Overall a good time, even if it feels more like a horror FPS than a true successor to Quake in terms of gameplay.

The gunplay feels very nice with a variety of weapons inspired from previous entries, my only complaint being that the railgun lacks a bit of oomf. You're also given upgrades throughout the games which feel like real improvements and help keep things fresh.
The game has segments where you use vehicles and I found them to be kind of boring for the most part, especially the rail shooter ones. It adds variety but the weapons don't feel that good to use.
Something cool is that you will sometimes have marines join your squad. They're aren't too dumb and can help quite a bit, and medics and technicians can fully replenish your health and armour, all of that making them feel like real assets to your team and giving you an incentive to not let them die.
I played on the "Lieutenant" difficulty, which is one step above normal, and it provided a good challenge without being unfair which I appreciate.

It also does a good job at being a horror game. The levels are dark and oppressing, and the idTech 4's stencil shadows work really well in this context. Sadly a lot of levels look similar, having the same tech corridor vibe, although a few areas do manage to stand out.
Body horror is also a core part of the horror experience here, as it's present in numerous aspect of the game, evoking disgust with a hint of fascination for Strogg technology. It's a bit cliché to see your squadmates die or be captured all the time, but I think it does contribute to making you fear the Strogg.

I played the native Linux version and it worked well, except for one occasional shadow bug that wasn't too bad. That being said getting it work was a real pain, and even then it was still a bit finicky.

This marks the fourth installment in Johnny Boy’s Quake brainchild. Running all the way back to 1994 Quake was kind of a “palette swap of Doom” and it’s strong point being multiplayer. Quake 4 changes that with an excellent single-player experience. Unlike Doom 3 Quake 4 is more of an “on rails shooter” where it guides you through a lot of scary and tense scripted events. These work for the game and separates it from its brethren. You play as Kane who is a soldier that has to help stop the Strogg invasion by destroying them at their core; the Nexus. As you make your way to the Nexus you can pick up a ton of cool weapons, upgrades, and even turn into a Strogg yourself. The weapons range from your piddly blaster to a dark matter gun. You have your railgun, a nailgun, shotgun, lightning gun etc.


Throughout the campaign, you can unlock upgrades for these weapons like clip extenders, scopes, and extra damage. This lets you easily change your strategy around and what gun works in what situation. The game has some pretty neat enemies types ranging from Grunts that rush you with their bulky body or Berserker’s who are all about melee. You have floating enemies that shoot rockets at you, you have giant spider robots, you even have massive Strogg with shields and railguns. These are all gruesome looking enemies that are both terrifying to look at and really fun to fight. The game sports great AI with enemies dodging your shots and ducking behind cover. Each enemy has to be taken care of differently, so you have had five weaker enemies and two guys with railguns. You take the five weaker ones out with a grenade or a rocket then deal with the railgun guys with your dark matter gun, or you can shoot rockets at their feet. This allows you to create a strategy that works best for you. I just really love the atmosphere Quake 4 delivers. You’ll walk through rooms and lights will dim and enemies will run across corridors, your teammates will get dragged off and tortured, and there are also some really cool vehicle sections. You either mount a machine gun, drive a tank, or a mech. All handle really well and these sections are both fun and challenging. This is a nice change to Quake which has always been on foot.


Now when it comes to multiplayer the game is fun, but nothing really special. What doesn’t help is no one is playing online (which really sucks) and the one map I did play was really boring. The game does have a lot of downfalls though. The game does have major frame rate issues but isn’t as bad as what people say. It only bothered me a few times in the game. The graphics are really good yet the Doom 3 engine is really dated and can’t be pushed any further. While the game does have weapons upgrades and vehicle sections the game still feels redundant and has the dumbest ending ever. So, if you want a good single player experience it’s worth a rental or purchase (it’s less than $10 everywhere) then play Quake 4.

"A Polarizing Mess"

"Quake 4" marks a return to the single-player focus of the Quake franchise following the multiplayer-only "Quake III: Arena", and Id Software decided to partner with Raven Software in order to take a backseat approach in crafting a direct sequel to "Quake II". Released during the mid-2000's amidst the ever-expanding wave of dull FPS titles hitting the market, the goal was to make this the hardest hitting entry to the franchise to date by finally bringing "Quake" into the new millennium. With a new engine, a darker tone, and all the motivation in the world, what is Quake 4's legacy? It turned out to be the worst "Quake" campaign!

