Quake II is a 1997 first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by Activision. It is the second installment of the Quake series, following Quake.
Shooter
Quake II is a 1997 first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by Activision. It is the second installment of the Quake series, following Quake. Developed over the course of a year, Quake II was released on December 9, 1997. In contrast to the first game, which featured a combination of science fiction and fantasy elements, Quake II entirely drops the latter elements and is set during humankind's war against a rogue alien race known as the Strogg, half-mutant half-machine creatures whose homeplanet, Stroggos, is the target of the humans' invasion force. The player takes the role of a space marine (referred to as Bitterman) as he crash-lands on the planet and, being the last survivor of his squad, is tasked with completing a series of missions to cripple the Strogg and end their plans to conquer Earth. The game's storyline is continued in its expansions, including one tying in Quake II and the first game, and Quake 4. The game's heavy metal soundtrack was provided by Sascha Dikiciyan.
Besides its single player component, Quake II also uses a client/server network system similar to that of Quake for multiplayer. Unlike Quake, where hardware acceleration was only implemented through later patches, Quake II was released with native OpenGL support. Quake II was also the first id Software game not to be released for the then-deprecated MS-DOS operating system, rather running natively on Windows 95, with several ports to other systems following afterwards. The source code for Quake II was released by id Software under the GPL license on December 21, 2001.
Quake II received critical acclaim on its release, and similarly to its predecessor is generally considered to be one of the best video games ever made. An "enhanced" version of Quake II developed by Nightdive Studios was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S on August 10, 2023. It includes the original game and its two expansion packs, an episode consisting of the levels from the Nintendo 64 version of the game, and a brand new episode designed by MachineGames.
Trailer. Watch on YouTube
Quake II - RTX | Full Game | no commentary | 4k | RTX 4090, 10minGaming. Watch on YouTube
| Platform | Region | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Worldwide | 2019-06-06 |
Released free on Steam and NVIDIA's site on 6 June 2019, on GOG since 19 August 2021. NVIDIA ended work on it in December 2025 after version 1.8.1.
Space needed2 GB
Quake II RTX had no DLC.
Playable offline todayYes
Everything still works. The full campaign needs the Quake II data files.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Price at release | Free, 6 June 2019 The first three levels are free; the full game needs the original Quake II data files. |
| Ever released on disc | No Only ever a download. |
| Ever released in the store | Yes, Steam, 6 June 2019 Also from NVIDIA's site, and on GOG since 19 August 2021. |
| In the store to buy today | Yes, free on Steam and GOG |
| Can be downloaded again if you already bought it | Yes |
| Disc runs with no patch | Does not exist |
| Disc runs with the final patch | Does not exist |
| Has online features | Yes Deathmatch and co-op over the internet or LAN, with the full Quake II data. |
| Online servers running today | Yes Players host their own servers; the game comes with a dedicated server. |
| Playable offline today: campaign | Yes |
| Playable offline today: local multiplayer | Does not exist |
| Playable offline today: online multiplayer | Yes On player-hosted servers. |
| Playable offline today: DLC | Does not exist |
Plays offlineYes
| Role | Name |
|---|---|
| Developer | NVIDIA Lightspeed Studios |
| Publisher | NVIDIA |
| Original game | id Software |
| Built on | Q2VKPT by Christoph Schied, on the Q2PRO engine |
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