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Quake II RTX
Quake II RTX is a cutting-edge, ray-traced reimagining of id software’s old school classic, by NVIDIA’s Lightspeed Studios. Global lighting effects, including realistic reflections, refraction, shadows, ambient occlusion and global illumination are a result of the path-traced simulation of light.
What players say
Steam review score and the most-helpful voices, which may include critical ones. Score via Steam as of 2026-09-02 · quoted reviews as of 2026-05-12.
What reviewers agree on
27 of the 81 reviews raise this.
“Quake 2 rtx runs way better than portal rtx, made a 30 year old game look good too, At least outdoors RTX just seems to be insane lighting and really nice water effects aswell as over the top bloom. We were infact not…”
16 of the 81 reviews raise this.
“Great old school, low poly fragging”
“I enjoyed the retro play. Nice looking with RT. I got stuck only once (couldn't move).”
“easy to run/very fun *it even rhymes!*”
11 of the 81 reviews raise this.
“Quake 2 rtx runs way better than portal rtx, made a 30 year old game look good too, At least outdoors RTX just seems to be insane lighting and really nice water effects aswell as over the top bloom. We were infact not…”
6 of the 81 reviews raise this.
“ok, but quake2 remaster is superior. atleast it's free to play through it.”
“First off, looks a bit better then official Quake 2 remaster, and with owning a full Quake 2 enables full game, unlike e.g. Halflife 2 RTX which is shortened game demo. Which is indeed a plus. And seems to be better…”
“this is what quake 2 will look like in 2013 all jokes aside you can just turn off the awful looking ray tracing and play the shareware demo for free, so if you cant afford the remaster this is a good way to try out…”
14 of the 81 reviews raise this · 8 of them still recommend the game.
“lipstick on a pig”
“Souless techdemo”
“Ugly and crap. Stick with the original enhanced version.”
8 of the 81 reviews raise this · 5 of them still recommend the game.
“Utter trash. Soulless tech demo that doesn't really work well.”
“While it looks nice, it just doesn't run well compared to other games that have implemented RTX. I love quake; 1,2, and 4 are my favorite in the series. 1 has a much better ambience compared to 2 and 4 has much better…”
“looks bad and run even worse. its just a rtx filter on top of quake 2. the game looks better without ray tracing”
3 of the 81 reviews raise this · 3 of them still recommend the game.
“ray tracing was a fun way to revisit Quake II, flares were a necessary addition with all the pitch black areas in some of the maps. one issue though; at the very end of the game after you kill the makron and hop in the…”
3 of the 81 reviews raise this · 2 of them still recommend the game.
“literally just a techdemo of 1 level”
Counted across 81 English reviews, sampled to match this game's 86.9% positive rating · as of 2026-05-12
“It was a cool demo. I bought Quake II and loaded the files into this game and played the whole game in this engine.”
— a player, Steam review · 15 hrs played“Obviously this is mostly just tech demo for path-tracing etc. advanced lighting, but to be honest, it's not that remarkable for me. Looks neat, I guess, but I think there are better demonstrations for this technology. This would not make me buy new GPU. There should be neutral…”
— a player, Steam review · 1 hrs played“ouaagghhhh oooooooo oaawwwghhhhh ooouaaaaaaaaaagaghhhhhhhh oooooooooo ooaaaaaaaaaaaaa shinyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy shiny and colorful aaaawywgugugghghghjgjkhgv uytc iyutrx 68i54ec o7uwtf bp8iq3wv yt”
— a player, Steam review · 15 hrs playedPlayer activity
Monthly average concurrent players. Live data self-collected from the Steam API · history through 2026-06 via SteamCharts.
Price tracking
US-region pricing (USD), sampled twice daily by our own tracker since 2026-07-11. Steam prices vary by region — always confirm your local price on Steam.
Latest official news
Developer announcements via the Steam news API — links go to the original posts. More across all games on the news hub.
Quake II RTX v1.8.0 Update
Maintenance update that includes the fixes and features introduced in the past two years. Highlights: - Added screen warping when underwater - Added an option to shoot at the crosshair (aimfix) - Adde
Quake II RTX v1.7.0 Update
Maintenance update that includes the fixes and features introduced in the past year. Highlights: - Added a player flashlight (use "bind toggle cl_flashlight" to bind it to a key) - Fixed multiple comp
Quake II RTX 1.6.0 Patch
Hey, everyone! Today we're releasing v1.6.0, featuring the below fixed issues and improvements. Breaking Changes: Re-designed the material definition system for flexibility and modding. Removed suppor
Quake II RTX 1.5 PATCH
Hey, everyone! Today we're releasing v1.5, featuring the below features, fixed issues, and improvements. New Features: Added support for ray tracing using the `VK_KHR_ray_query` extension API. NOTE: T
Quake II RTX 1.4.1 PATCH
Hey, everyone! Today we're releasing v1.4.1, featuring the below fixed issues and improvements. Fixed issues: Fixed a crash on launch when there is no "newgame" command, for example, when someone over
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Screenshots
Official Steam store screenshots — click any shot to enlarge.
Facts & details
From the Steam store record, snapshot 2026-05-12.
| Genres | Action, Free To Play |
| Player tags | Free to Play · Action · FPS · Violent · Multiplayer · Gore · First-Person · Singleplayer · Shooter · Classic · Sci-fi · Remake (SteamSpy community voting) |
| Features | Single-player |
| Languages | English |
| Official site | https://www.GeForce.com/QuakeIIRTX |
Minimum system requirements (PC)
Minimum: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS *: Windows 7 64-bit Processor: Intel i3-3220 or AMD Equivalent Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, or higher Storage: 2 GB available space Additional Notes: Vulkan