Quake 2 multiplayer is such a blast. The cat-and-mouse chase fights in that game is what defines the genre of "arena shooter" for me, there's still nothing else really like it.
The campaign has a place in my heart too, even if it's not perfect. A lot of DOOM's level design was predicated on claustrophobic interiors, and when you go "outside" in many levels it feels like a glorified courtyard. From the very first level, Quake 2 pushes hard to create an illusion of environmental complexity that plays very distinct from Quake 1 or DOOM.
Personally I think Unreal Tournament perfected the genre when it comes to multiplayer. Q1 was a lot of spamming of grenades and so on. Q2 was better. Still a lot of chaos. UT99 was also chaos but you could combine it with perfect moves and high precision shots. Great games all of them. I used to be an elite UT99 player but as the pace kept increasing along with my age my reaction time was simple not good enough anymore. Even if tactics compensated a lot those games are not like sneaking around in CS. I mostly played CTF. Good old times.
Idk, I think UT has some really neat design elements, like the shock rifle that are really unique. It rewards predicting the enemy a lot and a lot of mechanical skill etc. Plus there's the cool factor of guns like the Redeemer :D
QIII while solid feels missing lots of flair, it feels more generic shooter. Good, solid, but a little generic.
I think what makes Q3A seem generic nowadays is that it set the standard.
Q2 was always my favourite, that's where I started my multi-player journey. I only played against bots in the first Quake, and only played against my cousins at their place in Doom (they had multiple computers linked up back in the day).
The campaign has a place in my heart too, even if it's not perfect. A lot of DOOM's level design was predicated on claustrophobic interiors, and when you go "outside" in many levels it feels like a glorified courtyard. From the very first level, Quake 2 pushes hard to create an illusion of environmental complexity that plays very distinct from Quake 1 or DOOM.