Crayola Clan Wiki | Reviews / Quake 4

January 13, 2006

So I'm playing Quake 4 now that I finally got my new computer put together. (What was the first thing I installed after Windows? Yup. Quake 4.) I think I can give it a completely fair and balanced review now that I've played it for a couple of hours.

Quake 4 allegedly picks up where Quake 2 left off. I personally can't remember what the story for Quake 2 was, since I only played through it like one time before I switched permanently to multi-player Capture The Flag. Besides, who really cares about the story? Anyway, Q4 is basically the same as every other shooter you've ever seen. You've got guns. They get more powerful as you go along. You shoot bad guys. They shoot back. You pick up health and armor and ammo. Same plot as Doom from 1995. Q4 has picked up some of the newer features of this genre as well, such as the ever-popular reloading and the getting-more-popular "squad combat." Usually you've got a couple of AI-controlled marines with you that serve to provide witty banter and extra firepower. Most of the time, they just get in your way. And no, you can't shoot them. I was disappointed, too.

Quake 4 is dark. And I don't mean moody dark. I mean dark dark. As in, pitch freakin' black. You can't see a damn thing. I bought a powerhouse 3D graphics card for this game and all I get are screens filled with black pixels. I have to use the stupid little popgun of a machinegun all the time because it's the only thing with a flashlight on it. (Great move guys... only put a flashlight on the weakest gun in the game...) I'm sure the designers were thinking... "ooooh, this is soooo coool! It's so dark and scary, just like a horror movie!" Um, no. It's annoying. In order to play the game, I had to crank the gamma up on my nvidia settings to the point where my normal desktop is so bright it's like looking directly into the sun. Now all the marine's faces are so washed out they're just white blobs. But at least I'm not blindly bumping into walls anymore.

<i>What</i> is up with game developers trying to be movie directors all the time?? I mean.. you're walking along minding your own business, you open a door, and suddenly you hear a stab of scary music and you're in a cut scene. I hate that crap. Especially when you get killed right afterward and have to repeat the same cut scene over and over again. I also hate standing around while the other characters run through their pre-scripted dialog before you can continue with the game. Just give me something to shoot at! I haven't got all day to sit here listening to marines chattering!

I'm also not fond of this trend of mixing vehicular combat into these alleged first-person shooters. At first it was kind of neat but it's gotten pretty old. Remember the days when you stayed on your feet through the whole game? Not anymore. Now you've got to get into trucks, drive tanks, get into gun turrets... all kinds of crap. (I guess we can all thank Tribes for that.) Just when you get used to controlling your own movements, you get thrown into some vehicle and you have to learn the controls all over again.

All in all, I think Quake 4 is kind of a dud. Next to Half-Life 2, it falls flat on its face. Everything in Q4 is done better in HL2, and requires <i>far</i> less processing horsepower to boot. As for multi-player, I have no idea. I don't play multi-player anymore because it just takes way too much time to get good enough to compete with the kiddies. I know it's sad, but I've grown up to be a "casual gamer."

And yes, even though I just trashed the game, I'm still going to keep playing Quake 4 until I finish it.