“Well-coordinated and heavily armed group of eldritch abominations beaten by a ranger with the genre’s weakest shotgun and a grenade launcher with 14 foot max range.”
This morning I finished my Scourge of Armagon run.
Scourge of Armagon is good fun and worth playing after finishing the ‘main’ campaign of Quake, but I don’t think it was worth full asking price. The new ideas are forgettable and (most) of the levels indistinct. I like the idea of Ranger (and possibly his homeworld?) continuing the war against ‘Quake’ which now seems to be the codename for all the Lovecraftian entities that want to attack Earth.
Scourge doesn’t seem to have had a
lasting impact on Quake multiplayer, and its’ new features and weapons
aren’t found in later Quake mods. It has this feeling of not being
‘canon’ as it introduced nothing iconic, and I doubt Id Software will
ever care to reference it.
It’s just a new set of levels with a
couple of new weapons, some new power-ups and a very small amount of
new enemies. The new laser gun is great, and much preferred over the
charge-eating lightning gun, while mjölnir
went largely unused.
It starts fairly strong but the levels started to feel bland by the halfway point. They’re all fairly well put together but progression feels disjointed, even for Quake. Armagon having 0 personality and impact certainly doesn’t help things. He’s just an enemy fought in the last level (even Shub had some text at the end of each episode). There’s no sense of an evil plan, no feeling that you’ve invaded his home. The boss fight against Armagon himself is pretty lame; I had him dead in about half a minute.
The later
levels feel samey. There is a noticeable overuse of Vores – while it is
nice that the designers wanted to escalate Quake’s challenge, the lack
of a new high-tier monster on the level of the Shambler / Vore hurts the
encounters.
Scourge of Armagon is a competently put together expansion pack, but it is just a retreading. Good but forgettable. More Quake is always nice though.
Time for Dissolution of Eternity. Widely said to be the inferior expansion but which seems to get remembered more.
