Fun run and gun shooter, but more of the same old stuff.
This game took me approximately 12 hours to complete, on hard difficulty. Now, without further ado, here’s my review of Quake 4:
Contents:
Introduction/Story
Gameplay
Graphics
Sound
Artificial Intelligence
Pros/Cons
Conclusion
Introduction/Story 6/10
Quake 4 takes place in the future at an alien planet. It starts off with you seeing pieces of your comrades floating around in space, and then you crash-land at some unknown planet, where you regroup with your fellow marines. Basically, your mission is to gain control over the territory and rid the planet of aliens. IMO, the story is one of the weaker parts of this game. Basically, you’re only objective is to shoot, although sometimes, with logic behind it. Although, what you do throughout the game is what you would probably do in real life, which is shoot the crap out of your enemies, but I still feel that they could’ve made a stronger story. The game really picks up when you’re three quarters through the game, but I’m not going to spoil that for you.
Gameplay 8/10
There isn’t really much to say gameplay-wise. It’s your basic run and gun shooter. If you’ve played Doom 3 then you will find that this game is almost exactly like that, it is the same engine after all, just add vehicles and much more open spaces, ultimately leading to a much better experience than that of Doom 3’s.
For those of you that haven’t played Doom 3, this game uses the usual health bar and armour. There are a few med packs scattered throughout the levels. The guns in this game, I felt were extremely weak and nothing new. When you were shooting them they just didn’t feel at all powerful or entranced you in any way. I preferred that of Doom 3’s much more, even though they were practically the same.
Throughout levels, there are computers that can do certain tasks for you, ranging from healing to opening doors to operating cranes and etc… I liked how when you went over it you could see a mouse pointer over the little screen and you can press the option you want. Nothing big, but I prefer it much more than the usual method of pressing a button that can only do one task, such as open a door.
As I had previously mentioned, the game introduces vehicles. They range from tanks to mechs to flying bombing things. They are all a blast to drive, literally. Each vehicle has at least two modes of fire. For instance, the tank will have the usual big blast from the turret and the machine gun. It’s always fun plowing down a big wall of enemies with a machine gun.
Graphics 10/10
As I’ve previously mentioned, Quake 4 runs on the Doom 3 engine, although it has a few touch ups here and there. Set on ultra-high settings, the graphics are superb. The character models and environments all looked extremely well and pleasant to the eye. The only con I could really think of is that when you shoot some objects, their decals won’t be proper. Like, one time I shot a dead guy underneath a blanket and it made the same decal you would get from shooting a concrete wall, but you would barely notice something like that, I was just playing around shooting random objects at the time and happened to find that interesting.
The gun models and vehicle models all look great. I especially liked the many actions and animations the weapons have, such as the big ball of black matter swirling around in the dark matter gun or the ammo count and mode of fire display on some of the displays of the guns.
The indoor environments looked just like a carbon copy of Doom 3, maybe slightly less narrow hallways though, still, for me, it’s not much of a problem. The outdoor environments were very well made too. Such as dirt and sand blowing in the air as wind blew by and etc…
Sound 8/10
It all sounded like it should, sometimes even better. If outside, you could hear the wind blow by, or the crackling of your foot crushing sand underneath you. Indoors, you could hear the many machines all around you working and doing their thing. The only real concern I have, is that all of the weapons sound extremely underpowered and didn’t make shooting a gun much fun at all.
Artificial Intelligence 9.5/10
There’s not much to say. Enemies would take cover when under fire, peek out from corners, or go hide when injured. Sometimes, your enemies would even walk over to health machines and get themselves healed. Your fellow marines would do many of the same things, but there aren’t too many missions when you’re fighting along side them. Sometimes they would do stupid things such as shoot at a wall when the enemy was behind it, giving away their position, but then again ours also. If the aliens or marines would hear footsteps or sounds of the enemy they would become more cautious and alert, making it much harder to sneak past them. Note: This was played on hard difficulty, so if you are playing on a different difficulty level your experience may be different.
Pros
-great graphics
-cool vehicles
-great turn of events near the end
-nice AI
-a lot like doom 3
Cons
-weapons sucked!
-too much like doom 3
Conclusion
If you liked Doom 3, then you will definitely enjoy this game, since it’s practically the same thing. If you’re a fan of fps, sci-fi especially then I also recommend you pick this game up. Once again, if the weapons were better, I would’ve enjoyed this game MUCH more.