Quake 4

aka: Q4
Moby ID: 19650
Windows Specs
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Special Edition

Description official descriptions

Quake 4 is the true sequel to Quake II, continuing the Strogg vs. Humans storyline from the point where Quake II ended. The Strogg is an alien cyborg race which, much like the Star Trek Borg race from which they seem to be partly inspired, wander the galaxy conquering planets and wiping civilizations. Their sole purpose is to collect organic body parts with which to swell their ranks. After a prolonged war, the united armed forces of Earth decided to launch a desperate counter attack on the home planet of the invaders, Stroggos. By some twist of fate a sole marine was able to disable the Strogg main planetary defense (aka The Big Gun) and kill Makron, their leader. That was the end of Quake II. The second wave of attack is meant to land on Stroggos and take advantage of the brief disorder, ending the threat of the Strogg forever. Of course it will not be that easy...

This time the lone soldier theme (of Quake I, II and the Doom series) is replaced by a war. Not as large scale as a military FPS or even Halo, but close enough. There are squad mates, some of which are important to protect, some vehicles (a hovertank and a mech) and frequently changing objectives to achieve. The arsenal contains elements from all Quake games (nailgun, rail gun, lightning gun) and the classic BFG has been replaced by the Dark Matter Gun. Weapons can be improved later in the game, making them much more effective. The game uses a somewhat improved version of the Doom 3 engine to good effect. Multiplayer options are rather limited, offering only the standard Deathmatch modes and CTF.

Quake 4 was developed by Raven under the guidance of id Software.

Spellings

  • 雷神之锤4 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

225 People (212 developers, 13 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 77% (based on 64 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 118 ratings with 8 reviews)

Did we even need a sequel to Quake 2?

The Good
OK, maybe my One-line Summary was too rough already, but there is a piece of truth behind it. Anyway, let us get to the good parts of this game.

Beginning with the graphics - it's good, in fact, it looks beautiful, cause it's using the Doom 3 engine. Some improvements have been made from Doom 3's engine however. The lighting is a lot better, the blood and gore look more beautiful and realistic, and the game became more colourful overall. Although not all things have been improved goodly, for example, maybe it's just me, but the character models seem kinda too cartoonish, but that's not a complaint, they still look good.

Not much to say about the sound, there are no soundtracks like in the previous games, only sometimes an ambient sound can be heard in the background, and just like in Doom 3, there is a cool soundtrack playing in the main menu. The sound effects created by the weapons or other effects like explosions aren't to be glorified. What we got left are the characters. The monsters on the other hand, sound hostile, cool and businesslike, so they are OK. The way they speak the Strogg language makes it even better. The voice acting isn't like in F.E.A.R., but it's still well done, especially in combat situations.

The single player campaign is quite interesting and long enough to take us on a good and memorable adventure. It won't exactly blow you away and make you wanna play it many more times, same goes to multiplayer, but it's still fun. The weapons arsenal is rich, filled with weapons from Quake 1 and 2, such as the Nailgun, the Lighting gun, the Railgun, but also has a new cool introduction like the Dark Matter gun, which is, though a replacement for the legendary BFG10K, but is almost as powerful and has its own interesting effect.

Most enemies from Quake 2 return, and some of them, like the Gunner, in a very good and familiar form, some though, just like some monsters from Doom 3, had to wear a stupid looking new costume, and behave even more stupid. This doesn't ruin the gameplay though. There are a few new entries too, by the way.

Unlike in Quake 2, the "friendly" AI is now even useful in combat and helps you defeat the Strogg. They sometimes come in handy and are surprisingly strong when compared to the Strogg. Medics and engineers can heal your health and armor respectively. You can also ride tanks and walking robots as you progress through opened deserts of Stroggos.

The missions and objectives aren't too special for games of this type, and even for Quake 2. They are pretty similar to the game's prequel.

The multiplayer is taken directly from Quake 3, and hardcore fans of Q3-s multiplayer would perhaps be pleased, all others won't, and this is where we get to the flaws of this game...

The Bad
The small flaws made in the single player campaign weren't those which didn't make this game a hit it was supposed to be. It's all the multi-players fault. It's just too much Quake 3. I don't understand 1 thing - they put so damn cool vehicles in the single player campaign, and also added medics and engineers to it, then why not make multiplayer the same tactical warfare experience? Instead, they just took some maps from Q3 and Q2, added some new, took a couple of Q3-s power-ups, mixed it all together, and voila, there we have it - an updated Quake 3 with graphics, models and weapons from Quake 4. Sounds kind of stupid, don't you think? Will, i'll tell ya, if you read this, and believe all what i say, than the multiplayer is exactly as bad as you think right about now.

This is why Quake 4 couldn't keep up a tactical war with Call of Duty 2, F.E.A.R. and other successful shooters of that year, because it used the primitive caveman tactic of Quake 3.

