Customer Reviews

Quake 4

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Quake has a long, infamous history as a hard-hitting first person shooter that is not afraid of gore. With the XBox 360, Quake truly steps up its attention to detail.

This classic game has been around for eons. I remember the old days of Doom and Hexen - and wow, have we come far since then! We now see a very cinematic version of the FPS epic series, with cinematic style intro sequences reminiscent of Alien and other great sci-fi series.

You're in essence a space marine, part of the Rhino group. Your team is shot down from the sky while landing on a hostile planet, taking out the Strogg. From that point forward, all you need to know is that you have to blow up pretty much everything that moves.

I'm sure, with the never-ending sequence of sequels that come out, that people will compare this to old versions of Doom and Quake. They'll also compare it to Halo. Really, unless you want to play with old-system games for years on end, you have to find other things to play. I love Halo and Halo 2. But eventually I want to play new games, if only to try out new maps.

Quake has a whole different look-and-feel than Halo does. It's a different universe, a dark, bloody one full of industrial grunge. It's more "gritty". And, to be honest, as much as I love Halo, I really appreciated the marines in Quake 4. They appeared to actually work as a team. My medic and techie hung out near me, healing me and giving me support. In Halo it seemed like your teammates were the traditional "red uniformed security dudes" from Star Trek - only around to act as cannon fodder during the current episode. In Quake 4, they were much more long lasting, if you played things well.

Is this a killer app? Probably not. The graphics are rather impressive on the HD TV - but for example the sky is static. Pretty, but static. The textures down in the mines are detailed, bloody, grungy and very dark - but it gets repetitive. The gameplay is simply blasting, blasting more, blasting more and some dodging. The sound is a stream of bullet blasts.

But that being said, that is all the Quake series has ever intended to be. It's a fun way to blow off steam. You have a hard day at work or school, and you come home to blast away enemies for a few hours. It's very stress-relieving. You feel like you make some progress, it's easy to save and pick up the story later on. No complex puzzles, no intricate stealth sequences. It's all about blasting away with great accuracy.

If you're a FPS shooter fan, it would seem silly to sit stationary and hold your breath until you turn blue, or until Halo 3 finally emerges. Buy Quake 3, have fun blasting away at dark-and-gloomy enemies, and tune your skills. Other games will be coming out eventually for you to get that eye candy you crave.

Much maligned game. Unfairly. For those not in-the-know, the Quake franchise is basically what the ID guys did after they got bored with Doom. Quake4 is what they did after they got bored with Doom3. Doom 3 PC-to-xbox was well received, Quake4 wasn't well received in general, but the PC-to-360 translation seems to have gone fairly well though some complain of frame rate issues. They never bothered me. The other games you will have seen in the Doom3 engine / xbox universe would be Prey and the upcoming QuakeWars. Wolfenstein (very ugly looking port on the xbox) was Quake3 engine so not related.

CONS:
- early desert levels look uninspired, boring. If you left the game early, I can see why it got such bad press.
- goofy arcade shoot-`em-up game elements in which you shoot stuff and it flies up into the air. Reminds me of a boorish arcade game.

PROS:
- fantastic looking Doom3 engine.
- once you get beyond the external desert levels, much better maps and environments begin to kick in.
- variety of enemies with their own characteristics.
- slight twist on the health/armor pack. You also have techs that occasionally travel with you and can fix your health and armor. the also use the health station concept that Half-Life2 uses.
- good array of weapons. The weapons get upgrades which is nice. The lightning gun can hit multiple targets. I especially like the Dark Matter Gun which shoots a slow beautiful purplish-black inky deathlike projectile.
- no need to consult the internet due to glitches or non-intuitive gameplay.

Again, I don't know where to place the story. It's like criticizing a bad low-budget horror movie, it's almost unfair. But anyway I do like the story-twist where they make you the enemy, giving you access to enemy health packs, enemy language, etc (Prey also works this way) although the process by which this happens is too reminiscent of a cut-scene toward the end of Half-Life2. Doom3 Resurrection of Evil also ripped-off the Half-Life Gravity Gun so apparently the ID guys like Half-Life a lot. Consider it an homage.

And why is this guy still only a corporal after saving the planet?

It isn't Halo, it isn't trying to be. It's trying to be a good Doom3 derivative and that's exactly what it's good at.