I knew there was something wrong when I started the game completing the generic “go here and do this” military missions found in many contemporary military shooters of the time. While these missions were hit-or-miss in those titles, I instantly felt they were out of place in this franchise. The lack of player empowerment for directing oneself to the objective was heavy-handed, and it didn’t help that your allies throughout the game take every opportunity to belittle you and your efforts with completing objectives. The role of the player was much less badass than previous entries, despite the game constantly telling you that your character is a “legend”. This issue with tone wouldn’t just focus on the player’s role/legacy dynamic either. The focus on horror elements was completely new, and while I tried to give it a chance it ended up just devolving into the same jumpscare-ridden mess most games of this era tended to try to be. The only decent area that included horror was the “Waste Processing Facility”, where the zombie enemies were introduced. The lighting here was pretty solid, and while nothing “scared the crap out of me”, it definitely contained an increased level of ambience and atmosphere.

The story told here is also painfully dull. The whole plot revolves around an invasion of the Strogg homeworld, but not much is expanded upon with the enemy faction despite their savagery and medical experimentation. There’s a twist where you are turned into a Strogg, but it results in a slight variation in gameplay and some initial backlash toward your appearance. Besides that, no one seems to care too much. This change allows you to bypass much of the Strogg security measures and allows an infiltration of various bases in order to strike back against them. Not a whole lot of character development, and really bad dialogue throughout the whole ride. The setting is also extremely repetitive with factory setting after factory setting thrown at you over and over again. The color palette being so dull doesn’t help this game much, but better level structure could have made the world feel more enjoyable to play in and more interesting in the grand scheme of things.

The shooting also took a huge step back in quality. Guns felt really weak and the sound felt underwhelming throughout the whole experience, and therefore I just never found it that satisfying to shoot things. This is absolutely nuts for a “Quake” title to have subpar shooting mechanics, yet it's boring to engage with just like everything else in this game. Upgrades only make your guns slightly more usable, but you pretty much go through the whole game with a weak arsenal of weapons. Enemy AI is also not very great, and therefore gunfights are equally dull and repetitive. The combination of “meh” weaponry and dull AI led to uninteresting encounters, and the game grinds to a halt even after you become “Stroggified”.

One of the only real positives here is the lighting utilized throughout the game, and even then it's inconsistent and too dark at times. Shadows are fairly accurate to the angle they are created, and this helps add some horror to different sections of the campaign. The textures aren’t the best, but when the lighting is given room to shine it helps make the game look better than it actually does underneath the polish. It's commendable, but with the lackluster aspects surrounding this engine quirk it fails to bring the game any higher.

Level design also felt like it took a big step back. Locations felt linear in approach and the enemy AI didn’t seem to know what it wanted to do in a lot of areas. It became really easy to abuse the AI and its inability to take cover at times, so the campaign was mostly cakewalk with no strategy whatsoever. The vehicle sections, on the other hand, were really stupid. Not only did the audio design fail to make the “tanks” feel like tanks, but arenas were just completely barren and allowed for little cover. This led to these outdoor fights being the hardest in the game, mostly because there was nowhere to go to hide from artillery fire. Compared to the designs in “Quake” and “Quake II”, this was one of the biggest steps back for the franchise.

The game as a whole just failed to captivate me throughout its entire campaign. The shooting felt really weak, the level design was stripped back heavily, and while it has some atmospheric horror moments and solid lighting, its story was as barren as its graphical fidelity. This didn’t feel like a “Quake” game - it felt like some soulless mockery of the series. I would Not Recommend playing this one as it forgets everything that made the previous single-player entries good and opts to try and streamline something that had always stood out for its creativity in design. Sometimes you can fix something that isn’t broken, but this is one of those botched examples where the game lost what made it special…

Final Verdict: 4/10 (Below Average)

Upon my second play through my opinion is mostly unchanged from my review in 2007. The campaign is enjoyable enough for an old school feel, but playing with 4K texture mods really helps a lot. The game is a pain to get working right on modern operating systems and needs a release of some sort. Multiplayer servers are offline, but LAN and fan servers still exist. You, of course, aren't missing anything by not playing this. I feel the campaign here is better than Doom 3's with faster pacing and more of the classic id Software feel to it and less stop and go like in Doom 3.

Quake 4, which was made in the same engine that was used for Doom 3, and considered the black sheep of the series, is a bit of a weird entry in the Quake franchise to say the least.

