Quake 4

I came fresh from Quake 2 remaster and I remembered why I have never finished Q4 back in it's day. Too slow, too tactic, too squad based, too dark. Anyway the graphics are still great and it is a fan game, just not for anyone who come fresh from the insanly fast and crazy Quake 2 or Doom 2016 or anyway from games that go way faster than this slow pased game. Fingers crossed for a Doom 2016 remake for Quake!

I liked Quake 2 a lot and I was looking forward to giving Quake 4 a try (I didn't play it when it came out, only now, in 2021). The good: it didn't crash and it ran well on a high-end computer. The bad: the story is uninspired and feels like a clone of Quake 2. I liked it there but here the maps are just convoluted mazes set up to railroad the player from one ambush to another. The lighting/shadows are awful - there are literally pitch black areas right next to row of bright ceiling lights. The ambient light setting is a joke, I'm not sure why it was put in. The guns are near-unusable - only the two weakest guns have lights (which is needed all the time, see above) and the others have delays so when an enemy shows up, it's not possible to fire at them right away. All the weapons are under-powered and some enemies take a ridiculous number of hits even on the easiest level. I used to be decent in Quake 2 and 3 but in this game I died constantly, even on the easiest setting. Quake was always an arcade shooter but for some mind-boggling reason, they added reloading in this version, trying to make it a tactical shooter? It doesn't work - if I want to play a tactical shooter game, I'd play Arma 1/2/3, not this laughable effort. Textures look pretty generic and low-quality (even with the manual config changes to fix texture quality) and the same textures are reused everywhere. I could've sworn Quake 2 had better variety. Definitely not recommended, even with a heavy discount. I don't think this game is worth anything more than $1.

Maybe the game is too old and not optimized for my computer. It would make it to the main menu but would lock up and/or not read my mouse and keyboard. I cannot play this game with my current PC. Though I do remember owning the disc version back in the day. It's a really good game with a great story.

Apparently does not come with CD key. This disables Quake 4 online gaming. I did purchase this from GOG but I ended getting it also via Steam as Steam version comes with CD key and full online functionality.

Raven Software was a studio experienced with the FPS genre, so seeing them taking the Quake series was quite an expectation, but unfortunately they are not id Software. Direct sequel of Quake 2, the game tries to give a more "realistic" feeling with heavy inspirations from AlienS or Starship Troopers and why not ? Now you have to reload, cover, do without bonuses like the Quad Damage, Invisibility, Invincibility... The main problem comes from the level design : uninspired (it's just long corridors), it makes the gunfights a chore to play since you have sometimes to deal with large (and/ or heavily armed) enemies in tight areas where you can barely move whereas in the originals enemies size is adjusted to the areas so you have space to dodge (and that makes the fights exciting). They also kept the usual flaw of the series : playing on high difficulty is not interesting, enemies are hp sponge that take ages to die and your amor is just paper towel. So unless you're curious or just craving for a shooter, wait for a price drop. Otherwise stick with the ancestors, which are still masterclasses in level design.