Quake 4 Preview

At first, it looks like a Marine staring out a port into the deep reaches of space. The scene is almost placid, sedate, but that is soon twisted into something much more horrifying. The head slowly turns, revealing the other side, pitted and with holes in it. The camera pulls back and the lower half of the Marine’s body is gone and rather than looking out of a port into space, what remains of this soldier is floating through the vacuum of night. Nor is he alone. Dismembered bodies seem to be everywhere.

And then the ships warp into view – massive ships carrying an invasion force. But this is not the attack of aliens on Mother Earth. Quite the contrary – this is a retribution, angry and vicious, of warriors from Earth invading the homeworld of the Strogg, the alien race that attacked Earth.

Quake 4 is from id Software, developed by Raven Software and published by Activision. The game will release on the PC and Microsoft 360 platforms in October and November respectively.

Activision recently held an event in San Francisco to show off several of the game’s levels, including one with a tank and walker and Quake 4 is what fans have come to expect from the Quake series but with some nice steps backwards to bring old storylines to the fore.

The story is a continuation of the Quake 2 arc. A lone Marine busted through Strogg defenses and took out their planetary defense system, allowing a massive invasion of Marines to the planet surface, something the Stroggs are not taking lightly. Players take on the role of Matthew Caine, a member of the Rhino company. The landing is interrupted by missiles and Caine is mistaken for dead. When he finally comes to, he is separated from his company and must rejoin them. That begins the adventure. 

Pre-E3, a trailer showed Caine being captured by the Stroggs and modified to be one of their bionic weapons. He was rescued just short of a brain wipe, but comes out with enhanced abilities and knowing the Strogg language. The scenarios shown in San Francisco were all pre-Stroggification, and basically had Caine marching through levels, complete with auto-save points. Of course, the Strogg come at you in a variety of ways – there is the Doom 3, pop-out of the darkness in tight corridors way, aerial attacks that drop roving metallic balls that fire and take out shielding in a hurry, and other aerial assault mobs, and Strogg that will find elevated platforms from which to shoot at you. Maintaining a constant scan of the area for targets is essential, and this is a fire fight that rages fast and furious. Each level has a plethora of targets and much depends on which of the four difficulty settings selected (the dev team even had fun with that – for example, corporal is the second easiest level and the description states that at this level you can hit a moving target … usually).

The game features rag-doll physics, which results in some satisfying animation when you blow a Strogg off a wall, or run over them in a tank. But graphically this game is superb. Put the PC version up against the Xbox 360 high-def version playing on a giant wall-mounted plasma screen (running 720) and you won’t see much difference. The sound is intense and comes at you at almost the same rate as the enemy fire.

The PC control scheme is a dream, with mouse targeting (Logitech’s G-series laser mouse was used at the demo) and weapons scroll as simple as using the scroll button on the mouse. The keyboard controls were all pretty much intuitive.

The game also features a variety of multiplayer modes, and the SF event featured a multiplayer frag-fest that had almost no map loading times (there were some old Quake maps included), and was a case of either being very quick or being very dead. Spawn, shot, dead. Respawn, run and hunt.

Make no mistake, Quake 4 has some disturbing cutscenes that advance the story and propel players into the action with a vengeance. Graphically amazing, with strong audio elements, this is a title that will please Quake fans and continue a great story line.