Quake 4

When this game got released, people quickly dismissed it as a sequel to Doom 3, for some reason. They found it lacked innovation. They were wrong. Visually stunning at the time of the release, this game is really fun. It is true that the multiplayer is some kind of revamp of Quake III and never achieved the same level of success but the single player campaign really is fun and is a newer version of Quake 2's story. If you liked Quake 2, you'll like this one. I never really liked Doom 3 because it mostly went the sci-fi horror path rather than staying true to its origin, however this one stays true to the Quake name. Must buy for all the Quake fans!

At the time of its release, Quake IV was dissed quite a bit. Even the venerated Danny O'Dwyer (formerly of GameSpot) referred to it as "a step back". I disagreed in 2007 and still disagree in 2017. As FPSes go, Quake IV is a dang fine game. Its single player campaign is action filled, tactical, and sometimes atmospheric. Despite the praise that showered Doom 3, I really think Raven made better use of the engine than id themselves. Though the multiplayer feels tacked on compared to Quake III, the single player remains fun after multiple play throughs. At $15 (USD), Quake IV is worth it. Now being DRM-free? Even moreso. As far as texture issues with modern graphics cards, there's a CFG file floating around the web that fixes that issue. Dig it up on the Steam or GOG forums and dump it in the baseq4 folder. Solved.

It was tough going back to this game recently. Yes, there was compatibility issues, but that's not something I'm willing to hold against the game. The broken shaders and awful texturing is something that can be fixed if you search around the GOG reviews and Steam forums. However, I had some nostalgia for Q4 as one of my first Xbox 360 games. It had lots of bugs, sure, but it was a solid shooter with fantastic visuals, cool weapons, and this overall 'punch' to guns that no engine but id Tech 4 can quite nail. It also came with a copy of Quake II that ran at 60 FPS and had split screen, so what's not to love? Playing the game on Steam recently, much of this nostalgia is gone. I still find the id Tech 4 engine to be absolutely solid, and I stand by what I've previously said on the gunplay. However, Quake 4 has one massive glaring flaw that completely destroys the second half of the game-- it desperately wants to be a military shooter. Unlike Quake II, you're not alone and outnumbered in the middle of a Strogg facility-- you have a squad of AI partners that you 100% rely on for all your door-opening needs. I wouldn't mind this so much, except that it feels as if they only picked every five rooms to say, "let's have a fight here." In between the awesome combat galleries and going through atmospheric corridors, each new combat sequence is dialed back by a good dose of walking around, hearing squad banter, sitting around talking about how cool some battle was while an invisible wall makes you stay and listen. It just kind of kills the game in a lot of ways. This does get better as time goes on, since there's a sort of point where everything gets cranked up to 11-- including the enemy count. The game balance completely falls apart by the end, and the end-- ...what? Of the id Tech 4 titles, Q4 suffers the most from questionable trend-following, and it makes the game hard to revisit. It might be worth the sale price, but make no mistake, it has NOT aged well.

This game is amazing. It's got great gunplay, great atmosphere, great weapons, and some of the best team AI I've ever played with. It's amazing how much more useful my squadmates in Quake IV are compared to the utter uselessness that is Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite. Couldn't recommend this game enough. Buy it, play it, cherish it.