Not without it's flaws but a good solid Strogg busting shooter
You play as Matthew Caine...a new member of tough marine troupe...Rhino Squad...following on from the events of Quake 2 as we join the marine forces they are heading for their first landing on the home planet of evil biomecanical monstrosities the Strogg, and it's all out war from the start.
As with all of the Quake series this is a first person shooter, ulike in previous installments however you regularly find yourself fighting your enemies shoulder to shoulder with a number of allied units as you battle with you're fellow marines to eliminate the Strogg menace, sometimes their pressence just serves to add extra firepower, however as sometimes you'll meet field medics and techs that serve strategic as they are able to restore your health and armour mid battle as long as you keep them in one piece. The friendly faces of your Rhino Squad team mates also team up with you on regular intervals and their struggles and plights throughout the campaign serve as further meat to the games storyline.
Graphically i found this game quite pleasing...I feel this is where the game might have drawn flak from those who have previously played the PC version and mention frame rate problems and other graphical glitches. Now perhaps It's because I never played the game on the PC or perhaps im just uncultured but I noticed no such problems...from my viewpoint while I can conceed that the Xbox 360 is capable of better visuals as we have seen from the likes of Perfect Dark etc...there is nothing about the graphics I witnessed that impared my enjoyment on the game in anyway..and quotes of "next gen graphics should be better" aside I found the visuals to be of a high standard.
The game however is not without it's glitches on a number of occasions on completing a level the game failed to load the next causing my machine to hang up...perhaps this was an issue with a certain batch or something similar but despite exchanging the game for a new copy once the same problem did arise on occasion..and from looking on forums it appears others suffered the same problem...which can be annoying to say the least. In my expierience at least this happened more towards the start of the game, perhaps more thorough testing was required and this is symptomatic of rushing the games release to meet the 360 launch date but this is unconfirmed and does not effect the game itself as a whole.
I found the weapons on the whole to be varied...well balanced and satisfying from the rapid firing carnage dealt by the Nail Gun and Hyper blaster, and the close range carnage of the shotgun, to the death vortex spewing dark matter gun. The enemies are well designed, varied and have good solid AI requiring good tactical awareness and focus on choosing the correct weapon for any given situation, Likewise the AI of your team mates is fairly solid..they get stuck into battles and manage to mostly avoid running into you're line of fire, although of occasion when you are supposed to follow someone to the next location they do seem to enjoy charging off without thinking that you might like to pick up all that ammo and health that may be scattered around.
Gameplay wise the use of vehicles and some on the rails shooting sections help to keep a bit of variety in the air and the use of challenges and acheivements increase lifespan of the game and attempt to tempt you back to unlock further boasts for your gamer profile.
Another unfortunate downpoint is that although the game does feature a live multiplayer mode...I am actually yet to catch an online game as the servers seem to be permanently deserted which is unfortunate since with no one to play with multiplayer mode becomes somewhat redundant.
Finally one final upward point which led me to further enjoy this game was the suprise inclusion of the sweet little bonus disk I found in the games packaging...along with standard goodies such as making of videos it also features the full version of the classic Quake 2 all ready to roll on the 360 a nice touch nd another full game to play...it can't be bad.
So to conclude while not a life changing expierience I found Quake 4 enjoyable and compelling from beginning to end and though in time it may be overshadowed in a growing 360 software catalogue you could certainly do a lot worse.