I'm just now playing Quake for the first time on PS5, and as a huge lover of OG Doom, I'm almost surprised the game didn't get any backlash when it came out.
In the first two chapters of the main Quake experience, it just feels like DooM...but less good. This game is Browntown USA. Everything is brown, the enemies are brown, the guns are brown, the water is brown. Why?
The enemies are very same-y, both in the sense that you see the same enemies all over the place (hi, grenade launcher + chainsaw dudes) and that they seem sort of visually close to each other, so discovering a new enemy isn't all that interesting or exciting. The game overall lacks a strong identity on top of this. The early stages and some of the enemy designs absolutely feel like they started out making Doom 3, but then changed gears.
I also wondered when FPS games got so slowed down after Doom sort of set the pace at such a fast level. Quake sort of answers that question. It's still fast paced, but it added now familiar pace-killers to the game: swimming, hard to see death/damage traps, platformer-esque boss encounters.
In a very weird way, playing Quake for me feels like playing a "souls-like" game. I'm enjoying it because it scratches the itch of the parent series I love, but it still doesn't hit the same as a genuine series entry.