Reviews

Ray quaking

Playing a classic with shinny water

Jon Peddie

It’s June 6th and the free demo of Quake II RTX is available. Download (easy), install (easy) stop.  Update driver (Not easy).  Tried to do it from Nvidia’s main menu but that version doesn’t see one’s DXR. However, if you download it from Nvidia Experience, you get a version that does. OK, a half hour lost. 

Flash to past—It’s like we never left. Run and blast, pick up health and ammo, find and get the BFG, run, and blast—wait, look at the water we’re about to go through—wow, run and blast.  Oh, shoot—wait, look at that reflective glass before you SHOOT IT.  

 

And so on.

Want some fun? Got an RTX (higher is better). Get Quake II RTX and block out an hour or so.

Comments from Nvidia:

Quake II RTX includes the first three single-player levels of the beloved PC gaming classic. Gamers that already own Quake II can experience the whole game in its entirety, including multiplayer deathmatch and cooperative multiplayer modes, all fully path traced. 
 
Quake II RTX is the world’s first game that is fully path-traced, a ray-tracing technique that unifies all lighting effects such as shadows, reflections, refractions and more into a single ray-tracing algorithm. The result is a stunning new look for id Software’s Quake II, one of the world’s most popular games, originally launched in 1997.
 
Quake II RTX,  published by our own LightSpeed Studios, is available now on Steam and from NVIDIA. More details, including a Quake II RTX technology explainer video, as well as a Quake II RTX trailer, are available at www.nvidia.com.
 
One known issue: If a non RTX user connects to an RTX server, they will crash if a flare gun is used by an RTX user.

Take a few seconds and look around, after you dispense with the enemies.