3 2005 was the first time that Quake 4 was shown to the public, but not until here at QuakeCon 2005 was the game playable. Unfortunately while the single player aspect of the game was not playable, multiplayer is playable for the first time on the show floor in various booths with two separate levels. We extensively played the multiplayer levels, saw an updated portion of the E3 single player aspect, and witnessed an early build of the Xbox 360 version of the game. Plus we got quite a bit of new information on the game that we learned from Raven Software’s co-founder Brian Raffel.
Quake 4’s story line begins directly after the events of Quake 2. The stroggs’ planetary defense was destroyed by your lone marine, and now the Marines are now returning to the Planet Stroggos to return the favor. You will play as Matthew Kane, a member of Rhino Squad, which is the unit dispatched to invade planet Stroggos. The game opens up with marine drop ships arriving and surrounding the planet. As your ship gets closer to the planet, a missile strikes one of your dropship’s wings hurtling your ship to the planet’s surface. You’ll find yourself slowly regaining consciousness after being tossed from your ship where your squadmates are already engadged in a heated battle.
Not only is he big, but we believe he smells, too...
Gameplay is mission based, and you will not only fight alongside your fellow squadmates, and some of the action will see Kane take on the strogg solo. Unlike Rainbow Six titles where you order your squadmates around, in Quake 4 you’ll have some interaction with them, but you won’t have to issue anyone orders, or monitor squadmates health. The other marines will help you in your efforts against the strogg, heal you, give you armor and weapon upgrades.
With weaponry, Raven wanted to keep much of the same weapons from the original Quake 2, but offer some flexibility. One of the first things we noticed was the basic assault rifle now houses a scope which can be utilized by pressing the alternate fire button (mouse button #2). While zoomed in on your target your shots aren’t fired in a burst, but you are more accurate and will be much more powerful. Also, a majority of the weapons in the game can now be upgraded, which can allow you to place a scope on a weapon, add extra clips, or in the case of the rocket launcher, you’ll now be able to guide rockets to hopefully deliver a much more painful outcome for the strogg.
About halfway through the game, Kane will be captured by the strogg. Captured marines are transformed into strogg, which you’ll unfortunately witness this atrocity from your first person perspective as you are zipped around on a conveyer belt and your body is hacked and transformed into an alien fighting machine. Fortunately for Kane, just before your neural implant is turned on and you’re fully stroggified, Marines come to the rescue. From then on out, you’ll take on the strogg as a strogg. This will give you the ability to utilize strogg weapony and health stations, read strogg language, and interact with strogg security stations. As a more powerful strogg Kane, you’ll be faster and stronger, but this won’t play out well with your fellow Rhino squad members. They’ll treat you much differently, and not trust you as much - feeling you are some freak-of-nature half breed.
The walker rocks!
In the four levels that we witnessed, there were levels that were more close-quartered like Doom 3, but much of the action will also head outside with much more open environments. For those just thinking this is Doom 3 with open environments, the game is much faster paced and action oriented, and even though strogg will jump out from anywhere and startle you, Quake 4 isn’t aimed towards the horror genre. Quake 4 also now introduces vehicles like hovertanks and walkers to the mix. Hovertanks are quick, and pack quite a punch with powerful blasts. Walkers aren’t as quickly maneuverable, but give you the ability to launch a barrage of rockets (which do refill) and unleash a heavy machine gun onto foes. While the vehicles will not be in the multiplayer aspect of Quake 4, all of the assets will be included for the mod community, so shortly after Quake 4 is released it should be interesting and fun to see how modders utilize these massive beasts in multiplayer maps.
Quake 4 was built on the Doom 3 engine, but has surpassed Doom 3 graphically in everyway. Character models are even more detailed, and environments are beautiful. For those concerned if the game will run on their PC, id has more or less stated that if you computer has the ability to run Doom 3 then you’ll be able to run Quake 4, which is really good news for those who had upgraded their PCs to play Doom 3. However, we did get to play the game multiplayer on super ridiculous top-of-the-line PCs in the Dell booth with completely sick specs and NVidia SLI setups. The difference and new visuals that new hardware can offer may have some returning to the store to drain their wallets for upgrades.
On the multiplayer end, I played two different maps. One CTF map that was extremely reminiscent of a Quake 3 map with jump pads in space, and another map that was multi-tiered and had multiple rooms, hallways, and jump pads. Multiplayer is fast and furious, and basically plays exactly like Quake 3 but with much improved graphics. So basically, if you love the multiplayer aspect of Quake 3, you know what to expect. Rocket jumping is still intact, but it seemed as “bunny hopping” technique was dumbed down a bit. You can still bunny hop, but it didn’t feel as rampant as in Quake 3. Weaponry types will be similar to the single player mode, but have been completely tuned separately, and there will be no ability to upgrade weapons in multiplayer. Raven and id decided to base single player on Quake 2, and multiplayer on Quake 3, which at the end of the day will result in a package that is the best of Quake. While the final number of multiplayer maps shipping with the game is still being worked out, they’re promising at least twelve maps with the usual suspects for multiplayer modes.
We did get to see a quick demonstration of the Xbox 360 version, which was displayed on the exact HDTV display as the PC version which gave us a good idea for comparison. While it looked quite impressive, not too surprisingly the Xbox 360 version didn’t look as good as the PC version. I wouldn’t say the differences were as extreme as comparing the PC version of Doom 3 to the Xbox version, but there was a noticeable difference. It still looked great, and those with wide screen HDTVs will be in for a treat. With that said, the Xbox 360 version is still a work in progress, and Raven said that they still haven’t fully utilized the power of the Xbox 360. They still want to improve the textures, and speed up the game. The Xbox 360 version will be fully Live compatible for multiplayer, and downloadable content is planned, but what exactly that will be is still be determined. We’re hoping that if the mod community comes out with some cool maps, or interesting modifications they are downloadable through the marketplace.
So, when exactly will Quake 4 be released? We did receive the usual id Software line, “When it’s done.” But, the PC version could ship earlier than the Xbox 360 version. Both id and Raven are shooting at getting Quake 4 into the Xbox 360 launch window, so hopefully it won’t be too long before we’ll be laying the smackdown onto those strogg bastards. Until then, fire up your copy of Quake 3 to practice up in some multiplayer because the mayhem will most likely begin this holiday season. I for one, cannot wait.