Quake 4 Review

After 6 years of Quake 3 Arena, Id Software has finally released Quake
4, developed by Raven Software’s and marketed by Activision. Instead of continuing the Deathmatch concept of Quake 3 arena, Raven chose to continue Quake 4 from where Quake 2 left off.

Using a tweaked Doom 3 engine which provides for better graphics and gameplay, Raven developed another great game of the Quake series.

Payback Time

The game continues the story from where Quake 2 left, the Strogg invasion of Earth has been stopped and now to prevent anymore attacks; Earth’s forces have launched a massive attack on the Strogg’s home planet, in order to destroy the remaining Strogg warriors. You are put in the shoes of a soldier named Mathew Kane and sent with the first wave in the planet. However the ship carrying Kane and his other squad members crashes under enemy fire. Somehow Kane survives and meets up with the rest of his squad. From here begins the battle for survival and destruction of the Strogg bases.

All is going well, when Kane gets captured and is put through the process of becoming a Strogg, however before his mind can be cleared off his emotions and memories, he is saved by a team of infantry. Now Kane must infiltrate the main headquarters of the Strogg and destroy the central system in order to render the Strogg army useless.

Weapons

Quake 4 features both old and new weapons. The nail gun and the pistol are back from Quake 2 and turn out to be quite useful during the game. The Hyperblaster and Dark matter gun are the two new guns of Quake 4, Hyperblaster being the same as Quake 3’s plasma gun only having a faster firing rate, the darkmatter gun is totally different however, and creates a burst of energy when it hits and deals a lot of damage. Among the other weapons, the usual rocket launcher, grenade launcher, shotgun etc are there along with the much favoured Rail gun and
lightning gun.

The machine gun and pistol, both have light fixed which can be used to see in the dark, which is much better from the flashlight in hand of Doom3. Also the weapons have zoom function which can be used to frag far away enemies easily. The pistol never runs out of ammo, but doesn’t deal much damage also. As you progress through the game, tech engineers upgrade your weapons with heat seek, rapid fire and double damage abilities.

All in all the weapons look great and do not leave a scope of any complains in this sphere.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Quake 4 is top notch. The movement of both team members and enemy units is quite good. Team members stick with you, help and warn you about the upcoming enemies, the enemy units hide, roll away and even charge at you if they are close by and also setup traps in order to get you. The gameplay is definitely better than Quake 2 and even than Doom 3’s infact. The game moves quickly from one location to another providing different objectives thereby keeping the game interesting and enjoyable. The AI of the game is also pretty impressive, your squad mates don’t run away instead they help you out as much as they can; they can run ahead, unlock doors for you and also take quite a beating while taking out enemy units.

Once converted into a Strogg, Kane gets more armour and health, jump higher and is able to read Strogg’s language which adds to the gameplay. The loading time of the game is quite less and levels load up in under 20 seconds which is quite decent compared to the larger levels. Although you get to drive vehicles in the game which aren’t much hard to control and possess a good deal of firearms, they are restricted to particular levels only.

Sound

The game features almost no in-game music, however it makes up for it with the gun sounds and voices used. The dialogue delivery is quite decent and lines up with the game’s environment perfectly. The sounds of aircraft going overhead while dropping attack pods is also quite realistic along with the screeches and shots made by the Strogg units during war. The tanks, transport trucks, drop ships, etc all have been tuned to sound perfect.

Each of the guns have their own shooting sound done brilliantly, from the sound of the zoom of the machine gun to the grenade falling onto a steel pad, all add to the feel of the game as you hear the rocket leaving the launcher or an enemy unit falling screaming..

Graphics

Quake 4 uses a modified Doom 3 engine which is tweaked to a new level. This provides for the environment look which is quite real along with the gun and player models. The enemy units are quite well made and one can see all the metal fused with the skin and the damage done to them. The cutscenes are also well done and utilises the engine’s capacity. The graphics are crisp and beautiful even at the medium settings and get better as you move to higher settings.

The Strogg planet, aircrafts, alongwith other vehicles are also rendered beautifully and Quake 4 is provided with an Ultra graphics setting which can be used only with a 512mb gfx card which has been launched a few weeks back.

The Multiplayer

Multiplayer is the front which got ruined in making a good single player game in the case of Quake 4. Quake 2’s singleplayer mode was great and so was its multiplayer mode. Quake 3 took the multiplayer level to an alltime high being featuring a deathmatch type Singleplayer mode.

Quake 3 sparked off a lot of game mods providing players with different options like bright enemy skins, air control, quick weapon switch, etc. So there were many expectations from Quake 4’s multiplayer mode featuring a lot of improvements that were required in Quake 3 such as air control, bunny hopping, quick switch, better netcode.

Raven however did nothing; they took the basic Quake 3’s multiplayer mode and inserted it into Quake4 with just 9 maps shipped in the game. To top everything up, there was no option to add bots in multiplayer mode, which means that you cannot enjoy the multiplayer mode unless you have got someone to play the game with. The game has the standard multiplayer modes of Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the flag etc. The multiplayer mode doesn’t have any improvement over Quake 3, and thus may be the main reason for the game to not be as successful as its predecessors.

However with the SDK released the modding community has started up work on Quake 4 and there are some good mods like Xbattle mod available now.

All in all Quake 4 is a another great game by ID software having a great storyline, beautiful graphics and amazing gameplay, but it could have been better if more attention had also been given to the multiplayer mode. With competition from games like FEAR, COD 2 and NFS: Most Wanted, Quake 4 may not be able to make the impact that it could have made otherwise.

Quake 4 is available at a price of 1299 which is quite decent for the game according to me.