Juggernaut for Quake 2

These textures have been run through Paint Shop Pro's "rusty metal" filter enough times to qualify as the only serious amount of work that went into Juggernaut.

First of all, I'd like to state that Quake 2 is my favorite game in the universe. I have over 1,000 simulated hours of strogg combat under my belt, and since 1998 a small portion of my brain has been designated as an imaginary game server where id software takes on the Transformers in an epic team deathmatch that I can see whenever I close my eyes. In between thinking and dreaming about Quake 2 I have also tragically played through 95% of the horrible custom levels available for the game, which is definitely a testament to either my love of Quake 2 or my masochistic tendencies. For the sake of completeness I knew I had to play the Juggernaut mission pack.

A joint venture between Canopy Games and the forces of hell allowed Juggernaut to ship a mere 2 months after the release of Quake 2. If this was just another run-of-the-mill bad game I would simply dismiss it as needing more work and maybe a few snowboarding levels, but in Juggernaut's case the imposed two month deadline was actually a blessing, as there is nothing in these 26 maps to indicate that the developers were striving to create anything but pure evil. Incidentally, most of the game's $100 development budget went towards buying kittens and promptly torturing them to death in front of horrified children at the local mall.

I liked Juggernaut for Quake 2's title because it succinctly conveys that the mission pack is called Juggernaut and is for Quake 2. After that it was all downhill, though. The substandard level design comes off looking like the future as envisioned by people from the 80's, or possibly the 80's as envisioned by people from the future. If Juggernaut wasn't made by inhuman motherfucking cyborgs I'd probably go into a speech about how just because a game has a sci-fi theme doesn't mean it has to look like a bad Full Moon Pictures rip-off of Alien. Instead I guess I'll discuss the new weapons and enemies.

Haha, just kidding. Juggernaut doesn't have any new weapons or enemies. Just so this paragraph isn't a total loss, though, here are some of Canopy Games' edgy reinterpretations of Quake 2's stock models. These, sadly, are all too real.

	Light Guard: I call the modeller's startling new vision of this monster "Gorillasaurus" in lieu of any discernable features or a more kickass name that isn't Bruce Campbell. This is by far the easiest review screenshot I've ever had to take, as there are literally 20 of these in every room.
	Hyperblaster: This looks like the sort of weapon prison inmates make out of toilet paper and stolen cafeteria trays. I just hope this means that the creators of this game are currently incarcerated, since I doubt there is a handgun large enough to make me feel safe in a world where deranged shitfuckers like the Canopy Games staff are free to walk the streets.
	Machinegun: Attention scientists: We know you're eventually going to improve the design of the machinegun by building it entirely out of model rocket parts, so can you please just do it now so we can maybe not get our fucking asses handed to us when the mutant apocalypse comes? Thanks.

Note to developers: If you're going to put an opening demo in your game, try to remember to turn off god mode before recording it. The intro demo is so bad it really deserves its own review (except for the fact that it doesn't). It's a good thing I followed the opening demo's example and turned on god mode, because this game took an obscene amount of cheating just to reach the point where I could say the first 3 levels suck. Someone decided that it should be ridiculously difficult to compensate for the overabundance of fun in other PC games. I seriously don't think you can finish without cheating unless you're God and invented crap. I could go on about the various ways Juggernaut may or may not be worse than Hitler, but it would be rather pointless since no one ever bought the pack anyway and its publisher has long since gone out of business (I don't normally derive pleasure from seeing karma shove it's steel-toed combat boot up another website's ass but in this case I'll make an exception). The happy ending to this review is that I still don't hate Quake 2, even though I'm pretty sure that was the sole intent of this game. That's another victory for love and one more pathetic failure that can be attributed to Juggernaut.

Each category in the rating system is based out of a possible -10 score (-10 being the worst). The overall score is based out of a possible -50 score (-50 being the worst).

– Jed (@notoriousamoeba)