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Have You Played... Zerstörer?

Feel huge

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

I'm going to keep doing mods for a while because: 1) I struggle to remember what happened yesterday; 2) Unable to afford many new games, for about a decade I mostly played mods - many, many mods. Of the many mods I played from cover discs off cheery RPS fanzine PC Gamer, the Quake singleplayer campaign Zerstörer - Testament of the Destroyer was the first that felt like something I should've paid for. "Professional quality," we said back then, with very specific ideas of what that meant.

Zerstörer feels like the official Quake mission packs - a new episode, some new enemies, some new/alternate weapons and power-ups, and a few fancy technical features (ooh! cutscenes! in Quake!). And like them, it's... Quake but not Quake. When you've played a game a squillion times, the small changes seem massive - make it seem huge. The level design isn't id, the new enemies work in ways that feel un-Quake, and look, I'm making a big deal about this.

One overly-complex huge level aside, Zerstörer is good and fun and exciting. Then, at the end, rather than defeating an elder god you just die. It was a pretty surprising twist at the time but I don't know what else I'd expect from a team named Nihilism Unlimited.

I suppose I'm quite interested in how small changes can feel huge with mods to familiar games. I remember being blown away by the Cujo mod adding a dog buddy (who even licked gibs!), when a game which had a dog from the start would be... actually, no, the dog in the Dead to Rights games are still hilarious and wonderful. But I was fascinated by mods like a new weapon letting me beat familiar encounters in new way, a grappling hook showing the world from new angles, and so on. I feel I'm missing out by playing so many different games now, no longer getting to know any one game inside-out and back-to-front.

If you want to play, you'll need Quake, Zerstörer, and Zerstörer patch 1.1. I'd recommend the updated engine Quakespasm, and always remember to set GL_TEXTUREMODE GL_NEAREST for that hard-edged software mode feel.

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About the Author
Alice O'Connor avatar

Alice O'Connor

Associate Editor

Alice has been playing video games since SkiFree and writing about them since 2009, with nine years at RPS. She enjoys immersive sims, roguelikelikes, chunky revolvers, weird little spooky indies, mods, walking simulators, and finding joy in details. Alice lives, swims, and cycles in Scotland.

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