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An expansion worthy of notice

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: October 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

In retort to the other review, yes this game uses the Doom 3 engine and this game is also shooter. I can understand cotempt for this game b/c of all the shooters coming out but this one IS EASILY my favorite. The AI is quite inteigent tho sometimes predictable. Graphics are still great, lighting is insane. I really can't complain biut it at all. Multiplayer wil catch on soon, and it will definately bring Quake fans up to speed. Happy fraggin' guys.

big let down ever

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 35
Date: October 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

yep. ive played doom 3 already. i thought this was quake 4, not another doom 3 expansion. pffff

Review for SinglePlayer only. Haven't tried Multi yet.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 10
Date: October 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I can't help but compare this game to HL2 and RTCW, since those are my last two single player games. This particular review is only about the singleplayer as I have yet to launch the multiplayer. I am running an AMD 2000 Ghz = 3200+, ATI Radeon 9800 128 MB, 1 Gig RAM.

The game is only 4 CDs, so it loads fairly quickly. After launching the game, I went into the settings portion of the game to set up my graphics, ctrls, etc. I immediately noticed the following:

-setting up the game
Customizing the graphics using the settings menu is largely simplified. You can select your resolution, otherwise you can mainly only select low, med, high, ultra quality. You cannot fiddle with bi,trilinear, lodbias, etc. settings. The advanced settings are a joke. When you make significant graphics settings, you must EXIT the game for them to take effect! I can only run in 1100? x 856? with high quality to get a decent frame rate. With my system I get an FPS from 40-120 FPS, with 60 average.
-50 million keys for guns, but no sprint key? Or am I blind? The NPCs in the game can sprint, why can't I?
-The console is hidden, just like in Doom3. CTRL ALT ~
-Additionally, setting low mouse sensitivity is a bit tricky.
To get a good setting, I had to use the console.

FIRING UP THE GAME
-Graphics
Compared with HL2, the graphics seem sub par. Even when I had them turned up, I wasn't as impressed as with HL2 or COD2 demo. Most places are pretty dark so I just leave my flashlight on a lot. I also have gamma turned up a bunch so that may be affecting things.

-Sound
Sound seems ok, but I'm not using speakers. One thing that bugs me is that I can't turn the music off in the game menus. I hate playing FPS games with a soundtrack. Am I watching a movie or in the action? The music isn't constant, but it comes on in places where the fighting is trying to build tension. I had to edit the config to turn off the music in game. Well, I think I did. I haven't heard music since.

-Movement
If you are looking for Q3/RTCW strafe jumping, look someplace else. Player movement feels faster, than say CS:S or Swat 4, but I can't seem to do much bunny hopping like in Q3A or RTCW. This is disappointing because because I had heard that ID wanted to keep the jumping physics for Q4 relatively the same to please the old Q3 players. Maybe in multiplayer?
Jumping feels similar to HL2, in that it's unlikely you will be able to jump more than a couple of feet high. It feels like the gravity is set quite high.

-Linearity of levels
This game has no surprises in the ability to wander around levels. It's just like any other FPS single player game in that you have to follow a fairly set path. Although thus far, they haven't made me back track too much when I've had to return to a certain point. Cool beans there.

-Stability
No crashes yet, unlike with the COD2 demo and HL2. Definite plus there. COD2 demo crashed about 10 times before I beat it. No exageration. HL2 crahses about every 45 minutes on me. Same with CS:S.

-Difficulty
I think this game has pretty good difficulty. The action doesn't feel as intense as with COD2 demo or some of the HL2 scenes, but there have been some trouble spots for me already. I think the difference is that the hits from the enemy take a significant amount of health (so long as you aren't wearing armor). A close hit on you might cost 100-150 health out of 100 (think knife attack) wherease a direct hit with the blaster weapon MIGHT take 25 health. All guesses.
For a challenge, go pistol only!