The Bottom Line
Will, in case you didn't get my point correctly, Quake 4 isn't a BAD game, the single player campaign is fun and that's OK, but just don't play its multiplayer to be disappointed. If you are looking for a sequel to Quake 2, i would even, in fact, recommend this to you. It really is a sequel to Quake 2, lets face it. And besides, making a sequel better than a prequel is very, very hard, especially by a different company.

Windows · by Medicine Man (328) · 2009

Can we say "$hit" in mobygames?

The Good
I think I'll probably win some enemies with this review about Quake 4, but seriously I can't find anything remarkable about this game. Maybe the design has been a hard work for the guys of Raven, and some models are rather cool. Aside from that, unless being an average game is something good, this game has nothing of interest.

Still, is obvious that if you are reading this you have probably enjoy the Quake series, and this game can be briefly described like a Quake 2 with modern graphics and sound and a bit of coop with other marines NPCs. And there are also vehicles, but this is not a good point of the game, actually.

There is also an improvement in graphics with respect to Doom 3. As in Doom 3, you need a very powerful machine to play it smooth, but at least here, you can take the shadows out whenever you want, what is very useful.

The Bad
I wander why there is usually very few reviews for games of the last year. I think that people here like to do good reviews and most of them are enough experienced to see that games are getting more and more repetitive and are rarely remarkable in some way and, therefore, nobody wants to make their review, their bad review.

Yes, Quake 4 is another FPS more and a bad one. And I dislike it specially because I liked the rest of the Quakes. The principal problem with Quake 4 is that it is a Quake without motivation, any other Quake were developed to be revolutionary in some way, but this one is just another FPS. I must admit, that some of the things I dislike about this game are present in the other Quakes too (specially Quake 2), and that I didn't dislike then because I was younger. In any case, they were more original then, ten years ago, and, the fact that they are here too is very sad.

The story is one big crap in this game. It's about US marines (the rulers of the year two-thousand-whatever) fighting an alien race. This is about bad aliens, so, like most of the marines vs. aliens games of the last years, they are brainless and violent and you better don't question the reasons of this war. As this is an Id game (not really, Raven is the company developing the game, a good proof that Id doesn't really care about the new Quake) the enemies are all a mix between rotten flesh and cybersomething, which was cool the first time but not the next ten times. As for the character development and dialogs you will only here things like "I'm a marine, bugga, bugga, bugga" and nothing more. Well, you don't really need to listen to what they say as you always know what to do: KILL!!. I think that in all those games where the marines save, not only the planet Earth, but all the galaxy, there could be very cool a "zero" weapon that makes the marine say: "I'm a marine" and all the enemies flee scared to the bones. Oh!, and, of course, you are not a random marine, you are the hardest marine ever.

So, once you are immerse in the story and you have some motivation to play the game, hordes of mindless enemies will attack you frontally, one after another in veeeery long levels of boredom. Some breaks in the routine will be the fight-with-friends levels and the combats in vehicles. The combat with vehicles were really frustrating, too, as the vehicles from the future seem to have very bad handling, and the levels were very poor designed. There is no need to pay attention to story through the levels, but if you want to know, is more or less like these: Bang, bang!, "oh!, those aliens are very hard", bang, bang!, "oh!, here comes supermarine, he will save us all", pium, pium!, supermarine: "arghh!, they've catch me, and they are transforming my body into a monster, but as I can kill more, now I'm happier", kaboom!, pium, pium!, "look, is supermarine, now is one of them, no he is not, but as he has some silly mental link to the big boss now we know where it is", bang, pium!, "let's kill it", "supermarine, here the boss (the god one), for some reason only you can enter the big boss level, no matter if you are a teenager with problems to communicate with others, the destiny of the universe depends on you and blah, blah, blah", so you fight the final boss (a really silly one), you lose, the aliens win... then you load again until you win and everyone is happy. Of course, supermarine still wants more action.

As for the graphics, if you have play Doom 3, half of the textures are from this game, so you can imagine how it is. Sometimes you wont know if you are playing Quake or Doom, remember, hellish monster with some dignity: Doom 3; silly aliens: Quake 4. I must say that the Doom 3 engine seems very artificial to me. When playing Doom 3 (which I like), the final look was very positive to me, the graphics make their job very good, but in Quake 4 I really have the feeling that everything is very poor, as in a sci-fi B-movie. I have the same feeling with Gears of War trailer (Unreal 3 engine), somehow, the new hyper realist graphical engines don't look real to my eyes. In addition, I find the level design very unoriginal, I'm going to explain this in a more wider context: the sci-fi nonsense.

