The Quake series is a little bit like family: you like them all, but you don't necessarily want to spend all your time with them. The original game was positively freakish in its lack of cohesion, mixing sci-fi environments with fantasy monsters, but fun nevertheless because it truly dragged gamers into three dimensional worlds. In contrast, the sequel was a much better game for those who prefer something even vaguely resembling a consistent theme. In contrast, Quake III Arena (Q3A) was more a technology demo in search of a game, its single-player aspect being nothing more than multi-player versus bots.
As a fourth entry in the fragmented history of the franchise, Quake 4 (Q4) picks up where Quake II (Q2) left off: with the space marines assaulting the Strogg homeworld after the death of the head bad guy, the Makron. Returning to the most dramatically interesting game in the series is surely a good step in the right direction, and it's equally noteworthy that id Software handed their baby off to Raven Software for development this time around. The only real question is whether Q4 lives up to its name.
DOOM 3 (D3) in color. That's the best way I can think to summarize Q4. Yes, D3 did have colors beyond the grayscale, but Q4 positively straddles the rainbow by comparison. Overall, I have to say I prefer the look of Q4; it's at least as detailed as D3, but not everything is chromatically unsaturated yet shiny with specular reflections. Thus, I find Q4 all the more compelling in its artistic style.
Q4 is also a more detailed game. Some of the environments in Q4, particularly those toward the end of the game, are downright stunning in their intricacy and use of special effects. Those with weak stomachs should be advised that the ugh-factor runs rather high throughout many of the levels, thanks to various horrible bio-mechanical forms mangled/produced by the Strogg. Seeing a headless torso hooked into some bunch of mechanical stuff, squirming as if the man behind the flesh might still be "in there", is wrong on so many levels.
In the plus column, though, the underlying D3 engine seems to have been optimized. Q4 does run a bit more slowly than D3 in terms of average framerates, but it's pushing a lot more polygons. It's not at all uncommon in Q4 to have a couple of squad mates on hand to fight a handful or more of bad guys. With the level of detail for each of those models, that's an awful lot of work for any video card, yet Q4 seems to lag only slightly behind D3 in its framerate. In terms of performance, if your system will run D3 it will run Q4 as well; it might be a tad slower, but you'll definitely be getting more visual bang for your buck.
The one complaint I have with the visuals is that the "skybox" doesn't look very good. I guess I've been spoiled by games like Far Cry, wherein one can look all the way to the horizon and see a believable world. In contrast, Q4's horizon looks an awful lot like a grainy texture slapped on a polygon. Perhaps this is a testament to the limitations of the D3 engine and its oft-mentioned inability to render large, open spaces? I really don't know. What I do know is that this one exception mars an otherwise impressive set of visuals.
The audio is as good as the visuals. The weapon effects in particular are nice and beefy. The ambient sounds are appropriately unsettling, dialogue is well recorded (if not always the most inspired performances), sound effects are sharply defined, and everything balances quite nicely. I always know a game's audio is working well when the emotional context drains completely if I switch off my sound system, and that's definitely the case with Q4.
Surprisingly, I can't complain about the audio implementation either. I encountered not even a single pop or misplaced reverb effect. Positional audio seems perfect. In short, everything works as well as one could hope. I have no substantive complaints about the game's audio. It's not brilliant, but it's quite well done.
The interface is pure first-person shooter (FPS) simplicity. The menu system is as minimalist as it is functional. The key binding screen is nicely done, though the basic mappings will likely please most gamers. The HUD is informative without being intrusive. Q4 does nothing to depart from the tried-and-true in its interface, which means there's little else to say. It's all very simple, it's all very familiar, and it all works.
Would you like another helping of mashed potatoes to go with your turkey? Comfort food, dear readers, is what Q4 offers in the way of game mechanics. It can all be summed up in the two words near and dear to every FPS-gamer's heart: running and gunning. Sure, there's a bit of crouching that can be useful, and let's not forget to throw some jumping in there as well. But there's nothing about Q4's mechanics that departs from what has worked before. As with the interface, it's all very simple, it's all very familiar, and it all works.
I did say this was a Quake game, didn't I? Not surprisingly, the story consists largely of two acts: (1) killing and (2) killing. What separates the two clearly isn't their content, but rather the nature of the story's protagonist, who gets what is surely the world's worst full-body make-over somewhere past the halfway point. Again, those with weak stomachs should be forewarned: the trip to the Strogg "plastic surgeons" is neither pleasant nor happy.
To be fair, the game does feature a set of objectives, all with a rather martial feel. Missions usually start with a go-blow-this-up directive, which then boils down into sub-tasks like meeting up with the squad, following the squad into combat, retrieving a medic to heal wounded squad mate, finding the switch to open the doors, etc. The problem isn't that it's uninteresting; it's that we've done it all before in too many other games.
In short, the story behind Q4 ties nicely into Q2, and there are a couple of noteworthy bits. I was appalled at what ultimately becomes of Voss, for example, as his fate was painful to experience. But those moments were very few and very far between. Perhaps I'm becoming jaded, but games like F.E.A.R. make Q4's story look like amateur hour at a bad science-fiction convention.