There are good first-person shooters out there. Those shooters contain a story that captivates the player enough to blast through a dozen or so levels of shooting, dodging, and grenade-lobbing. Those levels generally have multiple objectives that are varied, from bombing a structure to rushing a certain location and killing everything from point A to point B while staying alive. Those shooters are generally accompanied with attractive graphics and pulse-pounding music. The Xbox 360 version of Quake 4 doesn't have many of those qualities. It's not a terrible game, but it's one of the least impressive shooters I've played this year.



In Quake 4's brainless campaign, you'll strap on the armor of the space marine Matthew Kane, a member of the Rhino Squad that is attacking the evil Strogg on their home planet. The biomechanical beasts are foul, dirty, and ruthless--and a small twist near the middle of the game will show you and Corporal Kane just how dirty the Strogg can be. I thought that it was nice for Raven to throw in a truly unexpected story twist but I never really found the rest of the game to be very interesting. At least the second half of the campaign is fast, frantic, and intense. It's preferable to the first half. Overall the game is about 10-12 hours long, clocking in at or near the shooter average.



It's the gameplay that had me let down and shaking my head. Quake 4 plays like a good first person shooter...from 2001. The fragging is so ridiculously generic from the start of the game until the very end. Some will say it's just Quake's traditional gameplay, I say it's boring. You'll pick up progressively stronger and better guns but at the same time your enemies get a little faster, a little bigger, an a little more deadly. There's a balance established between strong weapons and strong enemies. However, most of the action consists of running forward throughout similar rooms, finding the Strogg, and shooting them until they fall over and their corpses disappear. They don't move around much at all, they often don't even try to evade your fire, and they don't try to outsmart you in the slightest bit. Usually they'll stand in place, move towards you, and shoot you without taking much cover or attempting to get around you for an easier kill. A few of the enemies have different tactics but these tactics are usually just slight variations from the "stand-and-shoot" or "run-and-slash" strategy. It's disappointing when games like Call of Duty 2 have such impressive intelligence.



The guns you get can be pretty cool but I discovered that almost anything can be killed quickly and effortlessly with a few well-placed shotgun blasts or an entire clip of machine gun ammo, even near the end of the game. The enemies don't take much cover, which is an example set for the player--running around and mindlessly shooting doesn't have many repercussions, because it isn't necessary to hide very often. Because of this, even inexperienced gamers can plow through this game's action. If you have to play through this game, play it on a hard difficulty setting unless you simply want to cruise right on through it. The only things that break up the action even the slightest bit are a few vehicular distractions, which are admittedly a lot of fun. One of them puts you on the back of an on-rails truck, shooting off the Strogg with your own weapons. The next throws you into the cockpit of a hovering tank, where you can quickly fire off missiles and pound the opposition with machine gun fire. The most exciting and last vehicle is the walker, which can use lock-on missiles and machine gun fire to rapidly take down enemies. These distractions are a lot of fun and it's a shame that the rest of the game is so generic.



Multiplayer, on and offline, isn't any more interesting than the single-player. What should have been a robust, fast-paced, frantic set of games turns out to be pretty dull and generally unexciting. Eight people can join up in a single game and of course you can frag each other in deathmatches but there isn't anything here that impressed me in the slightest bit. All these years I've heard about how much fun Quake can be in terms of multiplayer and I'm let down by gameplay that simply isn't interesting. Not to mention, Xbox Live is very inconsistent and the already-low frame rate (which I'll mention momentarily) makes Quake 4 more frustrating to play than it ever should have been.



Visually, it is very difficult to classify Quake 4. There were certain parts during the game that I was admittedly impressed with Raven's choice for art and style. There is a lot of detail throughout the environments, from blood-splattered walls to gears and mechanisms scattered around the various rooms. Even the nicely-lit interior locations, which compose most of the game, are interesting. Corridor shooting isn't nearly as repetitive when the bulk of the graphical factor isn't stale and boring. On the other hand, player models are very generic and almost every marine looks like his partners. One marine might have different hair and another might have a different skin color. The models also look so jagged without a high-resolution screen that it appears they have spikes or fur. Quoting a friend, "Quake 4 has cactus graphics." The effects are extremely dull, whether it's the Nintendo 64-calibur muzzle flash or the fire and smoke effects that would look at home in a generic Playstation 2 game. The music isn't very good, either. Where Perfect Dark Zero set a mood with its tunes, Quake 4 does nothing to pump the player up for any battle or confrontation. It's not epic, it's not exciting, and it fails to impress me at all. The voice acting is alright, but the dialogue is so cliched and generic that it cancels out any sort of impressing aural quality.



