Sound Advice: Tracking your Opponent with Sounds

Sounds are an extremely important part of becoming a good Quake II player. Sounds will tell you exactly how much health your opponent has, where your opponent is, where your opponent is going and how much ammo your opponent has.Each player makes a noise when injured - the noise they make depends on their remaining health. The ranges are 100-75, 75-50, 50-25 and 25-0. Memorising these sounds enables you to pinpoint to a 25-health accuracy exactly how much health your opponent remains with. This, of course, is vital in determining which weapon you should use - if your opponent has less than 25 health you're usually better off using the chaingun or super shotgun rather than the railgun, for example.

A careless opponent's position is easily deduced by the sounds they make - ensure you know the level well enough to determine where your opponent is if they make a certain pattern of noises; for example a weapon pickup and two ammo boxes. Make sure you know where every armour shard is on the level; usually there are only two or three groups of shards on a level so it's a dead giveaway as to your opponent's location if they pick one up. However it's important not to deduce where your opponent is then go rushing straight for them - instead, think where your opponent's next move will be and ambush them there.

More advanced uses of sounds include determining how much ammo your opponent has by listening to the ammo pickup noises they make - this can help a strategy immensely if you know, for example; that your opponent has only 50 bullets for their chaingun. Also, you can use the pain sounds to determine which healths and armours are left on the level by hearing how much damage a shot of yours took.