Quake 4 Preview

After last year's highly-anticipated but perhaps a little underwhelming Doom 3, id is looking to rock gamers' faces with the return of its other legendary blockbuster franchise, Quake. To the surprise of many, this task will not be handled in-house but rather by the crew at Raven Software, known for the Hexen and Heretic franchises as well as the more recent X-Men Legends games. The two studios are working closely on the project, however, and are making a conscious attempt to draw from what they consider the strong points of the Quake bloodline in developing Quake 4.

What this means is that the single-player component of Quake 4 is set in the Strogg-centric world of Quake II, and the multiplayer is reminiscent--to an extraordinarily high degree--of Quake III Arena's breakneck deathmatches. The game certainly feels like well-traveled ground in that respect; it's not going to reinvent the first person shooter genre in any particular respect, but from what I've seen it will deliver a good solid action experience. At a recent Activision event, I played four single-player levels of Quake 4 as well as several rounds of multiplayer. The game's introduction begins with a dropship full of Marines en route to the Strogg planet of Stroggos after a "lone marine" battles his way through enemy lines to destroy the aliens' leader. That marine, of course, is the you of Quake II, and this game begins only moments later. Were it not for the actual events of Quake II, that line in the intro might have been a bit cheesy, but as a reference to an earlier event in the series it's a great touch. In Quake 4 you play a new character known as Matthew Kane, a silent marine with apparently something of a reputation for badassery. Unfortunately, it seems like the Strogg still have enough defenses left to blast your ship out of the sky, and you crash land right in the middle of the battlefield, where you are separated from your squad. You soon find a medic who restores you to fighting condition and you then set out to catch up with your buddies. This is where the campaign proper begins, and it's soon clear that, despite quite obviously using the same engine, this game is a very different beast from Doom 3. For one thing, there are fellow soldiers to be found all over the place. The "lone marine" video game scenario is not often to be found here, and it's a welcome change. Through heavy use of scripted sequences, the game is frequently successful in its goal to create a sense of being in the middle of a war rather than an action movie. It's sort of the id sci-fi version of a World War II game. In this vein, one thing I started noticing as I was playing through the beginning of the game was that finding weapons on the ground, though always ultimately a good thing, caused me a bit of trepidation because it meant that there were dead marines around--and thus live enemies coming up. Though the early levels I played on the standard difficulty setting were not particularly difficult, the atmosphere had the right effect. In the first level, which is primarily indoors, the game plays somewhat like Doom 3; that is, you walk through tight corridors and rooms punctuated by Strogg leaping out from behind corners. It's made a bit more interesting, however, by the presence of your colleagues, who reinforce you both with words and bullets. That rather obvious conceit actually made a considerable difference to my enjoyment of the game. I've always enjoyed cooperative modes in games, and even if they're just computers I'd rather have some buddies by my side. It also keeps the game moving at a brisk pace since you're always aware of what you're doing and why. Most action games that are this scripted just aren't going to be particularly non-linear, so everything may as well be spelled out for you while you focus on the shooting and the not dying. One pitfall was the regrettable use very early on of backtracking. Upon encountering a wounded marine, it was requested that I go find a medic--who I met at the very beginning of the level and who hadn't moved since then--and escort him back to administer medical attention. While heading backwards through the same rooms I had just navigated, I was constantly expecting something to go wrong, or my route to be cut off for some reason, but I just ended up making it back to the medic without incident beyond shooting a few Strogg in the face. When accompanying the doc back again, traversing those rooms for the third time, I still expected something unusual to happen, but the two of just ended up at the wounded marine, who got his medicine, and I was on my way. That said, the gameplay was tight and engaging, and the weapons felt solid to use. Thankfully, there's a flashlight attached to both the pistol and the rifle, and as far as I can tell it doesn't seem to ever run out of power. As far as conserving ammo goes, it doesn't seem like a particularly overstated element but it does seem like the game is discouraging you from simply spraying bullets left and right. The second level was more visually interesting, putting you literally out in the trenches in the middle of a war-torn landscape. This is where you regroup with your squad, after which you are immediately sent out on a mission to a shield generator or something else equally inconvenient to human forces. You and your comrades battle through the Strogg forces in canals of dirt and metal, and it's nice to have such a distinct change in environment come so early on. After these levels, I was skipped straight to a stage in which I manned a very large and destructive hover tank. The format of the level alternated between plowing through straight narrow tunnels filled with Strogg to battling in large outdoor arenas filled with mobile turrets and enemy aircraft. The change in gameplay, as well as what I assume is simply an increase in difficulty due to being later in the game, resulted in a much more difficult time for me. I suffered my first death in the tank level, and in fact had to try it about half a dozen times from an autosave before finally clearing the last arena of its hostile contents. The tank is actually quite nimble as far as tanks go, but it also has a very floaty feel