The Official Quake IV release thread

Quote from Mazy

Thanks man!Been waiting the entire day to get this update!

Look I pwnd the minimum specs so shhhh

I like the design of the enemies with the exception of a few.

Nexus core next... ooooh.

Well I've beat it, so it's crunch time...

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I was quite worried that it wouldn't run on my older system, even though I'd managed to run Doom 3 below minimum spec I'd been told that Quake 4 was a lot more demanding, so I was like an 8 year old on Christmas day when I actually got it going.

I'd already stressed how much I wanted it to relate to the original Quake II, so I was happy to see that some sections did resemble areas of the earlier game (mostly the large steel structures with the old red winged flags). The lighting is a lot brighter on Stroggos and the sky's a completely different colour which has always annoyed me as many of you know, but it does look quite nice and the little animated effects make it seem more like a skyline than just a box with a texture slapped onto it, although it would of looked a lot better had the actual structures been actually 3D models. The squad AI reminded me greatly of Call Of Duty (especially when they lean in and out of cover whilst idle) and having the medics and tech guys patch you up saved a lot of frustration when fighting tough opponents.

Enemies ranged from pretty poor to utterly brilliant in both look and combat, the soldiers, gunners, gladiators and scientists were favourites whilst the grunts, spiderbots and 'lizard tanks' made me cringe. Some even managed to look like those of Quake II without looking piss poor. The weapons were all pretty well designed but I found myself only using a select few of them, I hardly ever used the lightning gun for example and mostly stuck to the machinegun, shotgun, grenade launcher and hyberblaster. The vehicle sections were pretty good, I disliked the tank parts though I found it hard to control the thing most of the time and thus I died many times, mostly due to being struck with multiple heat-seeking missiles which are next to impossible to avoid, same with the walker except that it was much easier to control.

The hangar section was really fun to go through, well scripted with lots of action going on. The Canyon level when you're on the back of a transporter manning a machinegun with unlimited ammo was brilliant, yet again I was reminded of Call Of Duty style gameplay. The Hannibal sections were brilliant too, I like levels where you have no weapons and just walk around talking to people, the calm atmosphere is just what you need after surviving a battle again hundreds of Strogg. The second one was exceptionally cool with the drop-pod sequence.

I was disappointed with being turned into a Strogg so soon into the game, I thought that there should of been a few more levels before that, it didn't seem like an hour before I was 'stroggified' and when that did happen there wasn't really much more that I could do apart from run faster and get 50 more hit points.. which isn't much of a difference really. I loved the waste levels where you're fighting failed strogg units, those things that spewed acid at you were bloody annoying but the torsos made me laugh when they try and jump up to bite you. I understand that Raven wanted to take the Quake game away from the old 'brown' look (perhaps why the sky was changed) but I didn't like all the colour used, such as those red or blue doors and the orange attack units or the red soldiers.. to me it didn't look right.

Some of the later areas although impressive looking felt a bit like Doom 3 with the clean steel look and I felt a bit bored playing them (the final nexus levels especially). Some areas were stupidly hard, you'd go through a door and find loads of pickups you didn't need, then through another door that locks behind you and you're faced with a massive swarm of enemies and there's only a few medkits and bullets stashed in a corner... eh?! I had to use God mode to get through a couple of really tough encounters and I was only playing on the lowest skill setting!

Oh and the ending was terrible... 'Kane, you've got new orders..' *camera faces Kane* *evil strogg laugh* ...what the Hell? I suppose I shouldn't of expected any better having beat the Makron in about 5 minutes flat... a bit unbalanced considering earlier battles with Stroggos elite.

I'm a bit confused also if the Nexus is the control centre for all the strogg directives then that must mean that now all the Strogg will drop down dead right? or even become partly human again? Not much to go on if a mission pack is ever planned..

All in all it's really good fun for the first 3 quarters but tediously annoying and tiresome for the remaining duration. As a game on it's own it could be a whole new Quake universe but it fails to be worthy of status as a sequel to Quake II as far as I'm concerned...so roll on the first mod.. the real 'Quake IV'

I give it 85%

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My 2$...

PS: I've already began editing the skyboxes to look more like QII..

Quote from Zacker

In the first screenshots it looked way too much like Doom 3, nothing wrong with that though as they promised it would turn out much different. Is it just me or does the final version still look more like Doom 3 than like Quake 2?

It's a mixed article, the early sections do resemble Quake II in some ways, the second half of the game looks more like Doom 3 though. Having said that the atmosphere is different..