This groundbreaking Quake mod was first released in 2015 and it has gradually increased in stature since. It’s an amazing achievement, and still incredible to play now. If you like First-Person Shooters and have never tried Arcane Dimensions before then I urge you to give it a try.

All you need is a copy of Quake; a Quake engine mod, like QSS, and the Arcane Dimensions mod itself. Consolidate them into the correct directories and set up a link to the executable and you should be good to go.

Arcane Dimensions features more than 30 new levels, all accessible from a hub level which you start in, and some of them are truly wild!

Take “Tears of the False God“, for example, which is a stunning multi-layered floating castle in the sky, with beautiful waterfalls and alcoves. The problem, though, is that it is populated by a metric fucktonne of enemies, so you don’t get much time to admire the scenery. And, like the best Quake maps, it really is a work of pure evil, with its tricks, traps, high difficulty, and surprise Shamblers… The aim in this special level is to collect nine Hallowed Shards. Unfortunately, each is guarded by a new type of knight that can jump and throw napalm at you. And they really take some putting down, so it’s something of a boss battle, taking one on. And you’ve got nine to defeat… Followed by an epic final boss battle!

There are, in fact, numerous new monsters in Arcane Dimensions, some are fairly minor but add some serious variety to the roster, and some are much tougher than regular Quake monsters. The extra challenge is very welcome, though. Even if it’ll have you tearing your hair out on occasion.

Other new things you’ll encounter: destructable walls; teleporting enemies that generate Lost Souls-like flying skulls; some very creepy, but amazingly well-animated spiders – and they poison you!; the “Widowmaker” shotgun (triple barrel!!!); grenade-launching soldiers; Jump Boots that allow you to double jump, and more besides.

The sheer scale of some of the levels – not to mention how intricate they are – really does demonstrate how much of a quantum leap this is over vanilla Quake. And you can run Arcane Dimensions at 4K resolution if you have a capable monitor.

It’s difficult to put into words just how good Arcane Dimensions is. It’s almost as if the development of Quake never stopped, and it still eclipses most modern shooters in terms of speed, precision and challenge. And it looks fantastic. This is Quake, but not as you remember it…

More: Arcane Dimensions on ModDb.com
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