Wirehead Studios

It's here.  Go get it if you want it.

But wait, what's this?  It comes in more than one flavor:

QUAKE 4 for the PC suggested retail price $49.99.
QUAKE 4 Special DVD Edition suggested retail price of $59.99, includes QUAKE II, the QUAKE II expansion packs, and exclusive behind-the-scenes content.

In other words, if you've wanted the Q2 mission packs but haven't been able to get them, for $10 more, - ten freaking dollars, you can get Q2 AND the expansions along with Q4, and whatever this "behind the scenes" stuff is.  That's a sweet deal if you ask me.

Intresting....as far as i've found, one of the q2 mission packs does npt like XP. I have the original mission pack, and have never got it to install.

Yes, but this is a new, DVD release, so odds are it will have a completely new installer as well.  The old mission packs do run on XP, you just have to manually copy the files down.

Well I picked Q4 up and tried it out for a little bit.  I have no idea of what kind of stuff is thrown at you during the rest of the game, but so far I'm averaging at about 6 fps.  Before you totally flip out, I run DOOM 3 at about 8.  So I'd say Q4's actual requirements are about 25 - 30% more than DOOM 3.

My system laughs at system requirements. So it will not be a problem for me when I get Q4.

That's funny, my crappy computer can run DooM3 at an average FPS between 10-15! Hopefully, it will run Quake 4 the same way.

Washu - Damn lucky guy. ;)

I will try that.

Save money, that's a good way to start. ;)
I'm still waiting for my damn PSU, 2GB of RAM and my second video card. Without those things, Doom 3 can run on high quality with an average framrrate of 60 to 70 fps. That's not the reason why I'm getting this though. I'm waiting for UT 2007 baby. That game is going to kick ass.
But anyway look around. Newegg is a good place to start, because I would seriously consider investing in an upgrade if you want to play these new games that are coming out.

I just picked up serious sam 2 myself. Ill be getting the dvd edition of quake 4 just because it will have less disks. Im sick of this 5 disk per game shit.

I just gave it a whirl. I couldn't stand playing for more than 10 minutes though. It's rather ugly , many surfaces look like tin-foil, there's lots of bad use of colour, especially when it comes to lighting and decoration.
Aside from that it (at least in the first part) just looks and feels like an uninspired and bland D3-mod. I'm sure it's fun in MP or will feature nice mech-action further on, but my artist-eyes want goodies, and won't settle for less.

Woah, and I like serious sam from artist's point of view. The style is different and uneique., I like it personally.

Just to clear this up if I'm being misunderstood: 'it' in my previous post was the game which this topic is about: Quake IV :]

Oh okay, then, but I share the same view with Quake 4 as well. But I only played it for like 10 minutes so I can't really judge it.

Looking at screenshots of the multiplayer maps, I'm unimpressed with the level design there so far.  It's like Q3 level style, but with a texture set that makes absolutely no sense.  I think I have an idea about the "no water to the railgun" problem though on the Edge remake.  You all can answer this for me once you play through Q4.  Let me know if you encounter any "swimmable areas" in the single player game.  If not, well, there's your answer, and it's a carry-over from Doom 3.

My computer would run Quake IV at decent framerates without problems...were it not for the fact that it was shipped to me with a defective motherboard...or something...which causes it to crash when running modern games after about 15 minutes. Hopefully it will be fixed fairly soon.

TBH, I'm not terribly excited about Quake 4 though. It doesn't seem to add anything to the series, there's no new features that I absolutely have to try, there's no evolution going on. The single player will probably be a mildly entertaining run-n-gun-fest, but at best, will probably be Doom 3 without the horror element. The multiplayer seems to have been an afterthought, and doesn't really make any efforts to improve upon Quake 3, outside of the graphics. So basically, we get Quake 3 with higher system requirements, less maps, and slower gameplay. There are no new features to gameplay, no new gametypes, no particularly new weapons, and while a few of the new maps will probably good, some will also probably be mediocre, and only a few maps from prior Quake games will be carried over. There's no way it will match the huge choice of maps, nor all the gameplay options provided by the mod community in Q3. Mods will come for Q4 eventually, but it will take a while, and if Doom 3 is any indication, there will not be a big enough community to churn out the quantity or quality of mods we're used to in golden days of Q3.

