I've always been familiar with Quake, but only as a multiplayer game. I've played a lot of arena shooters (I'm more of an Unreal Tournament fan), but for whatever reason I never got around to playing the real Quake. I didn't really expect much considering how badly DOOM has aged, especially in terms of level design and general game feel, but I was really impressed.
Quake holds up on all fronts. The gunplay feels good, the movement feels great, the enemy variety is pretty good, and the level design is a night and day difference from DOOM and DOOM 2. It's hard to imagine that they came out only two years apart.
Despite being copied a million times, I feel like Quake holds its own against modern shooters. I would recommend it to anyone who likes movement shooters, and I probably should've played this ages ago.
P.S: I HATE SHAMBLERS I HATE SHAMBLERS I HATE SHAMBLERS
I think the one area that Quake really falls flat on modern playthroughs, is the level aethetics. The assets all look fine, in my opinion, but the levels visually, all just feel so bland and same-y. So much of it is just brown-grey tunnels. The closest thing to a landmark within a level tends to be a stained glass window. It really highlights just how much of an improvement Half Life was. While I enjoy Quake on a moment-to-moment basis, I find it gets a tad tedious purely because everything looks too similar, and it doesn't feel like you're making much progress.