Brains

"A vicious cyborg abomination with life-stealing tentacles protruding from its chest during attack."

- Quake 2 Manual

In Quake 2, Brains is a strange Strogg creature, constructed from a grim mixture of human and mechanical body parts. It has a small stereo-camera in place of a head, two arm hooks, multiple hooked tentacles within its opening chest cavity (which it sometimes unleashes on nearby Enemies to bring them within range of its arm hooks), and a powerful energy shield that is able to absorb a lot of gunfire. However, (perhaps as a result of all the equipment it carries or because of some unresolved flaw in its creation process) the Brains is by far the slowest enemy in the game, making it easy to avoid, outmaneuver, and dispatch.

Brains start appearing in the Factory hub, and are a rare enemy throughout the rest of the hubs.

Strategies

 * Alone, a Brains is not much of a threat because it has to get in close to attack, but its energy shield makes non-energy-based attacks quite weak against it. Note, however, that when it opens its chest to use the tentacle attack it drops its guard, so an efficient way to attack it is to make it try to use the tentacle attack, jump back out of range and shoot it with the Super Shotgun. As the energy shield does not protect it from attacks from behind, another effective strategy is shooting a rocket from your Rocket Launcher that will hit the ground right behind his back will take him down in a couple of shots.
 * With other enemies, a Brains is a non-threat. Because of its slow speed, it takes forever for it to get near you. If you see it getting close, just move back a little. Get rid of it when the other enemies are dead. Otherwise, you're putting yourself in unneeded danger.
 * Beware of Brains hiding in small dark spaces, this happens often in small narrow hallways in which you may be ambushed if you are off guard.
 * If Brains is fought in tight spaces it may be really dangerous, especially if you're close when it uses its arm hooks. However, if it uses its tentacle attack, it will be vulnerable to attacks while not doing too much damage.

Death Message

 * Player was torn up by a Brains's tentacles

Trivia

 * It's possible that Brains are some kind of Strogg scientist. This may explain their name, the fact that they mostly reside in various research labs, and all have poor combat skills.
 * Brains' body is assymetrical, due to a small loss of their right side.