Ground Zero is the second and final expansion pack for Quake 2 that has us play as an entirely new character named Stepchild with unique orders to follow through that will finally take down the Strogg menace. Like the rest of the protagonists before him, his landing pod has gone out of control, and he lands in an entirely unintended location. In his case, it is right into a volcanic like cave system in which he must fight his way out of. It is a very impressive area visually and is filled to the brim with low tier enemies to mow down. Unfortunately, the level design for the first few maps of the game is less than stellar and confusion as to where to proceed to next will soon set in once you’ve wiped out all your foes. It’s not bad enough that one will require a guide, but it felt more like I was accidentally stumbling into my objectives rather than actively heading towards them.
This poor level design gets significantly better after the few opening maps, though they soon introduce two issues to make stages tedious instead of confusing. The first is one I personally don’t have an issue with and that is backtracking. They use most maps for all they are worth, and you’ll be returning to them multiple times. It would have been a far worse issue if the level design would have remained at its introductory quality, but even though it still stumbles at some points, its overall fine and you’ll naturally end up where you were meant to a large portion of the times. This second flaw is where most people that have played this expansion pack take issue with, including myself. The friggin turrets that litter the place and drag down the flow of the game. You see, they are placed in cheap areas such as the ceiling right above a doorway, have pinpoint accuracy from even across the map, and they are in turn, a very tiny target to hit.
Even that wouldn’t have made the inclusion of turrets such a crippling flaw on its own. What really seals the deal is how much health they have and their high rate of fire that will keep you pinned down once they start shooting. Some turrets fire projectiles that are thankfully not hit-scan, while others fire rockets. Both attacks can be avoided with the swift movement of a skilled player, but it truly becomes a mess when other enemies are involved. Due to how much damage they take to go down & their placement, you will be forced to play in a far different manner than usual, such as taking a single shot and quickly returning to cover, instead of charging into unexplored areas. Close to mid range combat becomes akin to suicide when a turret is involved, and the fact that they take either three direct hits with a rocket launcher or two using a railgun makes them a nuisance you won’t quickly be rid of.
One would think that the new weapons would be suited to counteract these new threats. Nope. The first that you encounter is a proximity mine launcher that can have its uses while leading enemies, but does significantly less damage than your stock grenade launcher. You then have the ETF Rifle which like the proximity launcher, uses its own ammo type and is a mid-ranged energy weapon. Next up and as inherently cool that an arm mounted Chainsaw may sound, this new weapon is sadly useless in a fight as it neither stunlocks an opponent nor dishes out decent damage to make it worth getting within range. It is useful for gibbing corpses to make sure the medic doesn’t revive them however. And finally, there is a Plasma Beam Cannon that will decimate most foes and is pinpoint accurate. While powerful it does burn through ammo, and it does share the same cell energy as the BFG, making it a very situational weapon that likely won’t get much use.
Quite a bit of new gadgets to rain terror on your foes or play around with all things considered. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that the turrets make them all defunct like it does with every other close to mid-range weapon from the original game. More so in fact, considering the new weapons are not bound to any hotkey, and it is pretty annoying to do so. It may seem like I despise Ground Zero at this point, but that is not the case. There is, in fact, some pretty neat moments like at one point being able to don Strogg armor and walk among your enemies unharassed as long as you don’t blow your cover by say, shooting someone in the face. While you do have to return to that area once more due to the constant backtracking which made the whole ordeal pointless, it was still a very memorable moment.
The turrets are also not the only new enemy to join the fray. There is now a very interesting foe called the Stalker, a spider-like creature of flesh and metal that clings to ceilings, waiting for the chance to pounce on the less perceptive players. They have both a melee attack and ranged projectiles, but what really makes them unlike anything else is how agile they are as they alternate between the floor & the ceiling to avoid your attacks. Another enemy is just a powered up version of the Medic, who not only revives foes but spawns them out of thin air as well, making them your top priority whenever you spot one. The last one is an unremarkable version of the flying Icarus who now has a shield and a more powerful blaster. I do like that this expansion pack has a far bigger emphasis on multidimensional combat with threats looming from both the sky and the ground to keep you on your toes. If you simply try to walk down a corridor and only pay attention whats in front of you, it’s likely you’ll find a footlong mechanical spider dropping on your head.
It’s ending is also something worthy of praise and is a perfect final battle to send off our long fought war against the Strogg with a bang. You will have to put everything you’ve got into that fight and unleash everything you’ve accumulated for a chance at taking it down. That is not the only boss fight to be found throughout, and they are all a ton of fun. These are some of the best bosses to be seen in the Quake series with only the first game’s Dissolution of Eternity expansion topping those found here. At the end of the day, Ground Zero is such an unfortunately mediocre experience that squandered its potential with questionable design decisions. It had ambition, no doubt, but they seemingly went out of there way to make it unnecessarily tedious. Cheap insta-death traps, poorly implemented turret enemies that change the core of the gameplay for the worse, and the immediate hurdle of bad level design for the first few maps makes it a tough sell. This is an expansion pack you can safely skip out on unless you are the biggest of Quake fans.
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