Quake IV

I went into Quake IV expecting a retro curiosity and came out genuinely impressed by how much the single-player holds together, rough edges and all. Raven Software picked up where id left off after Quake II, and the result is a straight-faced military shooter set on the Strogg homeworld, Stroggos, where you play as Corporal Matthew Kane of the elite Rhino Squad. The setup is familiar grunt-on-alien-planet stuff, but the execution has more personality than the box suggests. The core loop is linear and unapologetic about it. You move from firefight to firefight through compact Strogg installations, corridors dripping with body horror and industrial grotesquerie - human torsos converted into batteries, frozen body parts stacked like inventory. The id Tech 4 engine (the same one under Doom 3) gives the environments a dense, oppressive look that still holds up as atmosphere even if it hasn't aged gracefully as raw graphics. Weapons feel weighty: the Nailgun takes a split second to spool up before unloading, the Railgun doubles as a proper sniper tool, and the Hyperblaster can be upgraded to ricochet bolts off walls. The arsenal rewards learning what each gun actually does rather than just defaulting to the biggest number. Combat is faster and more chaotic than Doom 3 ever was, with enemies coming from multiple angles and squad marines occasionally covering your flanks competently. The game's most talked-about moment is the Stroggification sequence at the midpoint - a first-person cutscene where Kane is captured and partially converted into a Strogg. It is genuinely unsettling, well-executed, and changes your mechanical status for the rest of the game: boosted max health and armor, faster movement, access to Stroyent health stations, and the ability to read Strogg terminals. In practice the gameplay difference is modest, but it reframes every subsequent encounter in a way that linear shooters rarely manage. The second half of the campaign also benefits from smarter enemy variety, with Tactical Strogg units using cover and Railguns rather than just charging you. Where it stumbles is on its own ambition. The vehicle sections - a hover tank and a bipedal walker - are slow and undercooked, each appearing exactly once. Squad combat is present but you can't issue any commands, making your marines feel more like set dressing than allies. The level geometry is corridor-tight almost everywhere, which undercuts the war epic framing. Multiplayer modes include Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Tourney, Capture the Flag, Arena CTF, and DeadZone, with classic mechanics like rocket-jumping and strafe-jumping intact - but the online population is essentially gone, so treat this as a solo purchase. The campaign runs roughly 10 to 15 hours on default difficulty, which is a fair deal for what it delivers. Quake IV is not a reinvention. It is a confident, occasionally inspired execution of mid-2000s linear shooter design, built for players who want a gory sci-fi war story with a real weapon sandbox and no pretensions about what it is. If Doom 3's pace felt too slow and Quake III's lack of a campaign always bugged you, this sits in the gap between them with more comfort than its reputation implies. Alex, Scout Team