First, the obvious complaint: the game is a bit short. I spent roughly ten hours on it, and I was proceeding with a fair amount of care. I know I wrote recently of F.E.A.R. that I wasn't bothered by its short duration, but that was because its artificial intelligence (AI) is so good that the game feels more substantial. In contrast, the AI in Q4 is pretty much what we've all come to expect from Quake: (1) move to attack range, and (2) attack.
Thankfully, there is some diversity in the environments and situations to enliven combat. It's quite a different experience marching into dark, claustrophobic corridors, driving a tank out in the "open", or running like crazy from the monstrous bosses that live at the top of Strogg towers. And I have to give credit where credit is due: not everything is so completely dark as in D3. The developers did a decent job at providing different places to throw down with all the Strogg nasties.
Speaking of which, there are quite a few different sorts of those nasties along the way. I haven't a clue what names to give them, but I counted roughly a dozen different foes, many of which seemed more or less susceptible to particular weapons. It's not exactly a bestiary dripping with originality, but there are enough different enemies to give the gamer something to think about while shooting away.
While I'm on that subject, the weapons also earn a decent grade. The basic pistol is pretty useless, but the machine gun is worthwhile throughout the game. The launchers (grenade and rocket) are both fun, but the hyperblaster, nailgun, and particularly the railgun seem underpowered, to me at least. Even the dark matter gun fails to provide the kills-everthing-in-sight rush of the old BFG9000 from the original DOOM. The fact that several of the weapons are updated throughout the game is helpful, but the arsenal's best selling point, in my view, is the sounds they make.
The vehicle sequences are mixed. On the one hand, they provide nice opportunities to get outside and blow the crap out of everything that moves. Yet on the other hand, the sequences are so simplistic and so linear that many of them literally feel like being on some kind of carnival rail-ride. They're fun, but they're not nearly as engaging as they might have been; in fact, they often seem like filler material included only to add bullet-points to the side of the box.
The bottom line is simple: Q4 packs a decent amount of moderately entertaining content into one package. It's not a game that's going to dazzle gamers with innovative features, nor is it a game that's going to wow us with tons of interesting options. No, Q4's content practically screams FPS-by-the-numbers from start to finish, which is simultaneously its greatest strength and weakness.
Déjà vu all over again. Seriously, Q4 is virtually indistinguishable from its immediate predecessor, Q3A, except for the improved graphics. The strafe jumping is the same, the weapon basics are all the same—heck, even some of the maps are retreads of the Q3A classics! To be clear, I'm not saying this is a bad thing; in fact, it's one of the things that drew me to the game. I have very fond memories of playing quick, frantic games of Q3A deathmatch with friends, and I was hoping to recapture some of that fun with Q4.
The problem, as it turns out, is that it just doesn't seem very satisfying anymore. And maybe on this point it's time to start questioning me as a reviewer. I had tons of fun playing Q3A, logging what surely must have been hundreds of hours in the final tally. But after spending just a couple of hours with the multi-player aspect of Q4, it seems tired.
Is it because the game isn't done well? I don't think so; Q4 does everything as well as (or arguably better than) Q3A. Is it because basic DM and CTF are no longer viable game modes? Perhaps, but I still find myself jumping into Unreal Tournament 2004 (UT2k4) from time to time, and really hankering for an Unreal Tournament (UT) reunion with my old clan mates if I'm to be honest, to play exactly those modes. So what's the deal? Why doesn't Q4's multi-player aspect grab me?
The only answer I can come up with is that I've lost interest in the Quake way of doing things. There are some clear differences, after all, in the way Q3/Q4 approach DM/CTF compared to UT/UT2k4 and other games. I still get a kick out of those basic sorts of modes in F.E.A.R., Raven Shield, and several other games. So I begin to think I'm simply growing tired of the way the Quake games do things, and perhaps that disqualifies me from commenting objectively. I don't know what to think; you'll have to reach your own decision as to Phil's value as a reviewer.
Suffice it to say that there's nothing new under the sun in Q4 multi-player games. Virtually everything that you liked/hated about Q3A is all here. It's essentially the same experience.
I hate to say it, but Q4 is one of those games that grabbed me initially but fell a bit flat as time went on. It did pick up again, once I neared the final levels and more interesting environments, but a fair amount of the game felt as much like an item on my to-do list as anything. On the whole, I can't say Q4 is a bad game because it duplicates so much of what we've seen in other FPS games. The basic problem, I think, is that it does so little to distinguish itself from those other FPS games. It's most memorable distinction is the whole make-over scene, and that's non-interactive and makes little difference to the larger game.
It simply isn't enough anymore to get the basics right, not when games like Battlefield 2, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, F.E.A.R., etc., are sitting on my hard drive. If you're a die-hard Q3A fan looking for more of the same, or a gamer looking for any old shooter to play, then Q4 will likely exceed your expectations. But for the rest of us, our money is probably better spent on a different title. Q4 would have been hailed as a great game a couple of years ago, but today it just doesn't have what it takes to stand above the competition.
12/08/2005