Its first room off the center bridge makes you press a switch to raise a set of stairs out of a pool, and another switch seems like it'll probably rotate that bridge you just left. The Dismal Oubliette has just as much fun with medieval contraptions as The Wizard's Manse. But there's also armor in the very first room you start in, which means that yellow armor is actually a premonition: You're gonna need that later. At the start, it taunts you with paths you can't take, one holding a tantalizing 150 point yellow armor. The next level, The Dismal Oubliette, closes out episode two with a great centerpiece, an L-shaped bridge that eventually rotates as you progress and find buttons that activate it. The Wizard's Manse isn't a flashy level, but it sets up some of Quake's best ideas to come. The Dismal Oubliette, as seen from above. Without a line of dialogue, The Wizard's Manse still manages to tell some little stories. Just the kind of contraption a wizard would build to entertain himself and freak out the in-laws. It lasts just long enough for me to worry that I've screwed up, and then the cage crests the surface and I can breathe again. I begin to drown, watching my HP tick away with each choking gasp. There's always a sneaky elevator or alcove that gets you back to where you were in seconds.įinally, at the end of the level, The Wizard's Manse drops one more Quake lesson: in a game all about empowerment, having your power stripped away is more impressive than any new gun.Ī glowing button entices me into a cage, which lowers me underwater and into the shaft I saw earlier (aha!), and then slowly carries me down a long passageway. But Quake's levels are so dense, that's never a problem. Usually vertical videogame levels guarantee a groan, at some point, when you fall off the top story and have to walk your way all the way back. It's basically just four rooms-10 minutes of winding and climbing would take about 10 seconds laid flat. He had a small plot of land, so he had to be creative. They make me think about how the wizard gets around his house, and the satisfaction he probably took in building this whole place. The graphics in the Wizard's Manse are indistinguishable from the rest of Quake, but those little mechanical steps give it character. Finally I'm on the top floor, looking down two levels and wondering if the wizard appreciates this view. They pop out of the wall with a thunk when I get close, forming stairs for me to hop up. The next room is simple, yet one of the most memorable in all of Quake: a series of narrow platforms over an acid pit. The powered-up super shotgun turns them into chunks. One flight of stairs later and I'm under another set of walkways and above another pit of water, but jumping in this time yields something even better: a passageway that leads to a quad damage powerup and a way up, level with the assholes who were just raining grenades down on my head. It's a quick swim to get back, and also includes a great bit of foreshadowing: a barred-off underwater passageway that I immediately want to find my way into. When I leap (okay, fall) into the water to avoid a grenade, I'm rewarded with a few goodies that recover the ammo and health I just lost. The manse's main room-I guess crisscrossing walkways over a pool of brown water once passed muster as a foyer?-forces me to skirt the left side of the room until I find a button that raises the right side's walkway. The bridge and a couple grenade-throwing ogres outside are the manse's lookout tower, and a warm-up for a level that's going to constantly ask to watch out above. I get lucky: an ogre and two Death Knights follow, and a poorly aimed fireball blast into the ogre's back makes him take a chainsaw to the Death Knight instead of me. I walk out onto a long bridge, then immediately retreat back to the cave I started in. The Wizard's Manse starts with one of Quake's most underused gimmicks: Enemies fighting each other.
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