-Physics
Holy crap, you can't pick things up in this game. You can push them, but you can't pick them up. I guess I got used to that in HL2.
-Weapons
The shooting feels decent. Although the SMG comes with a scope which I think is kind of lame. Especially as it feels fairly accurate and does way more damage than the HL2 SMG. The Q4 SMG feels more like an RTCW SMG to me. Maybe between Q3A and RTCW for spread and damage. Again, this is just by feel.

-Fun
Is this game fun and worth the dough? Too early to tell. I needed a new drug badly so I picked this up. I think if I were you, I would try to get it on sale. I might be a bit happier if I could resolve some of my graphicsal disappointment (especially when compared with COD2 demo and HL2).

OTHER NOTES.
-Loading games from the quicksaves after a death is unnecessarily cumbersome. From autosave is fine, but not quicksaves.
-So far, the people in my squad (when I have a squad) are fairly competent. They don't get in the way like in HL2 and COD1. A definite improvement.
-No knife!!!! You start with a pistol, but I don't think there is a shank weapon for humans anyway.

-One thing I like is my goal is clearly defined in this game. In HL2 I felt like I was just running though a maze. In Q4, I know what I'm supposed to do and that helps keep a plot going. HL2 SP is immensely fun, but I felt the story was lacking quite a bit. The Q4 goals are fairly focused. Almost Ritalin focused.

For those with Cadilac CPU's you'll enjoy this game. For those with Yugo's, you'll go no where with this game.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: October 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Folks Q4 is the bomb. The game sucks up a lot of resources but if you have what it takes you'll surely enjoy this. If your still playing with a 128MB video card with old chipsets like ATI's: 9250, 9300, 9500,9600 and NIVIDA's 5100 - 5900 you might not get everything you were looking for out of this game. Of course if any of these are modified 256MB cards then your chance of enjoyment out of this game increases.

Before I continue: Parents this game is not for children. Maybe those over the age of 15 or 16. . . . .

The story picks up minutes after Q2. Which is great because everything that made Q2 awesome still remains. Outside and inside engagements are pretty well done. Your squad or shall I say fellow Marines are pretty good also. You can't control them. But they do so well on there own that you'll be worried more about keeping your butt alive. Although enemy AI like friendly AI is pretty good but not polished. You'll sometimes have a Stroggy run up to you shooting a pea-shooter while your holding a weapon that'll rip him and his buddies a new one in a New York heart felt second. . . . But hey their bodies belong to the Strogg but their minds don't.. . You'll find out more about that in the Game.

I must remind you that this is a FP action shooter. It's not another DOOM 3. In some areas it gets dark but your fellow Marines have flash lights on their basic issue rifles and so do you. Plus the Strogg are not plush. So that means their facilities and structures are built for purpose not show. So for that reason some environments in Q4 are dark, unwelcome, unforgiving, and very nasty. The Strogg are rugged and I hate to say this but fairly filthy and very unsanitary . Comparing them to Star Treks BORG is like comparing EA's System Shock villain SHODAN to the Trojan Virus.

The action is on par with HALO 1. . . with better AI and way better graphics. The game supports wide screen flat panels with the high end being 16:9. 1600X1200 (just not native wide screen resolutions) The Sound is awesome, better experienced with SB LIVE or AUDIGY sound cards and a set of 5.1 speakers. Playability is great. I would replay it again. The story is not as in-depth as HL2 but slightly below HALO 1. But again, it's a shoot and scoot game, not a shoot and look for answers game.

Overall. This game along with, HL1&2, COD, No One Lives Forever 1&2, Soldier of Fortune 1&2, & Far Cry are in my top 6 Favorite PC FPS.

I am also adding the Strogg as one of the evilest groups of villains in pc gaming along side SHODAN, and the "Many".

