Quake 4

I've always had a soft spot for mid-2000s military shooters that didn't try to be clever about it, and Quake 4 is almost aggressively honest about what it is: a linear, squad-assisted FPS built on the id Tech 4 engine (the same one powering Doom 3), sending you through corridors of alien war machines as Matthew Kane, a grunt in Rhino Squad. It continues the story directly from Quake II, and if you never played that one, you might feel like you've walked into the third act of someone else's movie. For returning fans, though, there's a real pull in fighting Strogg enemies that feel lifted and updated from that earlier game. The campaign's biggest swing is the Stroggification sequence midway through. Kane gets captured and partially converted into the enemy he's been fighting, and the game uses this to shift your stats: increased max health and armor, faster movement post-conversion, and access to Stroyent Health Stations that only the Strogg-modified can use. It's a genuinely interesting mechanic on paper. In practice, the story doesn't lean into the tension enough, Kane remains the obligatory marine savior without much personality, and the transformation feels like a stat buff more than a narrative pivot. The squad AI does pull some weight, though. Medic and Tech Marines restore your health and armor mid-mission, and friendly units contribute real firepower rather than just running into walls. Where Quake 4 stumbles is pacing. The first half of the campaign moves slower than anyone familiar with the series will expect. Environments are dark, corridors are repetitive, and the enemy variety thins out fast. Vehicle sections, tank rides and mechanized walker sequences across the Strogg homeworld's more open terrain, break things up on paper, but opinions in the community are split: some see them as welcome palette cleansers, others find they drag the momentum down further. The weapon arsenal is solid (railgun, rocket launcher, nailgun, the classics are all here), but the combat loop can feel like attrition rather than flow, especially on higher difficulties where enemies soak damage and hit hard in return. Multiplayer is a mixed legacy. Modes include Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Tourney, Capture the Flag, Arena CTF, and DeadZone, with movement tricks like strafe-jumping, rocket-jumping, crouch-sliding, and ramp-jumping giving it a skill ceiling that briefly made it the competitive scene's focus before Quake Live pulled the crowd away. The physics engine adds a wrinkle: you can fire weapons through teleporters and bounce grenades off jump pads, which adds some tactical texture. Today, finding live servers requires hunting community hubs rather than relying on the native browser, expect sparse lobbies, not a thriving scene. For single-player completionists who want a meaty, polished-if-formulaic FPS from the mid-2000s golden era, Quake 4 holds up better than its reputation suggests. For anyone buying primarily for online play, manage expectations hard: this is a game you revisit with friends or in solo, not one with a breathing matchmaking ecosystem. It's a game that does one thing, bombastic corridor shooting with decent squad support, exceptionally well, even if it never quite figures out what to do with its own best idea.

Alex · Scout Team

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