The other week we wrote about the making of Counter-Strike – whose descendant, Global Offensive, we deemed one of the best first person shooters on PC – and mentioned Action Quake 2. We mentioned it because CS co-creator Minh Le worked on it, but it’s worth talking about in its own right as a really excellent mod, distinguished by its movie violence, city streets and relatively realistic weaponry.
I don’t know if you remember 1998, but the creators of Reaction do. They’ve stuffed the “fast and furious” essence of Action Quake into an open source engine and intend to release it on Steam.
Reaction was originally developed by Action Quake contributors and fans as a Quake III Arena mod 15 years ago, but later ported over to the ioQuake3 engine based on that game’s source code. It was released as a standalone game in 2012.
“AQ2 still enjoyed great popularity in online gaming even 4 years after it was initially released,” Reaction’s Greenlight page points out. “Despite the development community labeling it an ‘obsolete’ game engine, it fostered over 500+ community made maps. Many people attribute this long lasting popularity to both the unique gameplay and the AQ2 community.
“By harnessing the power of a vastly improved game engine we hope to introduce a new generation of gamers to one of the pioneering classics of the FPS world.”
It’s undeniably dated to look at, but refreshingly different. Think you’ll give Reaction an approving shove up Valve’s priority list?