Visuals haven't aged gracefully, but that's ok. I like the overall aesthetic they went with, even if it might get a little monotonous at times. At least the atmosphere picked up in the last 5 levels.

The gameplay pace isn't as fast as the previous entries, but it doesn't feel bad and the gunplay is good. It also gets a little bit better in the second half.
It's different from its predecessors and far more akin to what you'd call a "modern shooter", so that may turn off some people.

Level design is fine, enemy and weapon variety is fine as well. You'll periodically get your weapons upgraded, which is nice.
Only 2 weapons have a flashlight option, which was a little annoying, since a big chunk of the game is spent in the dark and you'll also have to fight enemies there, kinda forcing you to use those 2 weapons.

The story takes place shortly after Quake 2 and is ok for what it is. It boils down to "Aliens are bad and we gotta destroy the bad aliens". You won't miss too much by not paying attention to it.
Nothing really stood out, but there's nothing really bad either.
The game took me a little under 9 hours to beat and I found it to be a bit more enjoyable when split into 2-3 hour sessions.

I guess the worst thing I can say about this game is that the final boss felt underwhelming and it lacks memorability in comparison to the previous entries of the series.

Over the course of my gaming life I've been on a journey. See, I'm not the biggest fan of "modern shooters", you know the ones, big emphasis on cover, slow movement speed, limited weapon slots, really boring enemies and level design; think the shooters that games like Call of Duty and Gears of War inspired. So, I made it a quest of mine to look for the best modern shooters, the ones that actually have substance and warranted using the aforementioned mechanics. So far I have found 6 of them, you can find them on this list: https://www.backloggd.com/u/mirphy/list/the-only-good-modern-shooters/

From the beginning paragraph, you're probably expecting me to say that Quake 4 is one of those good modern shooters, however, it isn't as simple as that. The game actually combines elements of both boomer shooters and modern shooters, in an amalgamation of ideas and mechanics...

...and it honestly works very well.

I'm not exactly the biggest fan of Quake 1 and 2's singleplayer experiences. Quake 1, while it had good ideas, overall felt like a lesser Doom to me, because it borrows a lot of ideas from that series but also does some things worse, such as level design, enemy usage and tone. No, I am not a fan of Quake's atmosphere. I'm a huge fan of games like Doom 64 and Super Metroid, so I think I have a fairly high standard when it comes to atmosphere, so that may be the reason for it. However, despite that, Quake is still fairly enjoyable, the first episode especially, and while I can't get into its atmosphere, I appreciate the intent and how it gives the game its own identity. Quake 2, on the other hand, suffers from mostly the exact opposite problems in comparison to Quake 1, it's overall a little more polished but the game is even easier than Quake 1, which was already a pretty easy game. Enemy placement is extremely bland, levels merge together and it overall lacks any identity. It's a fun game, I had more fun with it than the first game, but it's just so extremely bland, and is vastly overshadowed by its older sister game.

So safe to say, I was not hyped for Quake 4, I was interested, seeing how it was regarded more as a military shooter and looked upon less fondly, but I was by no means hyped, and oh boy, I was pleasantly surprised when my expectations were subverted, because Quake 4 is representative of everything great about Raven Software, the company who developed it. They are the kings of the 8/10 game, none of their games really push boundaries or revolutionise game design, but they are extremely fun, and have a fair amount of substance and heart. Quake 4 is by no means a perfect game, nor is it the boomer shooters the series is commonly thought of as, but it's such a fun and creative game that I can't help but love it, and I have confidence in saying that it is the best Quake game, or at the very least, my favourite.

The first hour of the game is really what brings it down for most people, including me; it's boring, not challenging at all and probably put a sour taste in the mouths of many Quake fans upon its release. You walk very slowly and are basically forced to use cover against generic hitscan enemies and it sucks; you only have access to 5 weapons at this stage of the game, one of which you only get in the last level before the turning point in this game, and they're underwhelming, to say the least. The grenade launcher is good, and so is the hyperblaster, but the Shotgun and "Machin3" gun feel very unsatisfying to use, so much so that I had to install a mod, it was bother me that much, and it was at this point where I was going to write it off as another boring modern shooter.

