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Quake 4 is the fourth title in the series of Quake FPS computer games. It was developed by Raven Software and distributed by Activision. Raven Software has collaborated with id Software, the creators and usual developers of Quake games in the past. In this case, id Software supervised the development of the game as well as providing the Doom 3 engine upon which it was built. Quake 4 went gold in early October 2005 and was released on October 18, 2005 for the PC, and later for the Xbox 360 and the Apple Macintosh. A special DVD Collectors Edition also exists, including promotional material and the game Quake II with its expansions. The Xbox 360 version of Quake 4 is based on the Special Collectors Edition, and therefore also includes Quake II. Plotwise, the game is a sequel to Quake II. Quake III Arena is not part of the sequence because it focused on online multiplayer gaming and provided only a very limited single player mode, which essentially pitted the player against computer-controlled bots. Quake 4, like Quake II, is not related to the first Quake in any respects other than name and logo.
Single Player The Quake 4 single player mode continues the story of Quake II pitting the player against a cyborg alien race known as the Strogg. The game follows the story of a Marine named Matthew Kane. Kane is a member of a military unit known as Rhino Squad. The Marines' mission is to secure the planet Stroggos, homeworld of the Strogg, but their ship is shot down and crashes right in the middle of a battlezone. Kane must rejoin his scattered team members and lead the assault against the Strogg, acting as a one-man army for the Marines. Gameplay features include vehicle-based combat with several vehicles introduced throughout the game, and squad-based combat on occasions where Rhino Squad fight alongside Kane, including medics and technicians in his squad who can heal him or repair his armor. Around a third of the way through the game, events lead to Kane being captured and then partially Stroggified — that is, turned into a Strogg — but the process is interrupted by Marines before completion so Kane retains his free will. This turn of events allows for more gameplay changes, including the ability to understand Strogg communications and use Strogg health stations, as well as a change to the player's HUD (Head-Up Display). This plot device also advances the story in different directions. Multiplayer Multiplayer modes are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Tourney, Capture the Flag, Arena CTF and DeadZone. Players at Quakecon reported the multiplayer gameplay to include elements similar to those in previous Quake and Doom games. Notable new additions to play are the ability to send shots through the teleporters and the advancement of the game physics provided by the new technology including the ability to bounce grenades off of the jump-pads. Like the previous Quake games the multiplayer has a client-server architecture. The network code has been altered from Doom 3, allowing for larger numbers of players on each server (Doom 3 has a four player restriction, whereas Quake 4 has a standard 16 player limit). One of the changes to the network code is a move from the per-polygon hit detection system used in Doom 3 back to using hit-box system like most other online first-person shooters such as other Quake games and Half-Life. Generally speaking four mods exist for Quake 4; those being Q4MAX, XBM, DeltaCTF and GTR. Q4MAX is the most developed of the three mods, offering many HUD, frame-rate, and gameplay tweaks and fixes. Q4MAX is used for the majority of tournaments, and used by the Cyberathlete Professional League. Nicknames can be colorized with most keyboards by pressing shift-6 to produce a carat character, followed by 0 through 9 to specify the color. Using idm0 or iw00 through iw09 will display images varying from a skull, to various weapon symbols. Most often used for nicknames under multiplayer, these character sequences can be typed into config files, the console, and chat text. Bots Quake 4 came without any bots for multiplayer play. User-made bots for practicing offline for users with only a dial-up connection or filling LAN servers are being developed by many dedicated fans of the game. Two prominent bots are Jarad "TinMan" Hansen's SABot (a.k.a Stupid Angry Bot) and Alpha Omni-bot, which perform very well on the retail multiplayer map packs as well as user-created custom maps. There is also the Oak Bot which is still in development. Bots are also in development as part of Q4MAX. Enemies Weapons The following weapons are included in the final version of Quake 4. All of these weapons appear in at least one of the other Quake games (except for the Dark Matter gun) and are for the most part similar to their counterparts in those games. GauntletVery short range melee weapon consisting of a spinning saw blade. (Available in multiplayer, replaces the Blaster) BlasterLow damage pistol, can be charged up to do more damage; not very powerful, but has a flashlight attached to it. (Available in single player only) Machine GunThe starting weapon in all multiplayer maps, a full auto rifle. The Machine Gun has a flashlight attached to it. The gun is upgraded during the game, doubling the magazine size. ShotgunA devastating close range weapon, which is upgraded during the game to have a faster reloading