Reviews// Quake4 (Xbox 360)

Posted 9 Jan 2006 17:42 by
Companies:
Games: Quake IV
...and your feet are all twisted in the sheets...

You ever had one of those dreams? The kind where weird, seemingly random things keep happening to you? The whole thing has some sort of constant stream of [sub]consciousness to it, but not one that really matters. Then you wake up and go "well, that was interesting!". That’s about how we felt when we FINALLY finished Quake 4 on the Xbox 360. Don’t get us wrong, we liked it, it was for the most part "fun", but it just wasn't altogether there.

First we should tell you, having not played this on PC, we're speaking here about the Xbox 360 version exclusively. To our knowledge there is no difference in content, only the controls really differentiate the two. And we’ve played Doom 3, albeit on the original Xbox not the PC, but we feel there are some valid comparisons/contrasts to be made. Just to let you know where we’re coming at this from.

So now, some background: This is Quake 4, but story wise, this is Quake 3, because Quake 3 was basically Quake 2 tournament, although it was called Arena, which made sense, but we digress. For those of you geriatric enough (like us) to have played Quake 2, it concluded, like video games used to before all this new fangled HALO 2/Half-Life 2 nonsense, with an ending. A good solid, "its over! go home" ending.

See basically there are these evil aliens called the Borg... err... Strog, whatever, and they are an amalgam of different alien races that have all been twisted into some pretty cool-ass mindless cyborg monsters of various shapes and sizes. And like all good "evil threats" they are trying to kill all of humanity. Now much like the Borg of Star Trek fame, the Strog possess a hive mind, sharing information across a vast network that connects them all. So the story goes, all of this fancy, Internet-like shenanigans, has to have some sort of central control right? Well yes and no. See at the end of Quake 2 you blew up, what was supposedly that central thing-a-ma-bob. But turns out, at the start of Quake 4, that wasn’t really THE thing-a-ma-bob, and your new mission is to find the actual central do-jig and blow it the heck up!

Problem is, we can’t help feeling the whole time that at this point in human history, maybe, just maybe, we have some giant space ship that we could wreck into said tower, I did mention it was a tower right, and end it all nice and easy like. Which for us at least, lends a sense of "why the heck are we doing this" to the whole thing. Now some might complain that it’s a Quake game, its not Final Fantasy, the whole point is to just shoot things with big guns! To those people we say “NU-UH”!

Now before this gets childish we should point at that the folks at Raven, the actual developer of this game (with over sight from id) did try very hard to add some sort of engaging storyline. Your squad mates and other characters re-appear throughout and the designers have really tried to instill some sort of concern for your teammates in you. Even going so far as to add little blurbs about how so-and-so likes to play chess and whatnot, during the loading screens. Sadly all of this is mostly for naught as even the main characters are animated in such a horridly lifeless manner that it’s almost comical. This is in sharp contrast to the in-game cut-scenes, which on certain occasions are down right bitchin!

Now we might not have minded the iffy plot and terrible character development if the game didn’t seem to drag on so. This is a fairly long game for an FPS, partially cause we may have died a few more times than average (protip: rockets in tight quarters = bad), but once we realized we could save whenever we liked (protip: save a lot!), things started to move along at a more reasonable rate. We would guesstimate that the average player would get about 15-20 hours worth of play time on normal, which in a game we care about might not even seem like enough, but in a game we’re trying to get through cause we want to write a moderately timely review, it got to be bothersome. And rest assured dear reader, SPOnG shall not review a story driven game until we have played it through till the bitter end. We do not half or even quarter ass it around here!

All of this goes back to what we were first banging on about. You know, that thing about the dream. Interesting things happen throughout. Some people die, some people miraculously make it, some of them you think you remember, some of them you're supposed to remember but don't. We blow up some cool stuff, but a lot of the time we don’t even know why, and when all is finally said and done we kind of go, "huh, that was interesting".

Just so we are clear, before we move ahead, this in no way means we don't like or wouldn't recommend Quake4, so please read on SPOnG faithful as more pertinent information and sad attempts at humor await.
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Companies:
Games: Quake IV

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Comments

LUPOS 9 Jan 2006 22:59
1/14
any other Quake 4 owners out there? i could use some people to add ot the friends list. Only person i know besides me with a 360 is my lil bro so far and hes only got DOA4.

if any one cares to send me a friend invite, mention your from spong forums... guess what my gammer tag is :)
miacid 10 Jan 2006 12:17
2/14
I've got Quake4 but it's on the PC. Haven't tried but I'm guessing there isn't a convergence between PC's and xBox 360's.
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king skins 10 Jan 2006 13:26
3/14
I loved Quake 2 :) One of the only games I have completed more than once. Nothing complicated about it just a very very good shooting game.

