Quake 4 (PC DVD)

The game follows on directly from Quake 2 with references to ‘some soldier taking down the Strogg leader’, allowing for a fullscale military invasion of Stroggos. You’ll immediately notice two things: firstly this game looks absolutely beautiful; the enhanced Doom 3 engine looks fantastic, the environments are delicious and the character models look much better – the whole plastic looking faces are gone, and secondly, the game starts in an almost painfully cliché way as you’re separated from your squad, forced to go it alone: but that quickly changes as you find yourself surrounded by fellow soldiers, sometimes fighting alongside them. It’s nowhere near as expansive as, say, Call of Duty 2 – but it does detract from the one man army feel FPS games tend to have. The outdoor sections also add to the feeling that you’re fighting a war as droids and tanks roll past to the chorus of machinegun fire.

The combat is bread and butter FPS stuff, enemies jumping from around corners with the classic Strogg ‘gyanchin’ type sounds, which I translate mostly as ‘Good day sir, might I interest you in a spot of DEATH!’ – then either shooting at you or charging in close to melee. You have no melee abilities yourself, which both forces you to keep your distance from the enemy and perhaps conjures fond memories of your pre-Halo days. The weapons available are pretty much the same as Quake 2 with a few additions – there’s a neat nailgun, a very fun-to-use lightning gun and a few other additions. I found myself thinking there were too many weapons in the game – and since only the blaster and machine gun have an attached torch, you’ll find you use the machine gun for most of the game anyway. But at least with so many weapons available (about 12), everyone will find a favourite in there.

To be blunt, absolutely nothing sets this game apart from the crowd, there’s nothing special – no neat features, nothing particular about this game – there’s no slow motion, no amazingly advanced artificial intelligence (the enemies hop from side to side, forcing you to adjust your aiming occasionally but that’s about as good as they get) and no neat set pieces or scripted events which are really memorable. But what Quake 4 does, and does excellently, is offers a no questions asked straight-forward killfest. Compared to recent entries into the FPS genre, ranging from last year’s FarCry and Half Life 2 to this year’s FEAR and Call of Duty 2, this game is bland and uneventful, linear and mainstream. But games don’t have to revolutionise the genre to be good games, and games don’t have to pass a two hundred point list of credentials to qualify as worth playing – Quake 4 is fast paced action with fun combat and top-class visuals. And while certainly not as good as the abovementioned games – it is nevertheless a fine addition to any games library and worth playing through.

The game mostly takes place indoors and looks absolutely amazing – the Strogg structures look great, and as you stalk through processing plants where human corpses hang on hooks, or power facilities where limbless, headless corpses have been integrated into power production, you’ll learn to hate the Strogg. Being a fusion of technology and biology, the Strogg buildings often have strange organs merged into the very structures, pulsating and making ominous moaning sounds when shot at. It adds an incredibly creepy atmosphere to the game – and although you’ll use your machinegun-mounted torch for most of the game, it’s when you turn it off and let the environmental lighting take over that the game really becomes something special.

The outdoor areas, which are thankfully few and far between, are bland and it’s clear the doom 3 engine is made for indoor environments. There are also a few vehicle moments, but they’re poorly implemented and nowhere near as exciting as those found in Half Life 2, or Escape from Butcher Bay, though they are pretty fast paced and one vehicle level features a very neat giant robot-spider boss.

The single player campaign lasts around eight hours, split down into around thirty levels each lasting about fifteen minutes each, meaning you can play for very small periods of time while feeling as though you’ve accomplished something – which may make the game stretch out and feel a lot longer than it actually is. The multiplayer plays exactly like Quake 3 did – but the player limit is sixteen rather than thirty two, and of course it looks a lot better.

The bottom line with Quake 4 is that it’s a game which offers a solid but straightforward single player experience and – if it’s your type of thing – a solid multiplayer experience. While the game is by no means essential, nor even highly recommended – it is worth a play and a decent addition to anyone’s games library.