As there are humans in outer space, I presume this comes later than Doom 3, which happens in 2146, I think. Doom 3 was actually another sci-fi nonsense, so this one is a sci-fi stupidity. If you played Doom 3 you may have noticed the dated weapons, the PDA technology 150 years after its development, the lack of some futuristic war technology: the soldiers seem to walk while fighting, there's no jet-pack, nor jumping assisted by the suit, nor communication center integrated on helmet, nor nothing. In Quake 4 you can even watch some Sargent with a ridiculously big laptop. Plus, the only thing that vehicles in Quake 4 have futuristic is that they float in the air, but any vehicles with wheels moves better than those. Of course, the fact that US Marines still exist in 2150+ is rather childish, but if technological sci-fi concept of Quake 4 is laughable, we can't expect nothing of social sci-fi. And I must insist on how stupid is the idea of futuristic buildings and spaceships with all the tubes and cables and air conducting stuff visible and accessible, Halo was maybe a better example of how a futuristic setting should look like. I don't think it is a good idea to make buildings in Mars more depressing than Mars itself, the people living there will go nuts for sure. Well, some of these ideas are very difficult to confirm, but is not that hard to use a bit your imagination to do something plausible, at least.

The Bottom Line
Less than average FPS, a shame for Quake series, and a shame for videogame world. Your children shouldn't play this game, not because of the violence (which can make a 5 years old child laugh), but because they going to waste their time. It's sad, but I don't think that Id need to change their philosophy, the usual game of the '00s is as insubstantial as Quake 4 is, and we can't ask them to do something better, because they don't know. At least, Doom 3 was much better than Quake 4, and maybe we can still expect average games with groundbreaking graphics from the guys of Id.

Windows · by MichaelPalin (1414) · 2006

Does nothing new, but does it good.

The Good
The game feels like a cinematic experience, there are very few cutscenes and most of the important stuff happens ingame.

The Strogg have kick-ass new models and look pretty menacing, although there are a few bad ones.

Level design is pretty good, considering that you spend most of your time indoors.

The game does some neat things with the Doom 3 Engine, like if a rocket or grenade explodes near you, the screen blurs and you won't be able to hear much.

The Bad
Most of the new weapon models don't look too good, although there are some exceptions.

The vehicle parts of the game are boring and are not needed.

The Bottom Line
A great action game, you won't see anything new in this game, but what it does is good.

Windows · by Dakota Bob (72) · 2007

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Trivia

Development

Being the first time Raven Software has designed a game based on a id license, id required overall approval of all design.

E-Sports

On 14th September 2005, prior to the release, The CPL (The Cyberathlete Professional League) announced Quake 4 as the one-versus-one competition game for 2006. With major cash prizes at stake, this is the duel game all the top gamers will be playing in 2006. 2005's duel game was Painkiller. In the past, The CPL also supported Quake, Quake II and Quake III: Arena.

German index

On November 5, 2005, the English version of Quake 4 (Windows) was put on the infamous German index by the BPjM. For more information about what this means and to see a list of games sharing the same fate, take a look here: BPjS/BPjM indexed games.

Rifts

Kevin Long, the lead artist for Quake 4, was a longtime staff member at Palladium Books and was one of the original artists for the Rifts roleplaying game. Many of the designs in Quake 4 resemble his earlier work with Palladium. Some examples include Quake 4's Blaster, which resembles the early Coalition energy pistols from the Rifts rulebook and Quake 4's machinegun, which resembles the Triax Railgun from Rifts Sourcebook 1.

Version differences

The German version of Quake 4 is intensively cut, particularly bloody scenes (Strogg Medical Facility, as marines are going in the cage), some bodies, body parts are deleted or blacked out. You cannot fire at your team members.

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2005 – Most Disappointing Launch Game (Xbox 360)

Information also contributed by Edward Beezy, Independent Scott Monster and Xoleras

Analytics

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Related Sites +

  • Official Webpage (Mac)
    The official product page for the Mac version of Quake 4 on the publisher's website, which provides a trailer, a short article by Aspyr tech support employee Andy Brazell, patches, a demo, and purchasing information, among other such things.
  • PlanetQuake
    The biggest Quake series related site.
  • Quake 4
    Official game website
  • Quake 4
    Official game page on id Software's website
  • Quake 4 on Schnittberichte
    Here you can see the difference version from quake 4 USK 16 with the uncensored europe PEGI 18+ version, in german indexed.
  • Quake IV GNU/Linux FAQ
    Overview, download location and instructions for the Linux version
  • Quake4.euro
    European Quake 4 community.
  • The Humans Strike Back
    An Apple Games article about the Macintosh version of Quake 4 (March, 2006).
  • X360A achievement guide
    X360A's achievement guide for Quake 4.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 19650
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Silverblade.

Windows Apps added by Plok. Macintosh added by Sciere. Xbox 360 added by Kabushi. Linux added by Iggi.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Sciere, UV, Yearman, Independent, Zeppin, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, Titan10.

Game added October 23, 2005. Last modified March 14, 2024.