Friday, November 04, 2005
Quake 4 and Its Failings
I've been in the market for a new game for my PC.
And I've been looking for 3d shooters.
So naturally, I turned to Quake 4, since there was some hype about it earlier.
This is a game where you realize it sucks by not even having to play it. You realize this because in something as competitive as FPSs, you need a playable demo. UT2k4 has a playable demo. I will get to see exactly how well the game performs on my system, what to expect from the AI, if the gameplay is great.
Quake 4 has no playable demo that I can find on its "official gaming website" -- just downloadable wall paper trailer movies.
And the trailers basically confirm your worst fear: Quake 4 is nothing new. You've seen all these weapons in Quake 3. The multiplayer level could be described as "Quake 3 with updated maps, textures and graphics."
The AI in the movies looks depressing. Enemies run right at you, not even attempting to use cover as it charges you head on and continuously pump round after round into its chest. You haven't seen gameplay that weak since Doom 2. Flying enemies don't try to flank you, nothing seems to work together as co-ordinated teams.
Like Doom 3, what id is trying to deliver is a playable movie crossbred with an FPS. What its done is generate a game that seems lacking in replay value, but just play value. Especially since they've open sourced all their other games via the GPL.
Quake 4 is as much a product of bad design as it is the George Lucas effect: If you're putting special effects in every single scene, that hardly makes them special anymore, does it?
Sadly, this means the tried-and-true 3d shooter of choice is now Halo. (Which, like Quake 4, involves a war between an alien race(s) and huaminity -- but for some reason Quake 4 involves visiting their home planet and launching a ground invasion of some kind, as opposed to just nuking them back into the stone age from orbit.)
Its just sad to see Id games crank out the 3d game equivilant of B-movies. And with the rest of the shooter games I loved from Childhood bought up by microsoft and turned into XBox360 fodder, its time to move on to better, and hopefully brighter games.
And I've been looking for 3d shooters.
So naturally, I turned to Quake 4, since there was some hype about it earlier.
This is a game where you realize it sucks by not even having to play it. You realize this because in something as competitive as FPSs, you need a playable demo. UT2k4 has a playable demo. I will get to see exactly how well the game performs on my system, what to expect from the AI, if the gameplay is great.
Quake 4 has no playable demo that I can find on its "official gaming website" -- just downloadable wall paper trailer movies.
And the trailers basically confirm your worst fear: Quake 4 is nothing new. You've seen all these weapons in Quake 3. The multiplayer level could be described as "Quake 3 with updated maps, textures and graphics."
The AI in the movies looks depressing. Enemies run right at you, not even attempting to use cover as it charges you head on and continuously pump round after round into its chest. You haven't seen gameplay that weak since Doom 2. Flying enemies don't try to flank you, nothing seems to work together as co-ordinated teams.
Like Doom 3, what id is trying to deliver is a playable movie crossbred with an FPS. What its done is generate a game that seems lacking in replay value, but just play value. Especially since they've open sourced all their other games via the GPL.
Quake 4 is as much a product of bad design as it is the George Lucas effect: If you're putting special effects in every single scene, that hardly makes them special anymore, does it?
Sadly, this means the tried-and-true 3d shooter of choice is now Halo. (Which, like Quake 4, involves a war between an alien race(s) and huaminity -- but for some reason Quake 4 involves visiting their home planet and launching a ground invasion of some kind, as opposed to just nuking them back into the stone age from orbit.)
Its just sad to see Id games crank out the 3d game equivilant of B-movies. And with the rest of the shooter games I loved from Childhood bought up by microsoft and turned into XBox360 fodder, its time to move on to better, and hopefully brighter games.