Overall, Quake 4 is a big disappointment. What was supposed to be a visually stunning, fast-paced, pulse-pounding shooter ends up being one of the most dull launch titles on the Xbox 360. The story is interesting enough to pull you through 10 hours of generic and brainless action, and the vehicular distractions are a quick and effortless blast, but that's about the furthest Quake 4 goes. If you're a Quake fan, I wouldn't question you if you rented the game but I'd have to frown down on anyone who decides to buy this game. There isn't enough here in terms of depth or new, modern shooter attractions. Pick up Perfect Dark Zero or Call of Duty 2 instead. Believe me, you won't regret it.

Sometimes, very rarely a 3D shooter playes better on a console than it does on a PC. Well, it's not one of those times. As a matter of fact for those who have played a PC version of Quake 4, playing it on Xbox 360 will be a huge step down. Surely the HDTV graphics are there and overall the game looks similar to the PC version, but controls are again the weakest link here.

Well, since the opening was about the "bad parts" of the game, let's go ahead and get though them before we get to the "good ones".

Having played Quake 4 on PC, and deciding to be a hot shot by start the Xbox 360's verion right away on the "corporal" difficulty, I quickly realized how bad of an idea that was. Aiming is certainly something that takes a good time to get used to with a controller. But even after about 5 hours I was still no where near good at locking into enemies and strafe dodging shots as I was on a PC after only 10 minutes of play.
Surely by switching to the "private" difficulty I was able to get though the game with a relative ease but the excitement wasn't there. All underminded by the fact that 3D shooters are meant to be played with a keyboard and a mouse.

The graphics in this game while not "Half-Life 2" realism like, are certainly pretty. And if you enjoy watching people get cut in half with saws, you will certainly appreciate all the character, textures, particle effects (yes, blood) and lighting quality of this game. (On the same note, if you enjoy it TOO much, you may want to see a doctor *wink*).

The problem, however, lies in the inconsistent FPS (Frames Per Second). Many times FPS plunge into low teen numbers, making the game a slide show for a few seconds. It wouldn't have been a problem if that happend every now and then but frames don't stay consistent for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Combined with already hard to work with targeting system, it can bring pure hell in certain situations and quickly lead to death. Which then leads to perhaps the last big problem in the game - long "loading" times. Loading times can last in excess of 30 seconds. And although they don't appear often if you progress though the game (about once every 30 minutes), they can become enormously irratating if you keep dieing. In situations where it takes more than simply shooting at the enemy (usually boss fights), it may lead to situations of running into a room, getting nailed with one hit and looking at "loading" screen. It can test a patience of those who are not sure what they are doing and die in seconds only to look at spinning Quake logo for half a minute, over and over.

On the good side, however, the game is a well made 3D shooter from the point of level designs, overall graphics, and a relatively deep storyline for a what most would consider "mindless shooter". The story is easy to get into: Stroggs are continuing the fight against the human race. So as one of the marines you get dropped off on their planet to show them who the boss is. The missions are the ones that tell you story from a "brotherhood" military point perspective. You know that the war is going on, but inside the game it's more about surviving together with fellow marines. Assigned to the squad, you constantly on the move to help others, and AI (CPU controlled NPCs) do a surprisingly good job helping you as well. Which certainly takes away the feeling many other shooters give you that you are actually "baby sitting" the NPCs instead of working as a team.

Through out the game you get to know quite a few peronalities and spend most of the game fighting along side of them. Never knowing who will live and who will die. It isn't until you get deeper inside enemy bases that makes you understand why this game deserves a strong "M" rating. The images of graphical torture of captured fellow marines, blood and gore are everywhere. But what can you expect from a complex called "Strogg's Medical Facility"?

The level and environemt designs are good, but at times can get a bit seamless. And the fact that many missions force you going back and forth though same rooms - certainly doesn't help. But it isn't significanly de-valueing the game overall.

There is a good choice of weapons in the game that get modified through out the game for a bigger punch. And there are a number of vehicles available for the use through out the short missions (usually outside). It seems fun but certainly nothing you haven't aleady seen before in other 3D shooters.

Multiplayer is pretty good and certainly adds a good amount of fun to the game. However, Xbox 360's version suffers from the same problems mentioned above. Where things like precise controls play bigger role than they do in a campaign mode. Making a PC version truly shine and leaving 360's version in the dust.