However, if you do end up playing this game, power through that section, because right around the corner is the Stroggification cutscene. It's what EVERYONE remembers about the game, and honestly? I think it's way deeper than just being "unnerving". It gives you an insight into how the Strogg are made, they are people, or at least used to be. They're monstrosities, created through the blend of flesh and metal, and they're out to turn everything into that, and this is a good way to flow into one of the highlights of the game: its existential dread. You see, every time you hear about the war going on outside of the battles you're fighting, it's almost always about something bad happening. This is a very grim war, most of the companions you meet end up dying; it's so heavy that even when you finish the game and have destroyed the Strogg's leader and communication network, it doesn't feel like a victory. This game brings back the Makron from Quake 2, and while I usually don't like reviving characters in any story, I think it works here, because if he came back before, he could come back again. The Strogg are a force to be reckoned with, almost a cosmical threat, and it does leave you wondering "Did I really win?", because even after you destroy the Nexus, the fight is still going on.

And boy, is the fighting a lot of fun. Once you become a Strogg, your movement speed is vastly increased, and the arenas, as small as they may be, are built like loops and encourage a more aggressive playstyle. It's helped a lot by the enemy design, which is pretty good. The AI isn't great, but it is pretty competent, and it further emphasises this tactical gameplay. It's no F.E.A.R., but it's damn good, and that's actually a good way to describe the gameplay; it's a combination of Doom and F.E.AR. Enemies can flank you and rush you out from cover, and most of them are projectile based, the few that aren't can be dodged, and you'll need to, because even on the 3rd skill, Lieutenant, they can melt you very quickly.
Edit: I've played through most of the human section on General, the highest skill, and I can confirm Lieutenant is the definitive way to play the game. General Just ups the enemy damage to an absurd amount without changing the AI.

This is on top of stellar weapons, despite my initial criticism; you have your rifle, shotgun, plasma weapon and grenade launcher, as previously stated, but you also have a "nailgun", which can lock onto enemies and do a lot of damage; very useful if your target is moving around a lot. There's also the lighting gun which returns from Quake 1, which is incredibly useful as it can attack multiple enemies, as well as a railgun, a rocket launcher and a BFG-type weapon. Most of the guns have secondary functions which give them added utility, like the rocket launcher having a guiding feature or the rifle having a semi-automatic scoped mode. This is mostly nothing new for the series, but they're all balanced so well that it's still a point of praise, despite being derivative.

A point of criticism for many was the vehicle sections and the two turret sections in the game, however, I actually find that the vehicle sections are a point of praise. The turret sections are boring, and the first one in particular is pretty tedious, I won't argue that, but the vehicle sections offer up some variety to the gameplay, and while their movement isn't perfect, it's definitely not nearly as bad as many people make it out to be. It was so refreshing to go from being so extremely slow to flying across landscapes that I can't bring myself to hate it, and plus, there's only 2 of them in the game, and they aren't that long, so even if you don't like them, they won't be staying for too long.

Despite the clunkiness of the vehicle sections, the game is still very well paced. I wouldn't've minded longer fights with bigger arenas because the combat is so good, it would legitimately make this game even better. It doesn't have as good level design as the highs of Doom, it doesn't have the extremely polished enemy encounters of F.E.AR., hell, if you still dislike this game over the original Quake, I wouldn't blame you. Not everyone is going to like this game, Quake 4 is not the boomer shooter the series is known for being, and it isn't a generic, watered down modern shooter of the present day. But it is a Raven game, a perfectly solid title that offers a fun experience with a decent amount of substance, so much so that I might end up replaying right after I finish this review, which is high praise since I basically never do that nowadays. It's sad that so many games that came out in the late 90s and early 2000s for PC have yet to see the light of day on modern consoles, but for those PC players, I would definitely recommend picking this one up.

It's Doom 3's combat streamlined to be quicker and have more oomph in the gunplay, but with a bunch of same-looking corridors and bullet sponge enemies. I think I'm halfway into the game and I already lost interest. There are also vehicles in this game and they control like ass.

For what it's worth, it looks fine for a 2005 shooter when you turn up the settings all the way. The problem is there is a bug in the game that causes the textures to blur on the highest settings because the game doesn't recognize GPUs higher than 1GB. Thankfully, the fix is easy in the config file.

I can say one big positive thing about this game is that its shotgun feels way better than Doom 3's melee shotgun.

Super janky nowadays.

A surprisingly good FPS title, that has a cool little story to it.

Worth a play.

Honestly surprised Quake 4 doesn't get talked about more often in FPS discussions. Just a really solid fun combat loop.

Quake 4 has its shortcomings, namely, Raven software felt the need to compete with the likes of halo and half-life 2 so there are some boring vehicle and turret sections from time to time, but it doesn't ruin the game. It starts off slow, but once you hit the Stroggification Facility it kick-ups a gear, and the flow of levels and combat improves a lot.