to it by design that makes quick reactive movements rather challenging when out in the open. By contrast, the indoor tank segments feel like extreme battle versions of a Disneyland ride, as you thunder along a linear route, blasting everything you have time to shoot at on the way. Both the indoor and outdoor segments are fun, though fighting a full set of enemies in the tank does have something of a learning curve. The last single-player segment put me inside a giant mecha walker equipped with a rocket launcher and a machine gun, both with infinite ammo (the rocket launcher reloads a few seconds after exhausting its six-shell clip). Controlling the walker has an appropriately mechanical feel. You really have to tell it what direction to go about a second before you want to start heading in that direction, because the walker will spend a moment reorienting itself and rotating around in a clanky fashion. After wading through hordes of on-foot and vehicle-equipped Strogg, I faced off against an enormous robotic spider-like boss. This proved to be the most difficult element of all four levels I played, as one full salvo of the spider's seeking rockets was enough to put my walker way out of commission. Eventually, I have to admit, I got past the challenge by simply staying behind cover until the spider wandered over into range, after which I emptied my rocket clip into him, headed back into cover until my rockets recharged, and repeated until my enemy was destroyed. It didn't really feel like the way I was supposed to neutralize the menace but I was relieved that it was an option. This level felt a bit like the result of a "kitchen sink" design methodology aiming to simply throw everything possible into the single-player game. I often found myself simply wishing I was just on foot, and the on-foot sections of the levels I played were definitely the most fun. However, it's worth noting that I did play those sequences out of order, and it's of course possible that the pacing of the game is handled very well in the final version. _PAGE_BREAK_ Quake 4 Multiplayer If you've played Quake III Arena you have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Quake 4's multiplayer component. The game is extremely fast-paced and from what I can tell most of the weapons and a few of the maps from Q3A return. We were started off with some straight deathmatch, and it felt immediately familiar. The game even has those little pings that sound when you hit an opponent, a touch I'm glad was retained. There are jump pads and easily-available weapons, health, and armor strewn about to ensure that the gameplay always remains fast and hectic. It certainly feels like a Quake multiplayer game, and it also certainly feels very very different from the Quake 4 single-player mode. Whereas much of the single-player is at least scripted and deliberate if not slow-paced by any means, the multiplayer encourages non-stop action at all times. Next we played a few rounds of team deathmatch, which as expected was more frantic deathmatch goodness. One thing worth mentioning is that the standard-equipment multiplayer machine gun is a lot more effective than the one from Quake III, and there were many situations in which I found myself forgoing a more powerful weapon in order to make use of the powerful-if-dead-on machine gun. EDIT: Raven has informed me that when unzoomed the machine gun operates the same as it did in Quake 3. When zoomed it does slightly higher damage at a slightly lower rate of fire. Plus, it's just nice to hear that dull bell sound again and again and again. The final mode we played was capture the flag. Being a fan of objective-based multiplayer games, this was my favorite of the three, and it provided a good team-oriented experience while still retaining the necessary Quake nonstop insanity. EDIT: Raven has informed me that there are in fact two more multi-player modes that will ship with the final version of the game: a Tourney mode and an Arena CTF mode. Raven definitely took the attitude that Quake III's multiplayer was already very solid, so why mess with it? It's an attitude that's hard to fault, because the twitchy and less-realistic deathmatches of Quake 4 still end up being very well-done. Plus, it's been about six years since the previous game, so not too many people should be bothered by the similarity. Quake 4 on Xbox 360 At this point it's looking like Quake 4 will hit stores within the Xbox 360's launch window. I tried out the first two levels on the console version, the same ones I started with on PC. For all intents and purposes the content and gameplay is identical. While I did notice the occasional texture that seemed a bit lower res on the console version, overall the game feels like a direct translation. The controls could perhaps be tightened up a bit, but it's a minor enough observation that I suspect it will be ironed out by the time the game is complete. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to try out the single-player vehicle sequences or the multiplayer mode on the Xbox 360. Had time permitted, I would have been interested to see how the tank and walker control compared between the two versions. In general I prefer using a console controller when driving vehicles for the more tactile feel it gives. The multiplayer will apparently be as similar as it can be to the PC version, though players of the two versions will not be able to play against one another online. Raven and id are attempting to ensure that, despite keeping as much of the game as possible a direct one-to-one conversion, the console version is still designed with consoles in mind as far as level design and control mechanics go. To that end, they will be extensively testing the multiplayer content on Xbox 360 and tweaking it to make sure nothing is lost in the translation from mouse and keyboard to dual analog sticks. All in all, Quake 4 is shaping up very well despite not reinventing many wheels. Following in the vein of Doom 3, the game has a bit more of a nod towards storytelling elements than is traditional in id's properties. Raven seems to be handling the task well, and the game should give Quake fans a solid experience when it ships in the near future.