Honestly, I think Id is begining to slip through the cracks and fade out of the industry. Doom 3's technology was revolutionary, but it's game design was mediocre. While it became a good technical benchmark, it didn't really put Id back on the map in the minds of most gamers, in terms of gameplay. There aren't a lot of people playing it, there's almost no successfull mods going on for it, and within a year, it's pretty much been forgotten. Not even that many 3rd party games have been built for it's engine. Now Q4 comes along, and it has no revolutionary features either, really no major selling points except it's engine, which has allready been seen in D3. I'm sure some people will play it, and it may be some fun, but it's not going to make big ripples in the industry. I think any further Doom or Quake sequals are pretty much out of the question within the next few years, and by the time a sequal would be developed, who would care about these franchises anymore? They didn't renew the name they made for themselves with D3 and Q4, so it's going to be very hard to market a sequel 3-4+ years down the road. I think we can pretty much consider Doom and Quake dead beyond this point, so enjoy this last bit of the Id universe while it lasts..

Aside from Carmack possibly throwing in the towel, I see no need to fear for id's demise, yet. Raven's messed this one up, but that's not a problem for them. Doom 3 is an amazing piece of coding, but perhaps horror is not id's forte. I'm sure they'll come up with something new. The only thing (ex-)id fans will have to realise is that they got some serious competition nowadays :]

I haven't played through the entire game, but I know I've played through more than half of the game (I'm thinking 70%-ish.)  I haven't seen any water thus far, and I am somewhat doubtful if I will encounter any due to where the story-line is taking me now.  

I believe there's a mod team creating a mission pack for DOOM 3 that address the swimming issue.  Perhaps they'll share their code and animations once they're done. :)

And now for a more detailed, spoiler-free summary of what I think of Quake 4 so far.

The gameplay is not at all like DOOM 3's.  Several different types of enemies are often thrown at you at once (much to my graphic card's dismay,) making for a more hectic pace that I feel is very close to Quake 2's.  It's not strictly running and gunning either, things are mixed up with on-a-rail shooting portions, piloting vehicles, and cutscenes and interludes that advance the plot.  You'll rarely backtrack and when you do it is generally for an escort mission.  Which leads me into the NPC interaction, your fellow marines are numerous (for the first half of the game,) and rather good shots (the escort missions in Q4 are much easier than other games I have played with them.)  You will also run across stationary marines that will add a bit of back-story to the game as well as extraneous information.

I will agree that Quake 4 is not anything new, but it is one of the better single-player-oriented, first person shooters out there in my opinion.

So here's a list of things that piss me off about the game...

-You are not a nameless marine, but you might as well be.

-The overall game is still far too dark.  (I have a sneaking suspicion Prey will be the same.)

--You'll find yourself using the machine-gun for most of the game because it has a built-in light (and it's also the most versatile.)

-The frame-rate is horribly inconsistent.  (I am going to retract what I said earlier.)

--The game is 25% - 50% harder to run than DOOM 3 due to the number of characters on the screen, the increased usage of rag-doll physics, and the insane amount of particle effects being rendered at once.

-The weapon sounds are loud, high-pitched (the sound of the nail-gun causes me to wince if it is too loud,) and overshadow just about any other noise.

-Multi-player runs noticeably better than the single-player.

And my 2 cents, after a fashion.

I think Raven did a good job on this one, there's far more attention to character development and personality than there was in Doom3. While there's nothing glaringly NEW about it, it's well done. The carrier feels lived-in, the major characters are lively, and very few combat sequences have had that overly contrived feel they had in Doom3.

The soundtrack is nothing short of spectacular, lending Quake IV an epic tone where appropriate.

The majority of the griping surrounding Quake IV seems to involve people's dissapointment with Doom3, and anger that it's not a carbon-copy Quake 2 part deux.

From what I've seen so far, Quake IV is a solid single-player experience. Certainly runs a hell of a lot better than Doom3 did (pun not intended).

I haven't looked, but I'm fairly certain there's no coop play out-of-the-box. And while not surprising, I'm still not happy with the lack of coop in current releases.

Just to clarify that for me, this is certainly not the case:

I'm of the opinion D3 runs more consistently and looks tons better than Q4 does. Regardless of the engine used, it is possible to create materials that look fresh, new and substantial (as in, not like sheets of paper). The unrealistic reflective properties that are somewhat present in D3 (but certainly overcomeable there) are much more pronouncedly present in Q4.

As much as I liked Q2's style of industrial environment and its gritty textures, I'm not biased in such a way that I can appreciate only that. For instance, as much as many people seem to hate Q3's map- and texture design, I think it's absolutely top-notch professional work. There's gone a lot of effort in getting colour balance right and (not regarding gameplay) quite a few new things have been tried out, there.
The bit of Q4 that I was able to endure didn't show me anything comparable. Dull, unrealistic and unconvincing, uninspired and nearly painful to look at.

Perhaps it looks better if you turn down the brightness until you see as much black as D3 shows, but that's hardly a solution - the ugliest being may seem great in the dark.

In the game's defense, I'm an old school modeler and texture artist. I'm not too fond of the early attempts to make use of new 3d-technology, when it seems to be used for the sake of using it. I do not care as much about gameplay as I do about eye-candy, and a game must have some seriously impressive feats for the player to distract me from visual insult.