Overall, this game is an almost perfect example of what you would expect from "big hitter" companies like Raven Software and Id Software. But I wish they had taken a slight risk and tried to add something new to the game to spice it up and make it stick out from the rest.

PC version of this game strongly deserves 4.5 our of 5 stars. Xbox 360 version, however, is proabably somewhere in between of 3.5 and 4 stars out of 5. Mostly due to problems mentioned in the beginning of this review. One thing can be guaranteed is that you will have a blast playing it if you are into linear Gory, and Bloody 3D "twitch" shooters. The only suggestion here is to get the game for a PC if you have a powerful enough computer. If you don't, you will still have a blast on Xbox 360. Just probably not as a big one.

In a nutshell, picture a not-so-scary version Doom 3 with an incredibly awful framerate, cheesy story-line and graphics on par with Doom 3 for the XBox 1. After seeing Call Of Duty and even PDZ on the 360 I was incredibly disappointed with the graphics on this one. If there are more than 2 enemies on the screen, the framrate slows to an incredibly choppy rate. The sky looks like a low-res jpeg wallpaper image. I'd expect this stuff on PS2 but not on a launch title for a triple-core processor system. It almost seems like this was developed for Xbox 1 and at the last minute shifted to the 360 to have another launch title. The AI is pretty dumb, they'll stand next to exploding barrels and do little to avoid your gunfire. Also, you can't melee attack or throw grenades. That is incredibly stupid. I like the Doom 3 engine so its not a total waste to me, but as a supposedly 'new' Xbox 360 game this is a total waste of time.

I picked this up down the street used for around 6 bucks. That's about what it's worth. It's just a boring shooter. I mean, back in the day, when 3-D graphics were new, "Quake" was just awesome. It was the game to beat. But these days - with every single game being some form of 3-D immersion, the coolness of Quake has long since vanished.
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It's a boring shooter. I didn't think any of the weapons, or their subsequent upgrades, were that good. I rarely used the top gun - that dark matter one - it's just weak. So many other games have had so many cooler and better weapons. The graphics are fine - but what game isn't these days? I felt the game was far too difficult. There are so few health paks around, you die all the time. I got pretty frustrated with it and looked up the cheat codes online and blew through it in under a week. It just wasn't engaging or rewarding enough to fight through waves of aliens or zombie-people or whatever to play it as-is. It did have a bit of a dark side to it, which was neat. But this game is, at the outset, utterly forgettable.

The game has a great single player experience. However, due to its age, hardly anyone plays it online anymore. Each time I have tried to join an online multiplayer game I have not been connected with anyone. I find it hard to believe that no one in the U.S. was playing at each of those times, but that is what happened. Also, compared to more recent games, it is disappointing that the game does not include a split-screen deathmatch or co-op mode.

the graphics and game play are amazing, but i had one problem with it, when i wanted to play with my girlfriend it turns out i couldnt, only one player unless theirs a system link or Xbox live, but a great game for any die hard Quake fan, and plus you get Quake 2 which i thought was a great bonus, wish they could have done that with other games

While the graphics are on par with Doom and the game play is entertaining, what could have been a solid FPS has been ruined by buggy code. The frame rates are a major problem in this game. When people compare it to a slideshow, it is not an over exaggeration as it does get that bad if you are near a couple of enemies. The game also suffers from freezing problems, mostly when loading a new map. This makes me feel like the game was rushed out the door without the needed time for testing and debugging. For $60, this is unacceptable. The bonus disc, which contains Quake II and features about the making of Quake IV, was a nice touch.


If you are not a Quake addict and in dire need of a solid FPS, I would recommend Prey. Its graphics are on par with Doom and Quake, there are no freezing problems, and it is evolving FPS game play.

Ok here is the deal... The online support for this game just plain fumbled. I mean playing in the actual matches is as good as I would want it to be it's just a long journey to get there.

No split screen multiplayer support? That's just plain mean.

As for the single player mode, I absolutely love it. The graphics are artisticly top notch (on my 48" HDTV looks INSANE) but there are technicly really rough. I'm not sure why Raven let this get through to the retail build, hell I would have waited 6 more months for this game to be perfect. There has been some ranting about frame rate issues but in the few instances I have noticed it I wasn't too concerned.

I purchased 5 games with my launch day bundle including Perfect Dark Zero and Call of Duty 2. Both games rate way higher across the board on all the major game sites but frankly Quake 4 is so much fun I haven't even touched the other 2 save for giving them a quick try.

In the end fun is the name of the game, and this game has me hooked big time!

Enjoy,

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