Use "Quake 4 tweaker" to get it running smoothly on a modern machine. There's a link to it in Q4's PCGaming Wiki page.

The stroggification scene is fucking nightmarish and I love it. It makes me uncomfortable but in the best way possible because A.) you're locked in an FPS perspective the whole way through, which adds a tangible and personal feeling of body horror the whole scene, and B.) you're right behind a guy the entire time, so you get to watch the process happen to him first, a small and subtle but brilliant choice that makes the painful incisions and dismemberments that happen to your guy all the more tense and frightening. You know what's coming, and it makes the moment when it happens hit that much harder. I also like that it never gets too gory - the guy in front of you is always just far enough away that you can only get a vague but discernible portrait of the horror that awaits you, and even when it does happen to you, the limiting first-person perspective actually makes it easier to process what's happening instead of being permitted a full third-person view of the gory details. It is a brilliant horror scene that's actually aided by the video game medium, because the stroggification would be nowhere near as tangible and icky-feeling if it wasn't in a first-person perspective, something that only feels plausible and natural in a video game setting. The stroggification scene rocks.

the rest of this though, uh, what the fuck is this??? Basic-ass generic oorah first-person shooter that has virtually nothing to do with Quake's dusty regality or gothic industrialism. I'd argue it's even more of a blemish on the series that the notoriously unfitting Doom 3 was to Doom. id Software properties at the time were in dire straits, lemme tell you.

Forget not offering a single interesting idea done better than other mid-2000's FPS contemporaries like Half-Life 2, Halo 2, or even this title's own cousin in Doom 3; Quake 4 in a vacuum has no soul, no atmosphere, and not a single thing in its favor beyond being technically competent.

The phrase "This looks like a fake video game" is perhaps overused, but never have I felt so strongly that this was the case as I have with Quake 4. It's an A.I.'s idea of what a video game is, so much so that it might not even have enough flavor to be slotted into a 4 second shot in an episode of CSI. It's a 7 hour slog of what is essentially a child playing with the dullest set action figures as possible. It's like fast-forwarding past all of the fun satire and charming production design of Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers film so you can watch the last 20 minutes of overly bloated alien shooting at 0.5x speed.

Quake 4 is all of these things, and ultimately somehow is a complete Nothing video game. The setting and plot are less inspired than Brute Force and it fails to follow up on any of Doom 3's ideas or technology to such a degree that in hindsight I'm tempted to think I was too harsh on that game.

Sure, it doesn't brick my hard drive, the guns do damage and make sound, and playing Quake 4 doesn't kill my cat, but I'm convinced the only thing notable about this game and the only reason anyone gives it any thought is the fact that it says "Quake" on the box and that Raven Software and id Software are otherwise known for video games that actually engage on some level and have sparked joy and innovation.

I'd like to say something witty like "more like Quake 4 out of 10." but astonishingly, it does not even reach those heights.
Quake 4 is a video game for people without tastebuds.

“We have Doom 3 at home”

But in all seriousness the similarities are glaring from the art style, enemy variety, level design and the various weapons which should be a good thing because I love Doom3
Unfortunately it’s a crappy console port with jarring frame rate drops that never make the game unplayable but came close several times and were annoying throughout. The load times in this game are also excessive. The checkpoint system is also frustrating with checkpoints before some unskippable cutscenes which can be a neausance on higher difficulties and I found myself hard saving a lot.
The game also suffers greatly from pacing problems with the first act being pretty slow and the game constantly shooting itself in the foot by adding drawn out boring turret/tank sections which just feel like filler and kill your enjoyment.

This review may sound overly negative but I can say I’m positive on this game. The second half of the game really picks up and you’ll be running though massive gauntlets of enemies. The shooting feels great and some guns really stand out like the nail gun, shotgun, hyper blaster and definitely the dark matter gun. Swapping weapons, circle stafe jumping and ducking behind cover is a ton of fun and all the weapons have good matchups against specific enemies. As a side note I’ve never taken more splash damage from my own grenade/rocket shots as I did in this game.

The art style and especially the dynamic lighting are gorgeous even if some of the textures haven’t aged very well. The sheer amount of blood and body horror also surprised me in a good way.

All in all it ends up being solid but frustrating because with better pacing and optimization on console this would be a game id be coming back to.

6/10