Well, I think I'll try serous Sam 2 first, (having just finished painkiller, I like lots of monsters) then I might try quake 4, if only for the nailgun. I didn't like doom 3 much.

update for the curious: Quake 4 avoids water like the plague. the Edge remake replaces the water to the railgun with an elevated niche/bouncepad. Physics seem a tad off, feels more like ut2k4 than it does q3. And with the engine differences, the Longest Day *cough* feels slightly.. off..

End result, q4's multiplayer would be fun had I never played q3. Singleplayer rocks, but multiplayer comes off as a huge dissapointment.

Hmm.  So much for Quake IV then! I'll just get back to replaying older titles :}  that and waiting for Prey and Alan Wake =]

Regards,

Yickle.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Id call it more of a respectful nod

Well, Rag Doll is Rag Doll, no matter where you go.  It's pretty much going to look the same anywhere.

Note to everyone saying "Id this" and "Id that" concerning Quake IV: Id made the engine. Raven made the game. Most of Q4's "faults," as I'm seeing them, fall into Raven's lap, not Id's.

It's funny that I said, back when I first saw screenshots of Q4, that it looked like a Doom 3 mission pack. I think I nearly had my head ripped off by someone for that. Game comes out... one shotgun? No water? Hm...

I think it resembles more to Q3 than to DooM 3 in terms of weaponry. Let's see now: There's a machinegun, a shotgun (with the same damage points if I'm not mistaken (10hp per bullet)), a GL, a RL, a lightning gun, a railgun, a gauntlet and a nailgun (Q3TA). The only different weapons are the hyperblaster, the dark matter gun & the blaster. Here, take a look:

http://www.upsetchaps.cjb.net/home.html (http://www.upsetchaps.cjb.net/home.html)

I think that Raven doesn't have the imagination to create new weapons like Id has, because the only new thing is the Dark Matter Gun!

The nail-gun in TA is much different than any other nail-gun in the Quake series.  It's a rather nifty cross between a shotgun and a rail-gun.  The nail-gun in Q4 is more or less the chain-gun from Q2 albeit with new whiz-bang effects and a highly annoying firing sound. :p

While we're on the subject of the weapons, has anybody experimented with the dark matter gun much?  I didn't experiment with it much in single player, and I haven't touched it at all in multiplayer.  So far it seems just like a regular ball of energy that has a explosion radius with which you get sucked in or take damage I think.

Edit:  I screwed around with the nail gun some more and decided that it's more on par with the TA chain-gun than it is the Q2 chain-gun.

Raven has created some great weapons in its day.Remember the gauntlets from heretic?.

 I never really thought quake IV was going to be anything amazing but i do think ill enjoy playing it. The fact that its "too doomish" dosent bother me in the least. I always liked doom more anyway.

I'm currently more excited about ET:Quake Wars than I am about Quake IV

However, i'll still go out tomorrow and buy Q4. Probably because im a diehard quake fan and i want to be able to say "Ive played it"

You know the funny thing about Heretic is most of the weapons were pretty much, function-wise, Doom's weapons just given new looks.  Example:

Staff = fist
Gauntlets = chainsaw
Wand = pistol
Crossbow was a dramatic change
Dragon's Claw = chaingun
Hellstaff = plasmagun
Phoenix Rod = rocket launcher with some player kickback
Firemace = pretty new

What they did so well was converting everything to feel completely different, even if they functioned similar.  When I looked at the Q4 multiplayer weapon lineup, I thought, gee, this is Quake 3 Arena all over again.  Not having played Q4, I can't make any judgements on its gameplay, but I can say this much for Raven.  Normally what they would do is take someone else's engine and do something entirely their own with it.  This time around they were making "someone else's sequel".  When you're messing with a franchise with as much weight behind it as the name "Quake" that's a tall order to fill.  I think this may have been a situation where they didn't want to "mess with the formula" from Quake 3, but at the same time wanted to add their own creative element, but also were having to deal with the Q2 storyline - and do it using Doom 3's engine.  It sounds like a painful endeavor just thinking about it.  Raven has always put out good games, I just think they do their best when they're completely free to do their own thing.

Well i just played Quake 4. It seems like a low rent version of doom 3 to me. it dosent have near the production values of doom 3 and it runs like crap. some of the textures look like they were made in MS Paint. Other than those few gripes it seems like a pretty solid title just not one ill end up playing for that long.

You know, reading half the comments in this thread, I have to wonder if we're playing the same Quake IV. Half of the weapon lineups people are talking about are out of multiplayer. :P

First thing's first: Quake IV singleplayer, and Quake IV multiplayer are effectively separate games.

