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| Quake 4 Review; Gamespy 4 out of 5 | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Oct 26 2005, 09:54 AM (153 Views) | |
| Maplassie GTR | Oct 26 2005, 09:54 AM Post #1 |
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MR GTR
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CALL ME CRAZY, but I don't think the Strogg are all that bad. They're just misunderstood. Sure, they've invaded Earth and massacred countless humans, but they're a helpful bunch, too. Just look at Corporal Matthew Kane. This badass marine spearheads Earth's counterattack on the planet Stroggos, and every time he hits a dead end, a security door magically unlocks or some Strogg comes crashing through a wall, allowing Kane to move on. Heck, when the Strogg finally capture Kane, do they kill him on the spot? Nope. They outfit him with Strogg technology and make him stronger, creating the perfect weapon for their own demise. See? They just want to help! This is the kind of stuff you'll have to overlook if you plan on enjoying Quake 4, a first-person shooter that feels a generation or two behind in just about every regard but graphics. It's fine for what it is -- an action-packed, sci-fi shooter -- but while other franchises like Halo, Half-Life and Far Cry have spent the past few years pushing the FPS genre forward, Quake 4 appears stuck somewhere around 2001. Thankfully, some things never get old, and Quake 4's polished multiplayer makes it two games in one and a package well worth picking up, no matter how generic and easily forgotten Kane's adventures might be. Alone in a Crowd It's almost unfair to pick apart Quake 4's single-player adventure, because multiplayer has always been the series' strength, and this outing isn't any different. The plot picks up after Quake II (Quake III Arena didn't have a single-player storyline), with Earth forces poised for a counterattack on the planet Stroggos. The new central character of Matthew Kane is introduced as a mysterious figure, but the closest we get to learning about his past are other soldiers whispering about him (often right in front of him) for reasons that are never revealed. Kane often has company through his battles on Stroggos. Posted Image The early levels feature Kane regrouping with his Rhino Squad and fighting through various Strogg installations in an effort to disable their communications network and infrastructure. The gameplay is as generic as it gets, keeping you on a tight script and leading you by the nose from one objective to the next: most of the action takes place indoors, running down corridors and shooting whatever Strogg happen to show up. One nice touch of these early levels is that you often have company, whether it's a squad fighting alongside you or an engineer you're escorting somewhere, which helps distinguish it from DOOM 3. About a third of the way in, Kane is captured and "Stroggified" -- a horrific fate that befalls many captured humans. However, Kane is rescued before he can be turned fully Strogg, which leaves him part machine: stronger, faster, and able to interface with Strogg technology in a way no other human can. Although this helps sell Kane as a one-man wrecking crew, the twist is mostly wasted: Kane's health goes to 125 and can read Strogg writing, but it's not as if he can sneak around Strogg areas undetected or that the gameplay changes in any other appreciable way. (One mind-boggling scene takes place after Kane is reunited with his squad aboard a large human battlecruiser: even though many soldiers mistake Kane for a real Strogg, no one pulls a weapon or even seems alarmed as Strogg-Kane wanders the hallways. Great bunch of Marines, there.) After Kane's Stroggification, it can be hard to distinguish one level from the next. You spend a lot of time navigating hallways, riding elevators, flipping switches and retracing your steps. Despite their cyborg nature, the Strogg aren't particularly intelligent opponents: most of them charge straight at you, each with a little pre-scripted AI dance. Most of the fights play out the same, and you can carry as many weapons as you want, so the only tactics you have to worry about are keeping an eye on your ammo and health count and using the appropriate weapons for each enemy. (There are a few sequences involving a hovertank and a mech walker, but they're pretty brief and then never seen again, as are a handful of arcadey sequences where you ride and shoot.) Those weapons are one of the best things about Quake 4. It's a "greatest hits" collection from previous Quake games, including the shotgun, nailgun, hyperblaster, rocket launcher and railgun. Every single one of them is satisfying to use, with big, beefy sounds that will make any room with a good sound system, well, quake. There's no BFG this time around, but the new Dark Matter Gun is essentially the same thing, shooting out a miniature black hole capable of eating up clusters of enemies. It's a shame there aren't any offhand grenades in the game: they've become a staple of the genre in past years, and it's another example of how Quake 4's brand of gameplay feels a few years behind the times. There is the innovation, however, of the weapons getting upgrades as you play; capacity and firing rates are increased, damage is increased, and homing abilities are added. (These upgrades don't apply to multiplayer.) At the end of the day, Quake 4's single-player campaign is competent, but feels less like a modern shooter and more like a mash of Quake II and Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, games released by id and Raven in 1997 and 2000 respectively. (At some point, you may even mistake the Strogg for the Borg as they teleport in late in the game.) It's a prettier package, for sure, but as a single-player game, you've seen it all dozens of times before -- often in more interesting ways -- so once again, it's up to Quake's multiplayer to save the day. Things tend to blow up a lot in Quake 4. Good for us, bad for Strogg Posted Image Old Schoolin' Online Indeed, it's Quake 4's multiplayer that's most likely to keep the game on your hard drive for months (and possibly years) to come. Like the single-player game, it's a throwback to an earlier time, consisting solely of deathmatch and Capture the Flag. The difference here is that while plenty of games have made advances in the single-player arena, Quake 4 reproduces the joy of Quake 3's multiplayer in a way no