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.
Oblivion is often looked past today, and it's a shame. Not as popular or "dumbed-down" as Skyrim, not as praised and "old-school" as Morrowind. Oblivion sits in the middle, the perfect balance that has been sorely overlooked by many series newcomers. I played this on Xbox 360 in 2009. It was the disc GotY Edition, complete with Knights of the Nine/Shivering Isles. Every repurchase since then was worth it. Oblivion starts you with an obligatory prison scene, quickly escalating as you witness the Emperor's escape. Patrick Septim Stewart VII himself makes a brief appearance, telling you about a vision of the chosen one and shoehorning in character creation stuff before cultists teach him a thing or two about hidden paths. His real sons have been assassinated, but there's still one... um... "loose end" who can be heir to the throne. The acting performances for these main quests are superb, the main storyline is a journey of daedric bad-dudes and blades, and the expansion packs are insane[ly good]. The world itself may not be hand-crafted, but it is hand-smoothed. While TES III and V's maps have a LOT of empty space, TESIV has an abundance of sidequests, lore, and random events to witness. You can wander off to a town and find an entire subworld inside a painter's canvas, or buy a cheap house with a VERY steep hidden "fee." Cyrodil isn't a map, but an entire world, and you never know what's coming up next. Worldbuilding at its finest, without a doubt. TESIV has aged well, but Windows 10 is a pain to deal with. Download the Purge Cell Buffer and Unofficial Patch on NexusMods to clean up new issues and Bethesda's... Bethesdaness. After that, Oblivion is just an experience that you owe yourself to try. I've invested over 600 hours, and never finished the main quest-- it's no feather hunt, but an actual open adventure of subdetails, city politics, and schemes. If you really had to pick between between this and Fallout 3, though... nah, just kidding. Get Oblivion!
