QUAKE 4 review - What and for who? Different but as good as QUAKE 2
5Quake 4 is a military science fiction first-person shooter video game, the fourth title in the Quake series. The game was developed by Raven Software and published by Activision. Raven Software collaborated with id Software, the creators and developers of preceding Quake games. id Software supervised the development of the game as well as providing the id Tech 4 engine upon which it was built. Quake 4 went gold in early October 2005 and was released on October 18, 2005 for Microsoft Windows and later for Linux and OS X, as well as being a launch title for the Xbox 360. A special DVD Collectors Edition was released, including promotional material and the game Quake II with its expansions, The Reckoning and Ground Zero. The Xbox 360 version of Quake 4 is based on the Special Collectors Edition, and includes Quake II. On August 4, 2011 the game was made available through Steam.
Plotwise, the game is a sequel to Quake II and takes place during the same war as Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Compared to other titles in the Quake series, Quake 4 has an increased emphasis on the single-player portion of the game.[6] A multiplayer mode is available, but it does not involve playable bots like Quake III Arena.[7]
Gameplay
Multiplayer
Multiplayer modes are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Tourney, Capture the Flag, Arena CTF and DeadZone. Players at QuakeCon reported the multiplayer gameplay to include elements similar to those in previous Quake games such as strafe-jumping or rocket jumping. Notable additions to play are the ability to send shots through the teleporters and the advancement of the game physics provided by the new technology including the ability to bounce grenades and napalm fire off of jump-pads.
Like the previous Quake games, the multiplayer has a client-server architecture. The network code has been altered from Doom 3, allowing for larger numbers of players on each server; Doom 3 has a four player restriction, whereas Quake 4 has a standard 16 player limit.
One of the changes to the network code is a move from the per-polygon hit detection system used in Doom 3 back to using a hitbox system like most other online first-person shooters such as other Quake games and Half-Life. In the 1.4.x point release, these "axis aligned bounding boxes" were replaced with axis aligned octagonal "cylinder", to make the hit-boxes more representative of the model shape.
Movement
The player movement in Quake 4 is similar to that in Quake III Arena and Quake Live, but with the additions of ramp jumping and crouch slides. Crouch slides give players the ability to maintain speed by sliding around corners.[8] Ramp jumps allow players to gain extra height from jumping as they reach the top of an inclined object,[9] which while present in the original Quake and Quake II was not included in Quake III Arena.