Downloaded the demo on Live and liked it, but its not something it would pay £50 just cos its on the 360, its taking the piss when it is a conversion of a PC game thats RRP is £30!!

On amazon.co.uk you can pick up the PC edition for £13.97 but the 360 edition is £39.99. Would pick it up if it wasn't such a rip off :(

LUPOS wrote:
any other Quake 4 owners out there? i could use some people to add ot the friends list. Only person i know besides me with a 360 is my lil bro so far and hes only got DOA4.

if any one cares to send me a friend invite, mention your from spong forums... guess what my gammer tag is :)


I'll add you or you can add me, but I don't have Quake only the DEMO... I only have PGR3, PDZ and Call of Duty.

My gamertag is my forum name king skins :)
miacid 10 Jan 2006 14:20
4/14
king skins wrote:
I loved Quake 2 :) One of the only games I have completed more than once. Nothing complicated about it just a very very good shooting game.


I second that 8~) I used to work at a small multimedia company at the time and we had some hell of a good LAN games. *Remembers the good old days*
LUPOS 10 Jan 2006 14:25
5/14
king skins wrote:
My gamertag is my forum name king skins :)


actually was playign quake 2 on the 360... Q4 comes with it... pretty cool... nice on the bigger screen... no live platy though :(... as for the pc cross over i dunno.... hadnt heard abotu it so i doubt it. Ill try and remember to add you tonight.... or you can add me, my tag is the screen name as well... right now i have condemed, q4,kameo, and doa4.
_______
king skins 11 Jan 2006 16:18
6/14
LUPOS wrote:
actually was playign quake 2 on the 360... Q4 comes with it... pretty cool... nice on the bigger screen...


Damn I'm quite tempted now... its just the whole £50 price tag, I feel like I'm being ripped off and if I buy it at that price I'm encouraging them to rip me off again :(
kid_77 12 Jan 2006 10:14
7/14
king skins wrote:
LUPOS wrote:
actually was playign quake 2 on the 360... Q4 comes with it... pretty cool... nice on the bigger screen...


Damn I'm quite tempted now... its just the whole £50 price tag, I feel like I'm being ripped off and if I buy it at that price I'm encouraging them to rip me off again :(

360 games are £40 from most online stores; Play.com, for instance.
king skins 12 Jan 2006 10:36
8/14
kid_77 wrote:
king skins wrote:
LUPOS wrote:
actually was playign quake 2 on the 360... Q4 comes with it... pretty cool... nice on the bigger screen...


Damn I'm quite tempted now... its just the whole £50 price tag, I feel like I'm being ripped off and if I buy it at that price I'm encouraging them to rip me off again :(

360 games are £40 from most online stores; Play.com, for instance.


Yep, I know, but Quake4 for the PC is £13 on play... still feel like I'm being ripped off. Its exactly the same game!!

They are just trying to rip us off with the increased prices for games in this generation. All down to increased development cost my ass. Games need to be getting cheaper not more expensive!!

Still tempted just cos I wouldn't mind playing Quake2 in Surround Sound on my 32" HD screen and its good to run around mindlessly blowing s**t up every now and again :)
kid_77 12 Jan 2006 10:59
9/14
Fair do's. Haven't paid £40 for a game in years :/

As a side note: A few months I was playing Quake 2 online... on my Xbox :)

Needless to say, I was totally prawn'd.
king skins 12 Jan 2006 11:14
10/14
kid_77 wrote:
Fair do's. Haven't paid £40 for a game in years :/

As a side note: A few months I was playing Quake 2 online... on my Xbox :)

Needless to say, I was totally prawn'd.


I just ordered it :( feel all dirty now... playing Quake2 is what sold me on it.

How where you playing Quake2 on your xbox?

If games where £20 they could sell so many more... I probably would have bought far more games as £40 is to much for a game unless you know your going to enjoy it. People would take more risks with new games if the price was cheaper.
king skins 12 Jan 2006 11:19
11/14
Ordered and on its way, the whole Quake2 thing got me
kid_77 12 Jan 2006 11:58
12/14
king skins wrote:
How where you playing Quake2 on your xbox?

As you're probably aware, the source code has been freely available for some time. Some genious ported the code to run on Xbox (modded ones, which can run unsigned code).

It was surprsingly playable with the pad, but mouse+keyboard PC veterans just hammered me.
LUPOS 12 Jan 2006 14:26
13/14
king skins wrote:
Ordered and on its way, the whole Quake2 thing got me


nice, the multiplayer is quite fun... a whole lot liek q3 which is great. I added you the list last night... gonan be a trick catchign you online though with the time change... probably on the weekend i imagine.

I look forward to shooting you in the face :)

______
king skins 12 Jan 2006 14:41
14/14
Yeah will hope full catch you on the weekend

LUPOS wrote:
I look forward to shooting you in the face :)


I'll look forward to shoot you in the back ;)
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