other game has in the past six years, all with a shiny new coating. The multiplayer offerings are kept fairly simple. There are nine deathmatch maps of differing sizes and themes, including a few remakes: "The Edge" (q2dm1) from Quake II, and "The Longest Yard" (q3dm17) and "The Very End of You" (q3tourney6) from Quake III Arena (now named "Xaero Gravity"). Of the new maps, "The Fragging Yard" is the best, which comes in two varieties: a normal layout for free-for-all deathmatch, and a smaller 1v1 version perfect for tournament play. (Sadly, the computer-controlled deathmatch bots from Quake III aren't present, so no offline practicing for you.) In terms of teamplay, there's support for team deathmatch, as well as five Capture the Flag maps, which can be played in two varieties: standard and "Arena" mode. Arena Mode includes the powerups from Quake III: Team Arena -- speed, double damage, health regeneration and ammo regeneration -- and, as any Quake veteran can tell you, greatly change the strategy of the game. Most of the new maps are solid: "Relativity" is the only clunker, an uninspired maze of corridors with framerate issues on the top floor, but "Heartless" is a classic bit of CTF design, and "Speed Trap" has a pace that befits its name. Even after 6 years, players can't get enough of "The Longest Yard," remade for Quake 4. Posted Image One nifty innovation is the new Tourney Mode, which gathers all the players on the server and creates an instant 1v1 tournament, complete with brackets and everything. Players are paired off in their own arenas, and all the first-round matches take place simultaneously. If you lose, you're free to scroll through all the other matches and watch the action; if you win, you keep playing until you reach the finals. (It'll be interesting to see if modders can build on this, allowing admins to manually seed players or support double-elimination tournaments.) Ultimately, Quake 4's multiplayer succeeds because it strips the game down to its purest -- and strongest -- elements. Other games may have single-player games with better AI, more interesting levels, and more gripping stories, but when you break it down to just an engine and players fighting against each other, it doesn't get much better than Quake 4. The weapons are balanced well - the rocket launcher is still at the top of the list, but the shotgun, hyperblaster, railgun, nailgun and grenade launcher are all perfectly viable alternatives. Our initial multiplayer tests suffered from some discouraging bouts of lag, but that's cleared up greatly in the past few days as more servers have come online. Quake deathmatch isn't just a game, it's a sport, and it's good to see Quake 4 continue in that tradition. Graphically, Quake 4 is built upon the same engine id Software developed for DOOM 3, and it's easy to see the resemblance -- it may not be as impressive today as DOOM 3 was a year ago, but it's still an excellent-looking game. There are the same highly detailed character models, the same lighting and shadow effects - in fact, Quake 4 is generally brighter, but there are characters and levels that look like they could have come out of either game. Heck, with both DOOM 3 and Quake 4 set in the distant future, it's worth wondering if the two franchises are destined to collide at some point. For all its graphical advances, DOOM 3 was a pretty hardware-friendly game, and while Quake 4 requires a bit more horsepower, it ran fairly smooth on our test machines. We occasionally had to lower down from 1600x1200 to 1024x768 to keep the framerates solid, but 60 FPS was a normal sight throughout most of our testing. In our preview earlier this week, we talked about problems getting widescreen support to work properly -- the options in the video menu don't work properly, so you'll have to use console commands if you want to play at 1920x1200. It's a bit disappointing, considering id Software's engines have always been on the cutting edge of technology and there's a widescreen version of Quake 4 about to release for the Xbox 360. Where's the love? Quake 4 is chock full of glowing stuff like this, and makes full use of the DOOM 3 engine's advanced lighting and shadows. Posted Image In terms of sound effects, Quake 4 is outstanding, with a roster of weapons that thunder and boom from top to bottom, which adds a lot to the action. I have two requests to make, however: (1) please add the ability to adjust independent sound levels for speech and sound effects, as characters are continually drowned out by weapons; (2) please start using some new voice actors. Yes, we know they're some of the best Hollywood has to offer, but it seems like every Activision game has the same voices in its supporting cast, whether it's Wolfenstein or Elite Force or Call of Duty or DOOM or Quake. Yes, guys, we can notice. Finally, it's worth noting that there's a special DVD edition of Quake 4 available, currently going for $60. Aside from removing the hassle of multiple CDs, the DVD includes Quake II and its two mission packs, as well as some behind-the-scenes footage. Is that worth the extra $10? I think it is. (Editor's Note: In the initial publication of this review, it was incorrectly stated that the Special Edition DVD contained every edition of Quake. GameSpy apologizes for the error.) The Final Word Whether you should pick up Quake 4 depends on what you're looking for in a shooter. If you're looking for a single-player game that can compare to games like Halo and Half-Life, well, that's never been what Quake has been about. Call it 2005's answer to Unreal 2, another game that mashed together a ton of solid sci-fi shooting but never gelled into anything particularly groundbreaking or memorable. But as a fan of old-school deathmatch and CTF, I'm quickly finding myself hooked on Quake 4's multiplayer, so much that it's arguably worth the price of admission on its own. You're really getting two games in one package with Quake 4, and it's a game I suspect will eventually find its way onto many hard drives over the next year. I'm now looking forward to seeing what kind of mods the community comes up with, and the triumvirate of id, Raven and Activision could help their case greatly by releasing a few more new or updated multiplayer maps for free, similar to what other companies have done in recent years. If that happens, it might not be long before we're all playing Quake again. |
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4:32 PM Jul 11