Back To Stroggos
Since Quake III: Arena didn't have a traditional single-player campaign, Quake 4 picks up where Quake II left off -- on the planet Stroggos, where a lone marine has just defeated the Makron boss, opening the planet up to counterattack from Earth forces. (The Strogg had initially invaded Earth, you see.) You play a badass soldier named Matthew Kane, and as your dropship approaches Stroggos, it's hit by a missile and crash lands on the planet, giving you a rude introduction to a war that seems to be raging across the entire planet.
The action that follows -- at least for the first few hours that we've played -- is pretty standard as sci-fi shooters go. Kane immediately begins to regroup with his outfit (Rhino Squad), and does what any good soldier does: follows orders. It's a pretty linear affair, and you're given one objective after another to accomplish, whether it's escorting a medic to aid an injured Marine, helping an engineer place explosives, or taking control of a stationary gun on the back of a hovertrain as you fight through Strogg territory. It's a tightly scripted game, with other characters routinely showing up telling you where to go next.
You spend a lot of time in the early sections of Quake 4 alongside other members of Rhino Squad.
The combat in Quake 4 is probably closer to Elite Force than Half-Life or Halo (not surprising, since Quake 4's developer, Raven Software also created Elite Force). Most of the Strogg we've fought so far aren't the brightest of brutes, relying on fairly simple tactics. Most just run around in the open waiting to get shot, although there have been a few areas where enemies can approach from different directions. The weapons, as you'd expect in any Quake game, are pretty solid, relying on your trusty machinegun and shotgun for most of the early missions. One thing that bothered me was the lack of off-hand grenades -- this has become almost standard in many FPS games, from Half-Life to Halo to the just-released F.E.A.R. and Serious Sam 2, and the combat in Quake 4 suffers a little due to the lack of it. We still have some levels to finish, however, so we'll see how things play out as we wrap up the game.
QuakeMatching
It's been 6 years since the release of Quake III Arena, and in that time, the face of multiplayer gaming has changed greatly. Old-school deathmatch and capture-the-flag have been supplanted at the top of the charts by team-oriented games like Counter-Strike, Battlefield 1942, and Unreal Tournament's Onslaught mode. The Quake series will plant its flag in that camp, so to speak, with next year's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, but for now, Quake 4 sticks to its roots, offering 5 different modes: deathmatch, team deathmatch, CTF, Arena CTF (using the 4 powerups from Quake 3 Team Arena), and a neat 1v1 Tourney mode (more on that in a second). Sadly, none of the other modes from Team Arena appear to have made it in (including the Headhunters mode), nor have the bots from Quake 3 -- it's live competition or nothing at all.
There are nine deathmatch maps and five CTF maps, including a few remakes: "The Longest Yard" from Quake III has been reborn as "The Longest Day," and is faithful to the original in every way, including jump pads and armor and weapons placement. Q3Tourney6 gets new life as "Xaero Gravity," which has had an additional platform added, as well as the new Dark Matter Gun, which replaces the BFG. Quake II fans will be excited to see there's also a remake of Q2DM1 "The Edge," which has had a few slight changes but is still instantly recognizable. "The Fragging Yard" is the best of the new deathmatch maps, including a smaller 1v1 version useful for tourney play.