Running a: Intel P4 478 3.2mhz 512 Cache, ASUS P4C800DELUXE. 1gig 3200 MEM, SB AUDIGY 2, RADEON PRO X850 XE AGP8.0 256MB, DELL 24inch WIDESCREEN 16ms access time. Oh by the way the DELL screen . . . With its 16ms access time has suffered NO ghosting at all neither in DOOM3, Q4, HL2, COD, any game. . . .seriously no ghosting. I ran Quake 4 with everything turned up w/ resolution 1600X1200 and screen sized @ 16:9. Smooth through most of the game with areas were my CPU slightly slowed down when entering a huge engagement. I hope you enjoy the game as much as I did.

Truly a worthy sequel to the fantastic Quake series

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: October 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

To other reviewers: Reserve judgement till you finish the game. It just gets better and better.

For the rest of you:

****Warning**** Some spoilers below.

Gameplay: The gameplay is fairly basic but still loads of fun. There is some prudence needed on your part, you can't just run and gun all the time and expect to get through.

Weapons: The weapons upgrade is a great idea. Even your weaker weapons at the beginning of the game can be used later in the game for more punch. And they are all useful. The machine gun is great to snipe enemies at a moderate distance. The nail gun is my favorite (especially later in the game). I wish the railgun and the BFG was more powerful though. And I did not like that the railgun has to be reloaded after 3 shots, especially since there is a charging time.

Enemies: This is one of my favorite elements of the game. The enemies are just amazing to watch. They have brought back the Gunner, Beserker, Gladiator, etc. with excellent detail. I wish they didn't disappear after they are dead. So sometimes I get myself killed just so I can get a better look at them. The AI maybe lacking a bit, but that is easily forgiven because of the damage these enemies can do at the harder settings. The bosses are a sight to behold.

Level Design: Amazing, detailed, probably the best I have seen in an FPS. You should upgrade your PC if you haven't done already, it is worth the experience.

Sound: The game sounds are absolutely incredible. The weapons sound very convincing. There is always some chugging and whirring in the background to immerse you in the industrial strogg atmosphere. Do yourself a favor and turn the volume up. The only weak point is the music, the score could have been a lot better (Halo raised the bar a little too high for me, unfortunately).

Kudos to Id and Raven for a spectacular game. We want more! Bring on the expansion packs! I can't wait 6 years for another sequel.

Hold up! This is NOT a DOOM clone!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 31 / 40
Date: October 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Whoa! Some folks are comparing this to DOOM! No way! Firstly, the AI is much improved. You aren't stuck in constant corridors where the AI doesn't have to have a brain. It just has to 'be' right in front of you, and come at you.
Not so here. I have actually watched the enemy AI step away and hide behind a pole until i passed the pole and shoot me in the back! You gotta keep your eyes on this one.
Of course, it can be a system hog. I have a P4 3200 + 1 GIG DDR RAM + 256 MB DDR PCI EXPRESS ATI VIDEO + SOUND BLASTER AUDIO. With those specs, i got a REALLY sweet framerate that hardly dropped under 75 fpm. That with a 1024X768 screen setting and *MOST* features cranked. I was glad they alowed key binding to be changeable, and that they included the save anytime feature also. NO FREAKIN' CHECKPOINTS! I see minor comparisons to HALO and DOOM and even F.E.A.R. But, not so much that the game feels derivative. I thought the graphics were sweet at the settings i chose. And, the weapons sound incredible. You can almost smell the gunpowder. This is worth every penny.

A DOOM 3 repeat...nothing new !!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 15
Date: October 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I would take a guess and say the ONLY people that will give this game a high rating will be kids 16 or younger.

If you have played DOOM 3, then you have already played Quake 4!

I was wondering why this game slipped out onto store shelves and was released to retail without any great fanfare. Now I know why! It is basically the new Doom, except the weapons have flashlights. I am not impressed at all. I beat this game on the hardest setting no problem. The enemies are not particularly clever, just greater in number. Talk about predictable...this game was that in spades. Sadly, you can finish this game in 10 hours or less....YUCK!

