Reading Games

Quake 4
RavenSoft and ID
9 out of 10

Your head hurts, your ears are ringing and as you look through the haze from the shell that just exploded behind you, you see movement. Is it… yeah, it is. Your team is positioned up ahead, firing around the corner while dodging behind crates to avoid enemy fire.

Pulse pounding, you scramble down the trench, reload on the fly and dart around the corner with full auto blazing at anything moving!

Got to tell you kids, this is a fun game. It’s got all the beauty of Doom 3 but a hell of a lot more action and suspense. You have to protect your man while he disables land mines, race across the ground in your walker, blasting at Stroggs and bombers overhead.

And I’ve only gotten to the 5th level. I can’t imagine what’s coming.

What makes this game a much better play than Doom 3 is that they didn’t try to re-invent the wheel the way that ID did. RavenSoft took what worked from the other Quake games, added some new functions and some new game play techniques and let it go. It stands on its own because you really get to play full on war with cool weapons and bad ass enemies.

As far as the enemies are concerned, the AI is a little stupid but I think that it actually mirrors the idea that these foes are really just chopped up people controlled by central computers and as such, they are not supposed to be the smartest. The Stroggs also have tons of them so they tend to not care about losses.

Raven made use of all the glory of the Doom engine and even added a few features to make the game visually stunning. Rather than the dank halls of Mars station and the gloomy fleshy stuff of Hell, there are a lot more colors and contrasts and a good deal of outside activity so that you find yourself battling down a corridor and suddenly your outside and there are drop turrets crashing all around your vehicle.

Sound, of course, is superb, especially if you have a nice 5.1 channel setup. I’ve tried ones with more speakers and while they are impressive, the cost doesn’t really make it worth it. I bought a cheap Audigy and a cheap Logitech speaker system and it is perfect for gaming. I did find, however, that the Stroggs tend to say the same thing over and over so that you know exactly which one is coming for you.

Don’t bother with the DVD Collector’s Edition. I have it and it really doesn’t have much to offer except if you really want Quake 2 and the expansion packs. They are not upgraded by the Doom engine like Half Life 2 did with porting the first game to the new Source engine. It is only $10US more so it’s not a bank killer.

All in all, I would have to give this game 9 out of 10 as it is just plain Quake fun and you can never go wrong with that.

I know I'm dead on the surface But I'm screaming underneath

Oh god yes, Quake 4 has been a blast. Haven't beaten it yet, but well... this game has already claimed two firsts:

The first SP game I'll beat in linux, and the game with the goriest and painful scene I've ever seen (beginning of strogg med station). Thinking of it, and how much it had to hurt... god...

But yeah, this game rules. I just got ahold of the rail gun and lemme tell you: I've never had more fun. There's something about running up to a baddy, shotgunning him in the face, whirling around with a rocket launcher to nuke a few baddies in a tight group and then hit the ground only to hyper up something else. The game is really fast pased, and is definitely challenging halo in it's epicness.

I've questioed several spots on how much they reminded me of other games. Half Life 2, for example, did a few things similarly (med stations). Also, getting into and controlling something that had more fire power was amazing! I mean, why couldn't I do that in doom 3? 0_o

One thing I really liked was how they didn't make it slow. Doom 3 was pretty hard to get through hardware wise. My 6800 blazed through Quake 4 at the same settings! I'd also like to report impressive audios with an Audigy 2 ZS and Altec Lansing 5051GT speakers (I can't reccomend these enough).

The only thing that ever let me down was smoke, ever noticed it looks like a bunch of swirling pngs?

Anyway, kyle, we need to frag sometime. I agree with kyle on the top tier rating. Somewhere's between 8 and 10, so far the game is awesome. Gotta see how it ends, though.

I should be ashamed of myself.

This post was edited by Aynjell on Nov 27, 2005.