Playing Dawn of the Machine

30th anniversary of the original Quake followed by new official expansion. New masterfully crafted maps and some gameplay twists.

New enemy additions and some modifications on the existing ones are keeping things interesting. I especially liked the "nested doll" enemies. Knights as you kill them turn into zombies and fiends.

Two fun changes been made. Player's health capped to 50 points gives some extra pressure and smaller maximum ammo capacity pushes the player to constantly swap weapons, hence forcing the player to mix playstyles. (similar to what they did in Doom Eternal)

So is it harder? Not really. It's just the enemy encounters became tighter overall. Most players that will quicksave inbetween anyway, so this was a smart choice to push the difficulty without making things frustrating.

All said, secrets became even more rewarding to discover as they give you incremental upgrades: bigger maximum health, larger ammo capacity and sometimes shiny new weapons.

Needless to say I enjoyed this experience to the point of wanting to replay it and find more secrets than in my initial playthrough.