“Quake 4” is the latest installment in a nine-year saga. The “Quake” series has been one of the most influential sets of computer games in the last decade, setting industry standards for both single player and multi-player experiences. “Quake 4” contains both single player and multi-player components, and we’ll look at each of these in turn.
Developed by Raven Software under the strict direction of Dallas-based id Software, authors of last year’s successful “Doom 3,” “Quake 4” was four years in production. Despite the amount of time taken to make the game, the storyline is all too familiar: save the planet by defeating the bad guy.
As a game that uses the “Doom 3” technology, “Quake 4” obviously looks stunning. It uses all the abilities of “Doom 3,” such as fully dynamic lights/shadows and bump mapping, to create beautiful environments. Well, sometimes the environments aren’t exactly beautiful (they’re creepy as hell), but the game is impressive to look at.
However, once you get past the impressive graphics, it is ultimately quite a dull game to play. There are some great scripted cinematic sequences (passing through the medical facility and being experimented on will stay with you for many years), and most of the enemies are well animated, but there just isn’t the feeling of depth to the game that one remembers from previous incarnations.
Perhaps it’s because we’re getting older, or perhaps our gaming palate became jaded over the years, but “Quake 4” just isn’t scary enough. At no time do you feel truly threatened, which should be the defining characteristic of this game genre. If the player empathizes with the character onscreen, game immersion is complete, which is sadly missing from the majority of this game’s solo campaign.
The single-player plot is effectively a retelling of “Quake 2.” Once you realize you’re playing the same soldier who defeated the evil Makross (end-of-game boss) in “Quake 2,” there is no further character development. We never understand why this soldier is silent or alone, and to be brutally honest, we didn’t care. There is a pretty flimsy motivation given for progressing through the game but it doesn’t seem like any justification for continuing to play. Even when you get captured halfway through the game and turned into one of the enemy, you’ll feel no spark of retribution or vengeance.
The other side of the game is multiplayer. Multiplayer has many changes from single player (since the emphasis is fast combat against human opponents rather than against computer-controlled enemies), but there isn’t enough space in this article to discuss all the relevant elements of “Quake 4” multiplayer. Instead, we can cover the most important aspects: weapons, sound, environments and characters.
The weapons in multiplayer work really well. The lighting gun and rocket launcher feel more powerful than they did in “Quake 3,” which is a “Quake” player’s dream. It was great to see the nail gun again, and BFG (an unmentionable acronym for the game’s most powerful weapon; begins with “Big” and ends with “Gun”) returning to its roots was a great touch. The machine gun as the startup weapon is a throwback to “Quake 3,” and there has been much geek-debate about this. Personally, we think that something like a shotgun would have been better.
The music is reminiscent of that created by Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor for the original game, amazing industrial tracks that pumped you up and got the blood racing. The weapon sound effects, however, are overly tinny and the rapid machine gun fire began to give us a headache.
The levels look great and we wish they had several more. Some of the levels are recreations from “Quake 3,” but many of the most popular multiplayer maps in the entire “Quake” series come from the original game. Seeing modern versions of DM6, DM2 and DM4 would have been spectacular but we were disappointed. Like many modern games, “Quake 4” comes with an environment editor so it will only be a matter of time before you can download custom interpretations of those classic maps.
Overall, one of the things that we enjoyed about “Quake 3” was the multiple options available when choosing a character to play. Female gamers will be disappointed that none of the multi-player characters are female, only variations on the “Quake 4” male character. What’s that about? If you’re a true fan of the first-person shooter genre, you’ll pick up “Quake 4” because it is your destiny. But anyone looking for a real FPS romp would do well to dust off “Quake 3” and hope there’s an expansion pack.
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