."

Re:

[Rayfield k.]

How many editions of Skyrim are we on again?

Too new. Where's the updates for my era of games?

[ihaveamo]

Love to see a hoard mode in Zork. (As usual, Nethack already has it - damn you, shopkeeper kops!)

Will this work with my original CD?

[Fly Swatter]

I have the game already, so will this patch work?

-It is remakes all the way down.

Re:Will this work with my original CD?

[Guspaz]

No, but they did release the remaster as a free update for anybody who already owned it on Steam and various other digital platforms.

Oh, it's Serious Sam

[DNS-and-BIND]

So, this is Serious Sam all over again [fileplanet.com]. For those of you who don't know, Serious Sam was a cult classic FPS. Fast-paced and fun, it didn't take itself too seriously despite the name. It had a co-op mode (rare at the time of release 20 years ago) that would scale up the number of enemies with the number of players. I especially liked the bomb enemies, you could shoot them in a crowd and blow up a bunch of enemies at the same time, or set off a chain reaction as one bomb set off another. Wonderful fun, and the action didn't slow down with tons of stuff going on. The game engine was specially designed to deal with large amounts of models on the screen at one time over long distances. The level design was solid and the action was frenetic and intense at all times.

Re:Oh, it's Serious Sam

[BladeMelbourne]

I thought Doom 1 also had co-op for 4 players. It might have been over IPX/SPX rather than TCP (but my memory is pretty hazy).

Re:Oh, it's Serious Sam

[alaskana98]

I'm pretty sure Doom 1 did not have a TCP option for multiplayer. I believe it was all dial-up IPX/SPX. I remember how much of a pain it was to set up death matches on Doom 1 or Doom 2 as you had to pre-arrange the details such as who was going to be the caller and who the receiver, not to mention the network settings needed to make everything 'talk' so to speak. Quake revolutionized that whole process, IMO, in that it allowed TCP which made for fairly easy multiplayer match setups. You didn't have to worry about all the overhead in an IPS/SPX setup, you just needed your Internet connected and then choose multiplayer, find an open game and done.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

I thought Doom 1 also had co-op for 4 players. It might have been over IPX/SPX rather than TCP (but my memory is pretty hazy).

It did originally yes, though doom acquired TCP/IP support in the late 90s. It also sprouted support for more than 4 players at some point along the way as well, though that may cause problems with some older levels designed for 4 players.

Re:

[jmke]

the gamplay of Quake and Serious Sam are very different. Quake definitely has a much higher skill level. SS is one of the best horde mode , noobie friendly COOP game experiences for sure

Re:

[Calinous]

When getting the two-barreled shotgun:
"Double the gun, double the fun"

Memories from 20 years ago... It was a very one-dimensional game, but that one dimension (let's call it an abundance of opportunities) was incredibly well done.

Possible to play HORDE Mode without DRM?

[thySEus]

I own the GOG Version of Quake: https://www.gog.com/game/quake_the_offering

Is it possible to simply put the .pak (or .wad? or .id3? or what its called) file of the new Horde Mode into the "classical" quake ?
Or is it possible to run it with http://quakespasm.sourceforge.net/ or similar quake source port ?
Bethesda has tied his quake version to the Launcher, which is Online only and not really DRM free.

I'm amazed at how Quake still holds up.

[Qbertino]

This game is more than 20 years old and it still holds up as a really neat shooter. I got the revamped edition for my Nintendo Switch Lite, which is just about the perfect device for it. Running Quake in high speed with crisp edges, FSAA and improved texturing on a small pocket device that costs 200 Euros and can run for hours is just plain amazing and shows how far we've come. I remember getting the original Quake when it came out and straining my Cyrix P200+ (SysClock pushed to 75Mhz with a Tomato-Board! CPU upgraded with fan!) and the Matrox Mystique (a GFX card specifically for gaming - digg that true avantgarde!) to the max.

I'm looking forward to playing through it again. Nice. I like that they did the revamp. ID Software deserves to indulge themselves, those guys are awesome and they love what they do and it shows.

Re:

[GoJays]

The new episode they added is really enjoyable to play. I highly recommend it to any Quake fan.

I had a similar experience to you back in the day, pushing my Pentium 100Mhz, with 16MB RAM to the limit... I went out and bought a Matrox Mystique card just so I could have a better Quake experience! I think it was around $200 Canadian if I remember correctly... All for a 4MB video card... lol

Open Source works

[akw0088]

I dont think we would see this if Carmack had no open sourced the engine and qc files for quake, a lot of beneficial activity from the remaster of doom, quake, quake2 rtx relate to the decision to release things back then. But yet, even with all these benefits, Bethesda locks down the source code for rage and Doom 2016. The cognitive disconnect is impressive

Arcane Dimensions is great!

[Kernel Kurtz]

Quake was the game that got me into gaming back in the day, and I played both the mission packs at the time, but only a month or two ago I downloaded AD and have been pleasantly surprised with this blast from the past. Plenty of really original community made maps. Definitely worth checking out.

https://www.quaddicted.com/rev... [quaddicted.com]

I'm using the Quakespasm engine, I don't think it will work with the original one.