time as well as a larger magazine capacity. NailgunA rapid firing yet high damage weapon. Upgrades for this weapon include an increased rate of fire, a larger magazine size and the ability to lock onto targets. When a target is locked onto, the nails will guide themselves to the target. Napalm GunLaunches a fiery ball of napalm much like the grenade launcher and attaches to the first surface it hits. The napalm will continue to burn and inflict damage for a few seconds. This multiplayer-only weapon was added in the 1.3 point release. Grenade LauncherLaunches grenades which detonate on impact or after three seconds. Rocket LauncherLaunches high damage rockets at a quick rate. This weapon is upgraded during the game to fire laser guided rockets. HyperblasterFires blue plasma balls at a very high rate of fire. This weapon is upgraded to allow the plasma balls to bounce off of walls to hit targets by ricochet. RailgunShoots a high damage, ultra high velocity slug (leaving a beam-like glowing trail). Recharges about every 2 seconds, has a zoom mode so it can act as sort of a "sniper rifle". This weapon is upgraded during the game to increase the number of enemies it can be fired through. Lightning GunContinuously fires a medium-damage stream of energy at target. This weapon is upgraded during the game to allow the energy stream to arc over to multiple targets. Dark Matter GunHurls a slow-moving yet incredibly high damage and large radius dark matter ball. In its trajectory, the dark matter ball sucks enemies inside the ball and destroys them. Weaker enemies won't be sucked in, but simply vaporized into bloody gibs. This is widely seen as a replacement of the BFG10K from Quake II, and some fans have reacted negatively to it. The weapon is very handy for clearing rooms when you are outnumbered and being fired on. Vehicles Competition Quake 4 was chosen by the Cyberathlete Professional League and the WSVG (World Series of Videogames) as the official 1v1 game for their upcoming 2006 World Series events. The first Quake 4 tournament for the CPL was held from December 14 to 18, 2005 in Dallas, Texas. LanWar and Dreamhack were the first tournaments for WSVG Quake 4 Tour, occurring simultaneously, causing the majority of European players to attend Dreamhack and North American players to attend LanWar. Many top names attended the Summer '06 CPL Event (renamed to Intel Summer) such as Alessandro "stermy" Avallone, Johan "toxic" Quick, and Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel (First Place CPL World Tour Finals), quite possibly being the most competitive Quake 4 tournament to date. (Note: Anton “cooller” Singov, arguably the best Quake 4 dueler at the time of the event, was unable to attend due to Visa issues). Since then, it has been replaced by Quake 3 Arena as the official CPL 1v1 game, due to popular demand. Major LANs are QuakeCon 2006 and WSVG Brazil. Reviews Reviews of the game have mainly been positive. Websites and magazines such as IGN and UGO praised its single-player campaign, graphics and Hollywood voice-acting, but complained that its multiplayer — the Quake series' biggest selling point — was far too similar to that of Quake III Arena. Nonetheless, a few days after release the majority of reviews gave Quake 4 scores of 80–90%. EGM gave a mixed rating to the Xbox 360 port, claiming that the single-player campaign was not creative enough to compete with other games such as Half-Life 2 and Halo 2 and that the game simply ran poorly on the 360. One major praise of the game was its return to plot-based single player missions that had not been included in Quake 3: Arena. Ports Quake 4 was released at the launch of the Xbox 360 and is Xbox Live compatible. Due to the fact that Quake 4 needed to be developed in a short time period in order to meet the launch of the Xbox 360, there have been major issues with frame-rates for the console adaptation, earning it the award for Most Aggravating Frame Rate / Best Slideshow in the GameSpot.com Best and Worst of 2005 list. These frame rate issues only occur in rare instances where lots of enemies and large explosions are occurring on screen at the same time while playing in Standard Definition; however, when played in High Definition frame rate issues occur more frequently due to increased processing demands at the higher resolution. In addition, the Xbox 360 port of Quake 4 has very long load times and Xbox Live glitches that result in problematic multiplayer experiences as documented by game review sites as well as on Activision's support pages for the Xbox 360 version. The Xbox 360 version was initially priced the same as the PC Special Edition DVD and features the same content as that edition, however as of May 2006 the Xbox 360 version has not received any patches to fix its numerous problems unlike the PC version. Aspyr Media published and released Quake 4 for Mac OS X, on April 5, 2006 as a universal binary, compatible with both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs. id Software continued their tradition of supporting Linux by releasing a Linux version of the Quake 4 binary executable, which players could download for free from id (though it requires a licensed copy of Quake 4 for Windows to run). The Linux version was made available a few days after the release of the game itself. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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