Quake 4 is built by the same team using the same graphics engine. I didn't like DOOM 3 much either but it was a great deal better than this. Yes, the graphics were average. I have a AMD 64bit 4000+, an NVIDIA 7800 256MB GTX, 2 sticks of Corsair 1GB 3200 DDR modules, and a Viewsonic 19 inch VP191b monitor. And with all that power, and with Quake 4 video settings cranked up to the highest settings...it still was rough and mediocre looking!! However, the Quake series was never known for its stunning graphics and beauty. Mainly, I felt there was nothing hard to accomplish or figure out. Basically this game did not fill the 1st person shooter void within me. I am a huge fan of id software and have played every Doom or Quake title they ever released, when they were originally released. Yes, I have been playing computer games since my old Commodore 64 was delivered!!!

This is just my opinion though. Download a demo version and give it a whirl but I doubt you will want to pay $50 for it.

That said, I bet multiplayer on this will be a blast after some MODs are created and released. I have hosted 5 different lan parties for this game and we yawned through it until we gave up and switched over to Battlefield 2 or UT 2004! MUCH BETTER MP ACTION!!!!

In summation -
Enemy AI is lame, graphics are weak, a few cool "factory" scenes but no reason to go crazy for this title, gameplay is predictable, weapons are mediocre, limited interactive environment, nothing thrilling, exciting or shocking that will keep your tension levels cranked up to 11.

Half-Life 2, Battlefield 2, UT 2004, GTA: San Andreas even the older and outdated Medal of Honor and Call of Duty games will keep you stressed and excited better than Quake 4.

Save your money...spend it on Call Of Duty 2, which comes out this week anyway! F.E.A.R. is already out, PREY is coming out soon. Much better uses of $50

Joke 4: The Death of OpenGL

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 35
Date: October 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Back in the mid to late 1990s two major Application Programming Interfaces managed to dominate the PC game scene - DirectX and OpenGL, so much so that graphics hardware developers like ATI and NVIDIA built hardware around these APIs. OpenGL seemed to enjoy a life with game developers who used Silicon Graphics workstations (SGI) to create models and animations for games and film. We could buy high-end OpenGL graphics cards that where up to 64mb back in the days when 8mb cards where mainstream. Even the Nintendo 64 built some of its architecture around OpenGL graphics. In the year 2004 the high end 256mb cards where quickly bought up to enjoy the power of games like "Half-Life 2" and "Doom 3" (in fact "HL2" was the only reason for the upgrade). "Doom 3" is an OpenGL game and looked amazing. "Half-Life 2" used DirectX 9 where previously Half-Life 1 offered both OpenGL and DirectX support. Because "Doom3" was so dark it led many to wonder that if the game was brighter, would it reveal something questionable about the quality of modern OpenGL graphics? "Doom3" also had an option to use 512mb cards that have only been released in the autumn of 2005. Valve's choice not to support OpenGL further fuelled speculation that OpenGL may be badly lagging behind DirectX 9. "Quake 4" is confirmation of this problem... and it is more serious than previously thought. "Quake 4" is built on the "Doom 3" engine. Since "Doom 3" was mostly occupied with hiding you in dark places you never got to see the full quality of a brightly lit OpenGL first person shooter. Now that "Quake 4" has had to come up with a sequel to "Quake 3", ID software handing over development to Raven software, the horrible truth has come to light. OpenGL is simply leagues behind DirectX 9... and we are talking a big difference here. "Quake 4" offers absolutely no reflections. Instead we are still in the world of mapped reflections. Texture detail is the equivalent of "Half-Life 1". Polygon shapes are clearly visible even with every setting maxed out. Bump mapping is hardly visible. Steam and smoke is displayed as big successive blocks of floating transparent maps. Fire is "Duke Nukem" quality, fat orange blobs of quickly changing pixels. The shading and textures of the weapons look terrible. Again, no reflections on the guns, but we do have shadows. The facial expressions of your space marines are an attempt on matching "F.E.A.R" or "Half-Life 2" but you must turn up the Anti-Aliasing to round them off. Sadly even on a high spec gfx card this results in an even lower fps. You are a space marine that must run through the alien enemy complex, usually to meet up with a special marine who you must bring back with you, or to defeat an enemy outpost. The enemy AI does not exist. Everything is scripted. The enemy, the Strogg, instead moves exactly the same, coming in waves of two or three and you can see them move like clones of each other, getting blasted up the same way and dying the same, every single time. Not good. Lighting looks extremely blurred and the sky background is just one big map that does not even move except for the odd ship that flies around the place. Even the PS2 has better graphics than "Quake 4" which when on a PC at this quality begs the big question - what will the XBOX 360 have to offer if the PC version looks like a pre-millennium first person shooter? This is terrible news for everyone. The Quake series has been ruined. Multiplayer is the same quality as Quake 3. There is absolutely no need to upgrade. OpenGL is now officially dead! Only "Doom3" could mask its failure. Now we know why Valve did not support it. The XBOX 360 is faced with marketing a bad port to show off absolutely nothing that the 360s architecture can handle. Various tweak scripts have been released for "Quake 4" on the internet. These seems to have a little bit of an effect on improving game play ever so slightly, but sadly do not help much. You simple can't get what isn't there and that is the bottom line. To add further trouble to the mess is the fact that these poor quality OpenGL graphics are so demanding that even high spec card users will find themselves turning off lots of features and running the game at a low resolution. That is why "Doom 3" and "Quake 4" have a 512mb option... because it takes a juggernaut of a graphics card to actually round the graphics off and even then we are nowhere near looking at something as good as "Half-Life 2". Things are really that bad.

