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| PLATFORM: XBOX 360 |
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| Y'ARR, THERE BE A DERELICT PORT AHEAD! |
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 n paper, Quake 4 on the Xbox 360 is an exact port of the recently-released PC version. In practice, it’s readily apparent that the game was designed from the ground up for the precision of mouse-and-keyboard control, and the 360 edition really suffers for it. Both online and off, Quake 4 on 360 is a clear step down from the PC version – which is especially disheartening when compared to fantastic launch titles like Call of Duty 2. You do get to shoot stuff, lots of stuff, but it’s all old hat to anyone who has played a first-person shooter in the last decade or so.
By now, we’ve seen what the 360 can do. Sure, superstar tech guys will come up with new ways to squeeze extra juice out of the hardware in the coming years, but even launch titles like Call of Duty 2 and Kameo give a pretty good idea what the face of 360 gaming will look like. Unfortunately, Quake 4, while a fine-looking game, looks markedly worse than those titles and fails to maintain a constant framerate in the process. Normally a couple of dropped frames here and there don’t mar the experience of a game too much, but in the fast-paced world of Quake 4’s multiplayer (the only real reason to purchase it in the first place), stuttering action onscreen can and frequently does mean the difference between victory and defeat. Anybody who has played any entry in the Quake series online knows just how frenetic a match can be, and it’s just frustrating with anything less than a solid 60 frames per second.
Surprisingly, the already-average single-player campaign suffers in the conversion to console as well. Less so because of the aforementioned framerate issues, but more because of the aim assistance. It’s freaking huge – to a large extent, you can kind of aim in the general direction of the bad guys and your shots will find the mark. You can turn it off, but then it becomes impossible to hit anything. There’s just no happy medium. And let’s not even talk about how badly it trivializes the track-shooting levels that require such precision in the PC version.
Quake 4 isn’t a horrid game on the 360 by any means. It’s just that the one thing that made the PC release great – the outstanding old-school online play – isn’t nearly as good on the console. It still offers fairly robust multiplayer over Live and an average offline campaign, but the game simply fails to do anything particularly well. There are certainly worse ways to satisfy a thirst for alien blood, but the magic is gone from this port.
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7.75 |
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Like the schoolyard bully that used to push me – I mean other kids; I was cool – into the mud, Quake 4 throws the concepts of creativity and originality to the ground and expresses itself solely through gratuitous violence. If non-stop action is what you like in an FPS, then I would recommend Quake 4 without hesitation. The weapons are cool, controls are tight, levels are well-designed, and the graphics are good, but not on par with some of the other 360 games, like Call of Duty 2. The boss fights are also a highlight, and the vehicular segments break up the standard corridor-based action well. But there is simply nothing here that hasn’t been done before – it’s a fragfest and nothing else. Even multiplayer is a pretty standard affair. If you’re looking for a deeper experience, I’d go elsewhere, but if you simply want to revel in a glorious orgy of violence, then you can’t go wrong with Quake 4. |
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7.75 |
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| CONCEPT: |
| Bring Quake 4 to the 360… ‘nuff said |
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| GRAPHICS: |
| Good, but not nearly as good as we’ve seen from other 360 games |
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| SOUND: |
| Strogg roar, marines scream, and lasers pew. Standard stuff |
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| PLAYABILITY: |
| Framerate problems and too much aim assistance are this game’s major faults |
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| ENTERTAINMENT: |
| In the absence of the PC version’s fantastic multiplayer, this isn’t good for much more than mindless shooting |
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| Copyright
1991 -
2009
:: Game Informer Magazine
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