As "Quake 4" was duel released with "F.E.A.R", a fully fledged DirectX 9 name, I would point gamers in the direction of that first person shooter instead and to also keep an eye out for "Call of Duty 2". OpenGL IS DEAD. QUAKE IS DEAD! ........noooooooooooooooo!!

Pros:
- Absolutely NONE.

Cons:
- Shockingly sub-par graphics.
- Poor graphics still demanding high end system specs
- No enemy AI.
- Nothing new. Same as "Quake 3"
- You must quit and restart the game every time for graphics settings to take effect.
- Same price as better first person shooters out there.
- It will break hearts.

Outdated Graphics - Old Story Line...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 28
Date: October 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

God, to think so many talented people, put in so much time, and so much hard work, and hours of coding and meetings, and pizza dinners, and miss their families, for this? Dude, WTF?

Using the Outdated Quake III engine for this game was the first mistake, this game looks like it's right out of the 1990s.

The Story line is interesting enough, but stupid.
If you could land a bunch of people on a planet, well, why?
Just keep pounding it with nukes from orbit, just like they said in ALIENS, 'it's the only way to be sure.'
A 15 minute game: jump to system, get in orbit, blow the planet to bits, done - go home for dinner!

Otherwise the weapons look like regurged versions of Q3 weapons,
with some slight change in lighting and sound effects.

The characters are improved, with some new maps,
but hey, it's a bug hunt.
Seen one FPS, seen'em all - if it moves, shoot it.
If it bleeds, shoot it again!

I mean, come on.
Really, can we get past the whole 'run around and shoot stuff' model?
How about something with some challenge?

Something that's oh, I don't know, FUN?

Skip this twitch master, and try Myst V - End of Ages.
A real game that is a challenge, with top notch graphics and award winning sound.

(...)

By far one of the best games of this year

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 12
Date: October 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First and formost this game is not a doom clone. Yes it uses the same engine but it's another game on it's own. Ok here's the Story on Quake 4 you play as Mathew Kane a new member of Rhino Squad and take place right after the events in Quake 2 where a lone marine knocked out the planets defenses and took out "The Big Gun" and killed the leader the Makaron. This is where Quake 2 ends and Quake 4 begins. Now for the graphics= the graphics overall are really great and worth taking a look. As for the game overall I would recommend it to anyone who loves FPS's. A great game and great use of the most powerful engine on the market this game is worth the $50 dollars you pay for it or if you get the special edition which comes with Quake 2 and the expansions it's $60.

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