The gauntlet never appears in single-player. And the weapons in multiplayer are modified to be almost identical to their Quake III equivalents.

As for performance, Quake IV runs far better on my system than doom3 did; and the only textures I can complain about are the strogg grunts; they look fugly as sin..

Furthermore, I'd have to say that having more than 3 distinct enemies in a game is a refreshing change of pace...

I just played quake 4 and WOW

i love it  :)~

first the plus points

1. Deathmatch is amazing, i can't get enough of it it takes the best weapons from quake 1 2 and 3 and throws them together

2. the machinegun / sniper rifle, a stroke of genius now i don't have to switch to the railgun all the time

3. the new edge, a class map, if a little smaller than i remember

4. the stroggification, is the singluar sickist part of the whole game so far  :thumb:

5. the weapons are kinda cool

6. Deathmatch is sick quick, and i mean sick quick in places, i makes me want to puke, NICE !  :thumb:

7. Nailgun is like quake 1's Perforator, EXCELLENT (does air guitar rift)

8. Strogg are as scary as hell on maximum detail, plus the metal shuffling is a nice point (ooohh Creepy)

9. Tanks (say no more)

10. The lightning Gun, feels more like the shaft, (which is a good thing)

and now the bad points

1. the guns are as ugly as sin

2. black matter gun is pants

3. strogg are to easy to kill, with the blaster (Shouldn't this be the hardest weapon to kill with?)

4. Single player story is too predictable, raven need to go back to the story boards

5. the weapons have an UT feel (if i wanted to play UT i would)

6. Strider Style walkers arn't scary (why there massive, shouldn't they scare the S*** out of you like the ones out of halflife 2 ?)

7. Kane is a silly name for a hero

8. no female models in deathmatch (a traversy)

9. No BFG  :evil:  :evil:  :evil:  :evil:  It's quake where the heck is the BFG

10. Team Arena style CTF (Arrrggggghhhhhh why, why damn you)

11. Shotgun feels like doom 3 (I didn't like the doom 3 shotty, it felt to weak)

12. the railgun, they took the most pwnage gun in history (i.e the quake 2 version) and made it as nerfed as possible, (even the machinegun / Sniper is Stronger)

13. NO BOTS, how the heck is a guy to pratice at work?

however Quake 4 is a damn fine game and dispite all it's faults, which are numerous the gameplay is quake, the music is sufficently gritty and the enemies numerous

if i had to choose between this and half life 2, and lets face it half life 2 was excellent, but let down by it's deathmatch mode (which was the biggest pile of F***ing S*** the world has ever known) then i'll choose quake 4

for 2 reasons

1. Deathmatch nearly made me hurl, EXCELLENT

2. I showed the stroggification process to my 2 year old nephew, who usually wants to come into my room, does he want to anymore ?, NOPE.  therefore a big plus

so i give quake 4 a 4 out of 5

while it's story will never match Half Life 2, it's deathmatch is the best quake expericence yet

roll on quake 5

I just installed F.E.A.R., and that seems to do a whole lot more with the engine than Q4. It's not quite good looking yet, but at least they seem to have tried. Remember how I always bitched at D3 and HL2, and how people should get their shit together and combine the lighting and the looks? Well, that's what they got close to doing. The environment looks less..  100%-metallic.. and shadows can be something other than pure-black too. It's a bit heavy on the hardware, but take their concept and give it the attention to detail HL2 showed - and you pretty much get what I 've been hoping for, for a while now.

Maybe Q4's MP is fun (I already know a 'pro' player who's disabled every graphical setting to increase performance until it looks like Q1, although this time that doesn't hurt much), but I don't have the time for that. Besides, I have Gen to worry about. ;]
If a game doesn't manage to be enjoyable in SP (if it pretends to be), it's going to be on my black-list for a while. I prefer looking at beautiful skin-less renders of the Q4 models, at least those shots do them justice.

After playing quake 4 id say i like this game sure there are elements which i do think could be improved and q4 suffers from the d3 black shadows, and overly the game is a bit dark hell sometimes all that amazing geometry can't be seen because it's pitch black!

the scary factor aint especially high but then again quake is about action.

However the stroggification part was one of the most sick things i've ever seen in a game before!!

i havent tested multiplayer yet tho because of the lack of time (damn this work is slowly killing me)

Anyways quake 4 is worth the moneys, it's almost worth upgrading your puter for playing this game. (i should upgrade mine anyways ;) )

That's the second time I've heard that and I didn't think that part was all that bad (could be I need to up the graphics some though)

I haven't finished the game yet but so far I think the special dvd ver. is worth it partly cause i don't have to hunt down quake 2 now and i can say i got a doom 3 mod with it :smirk:

I haven't played online yet but just loading multiplayer i feel like...  someone ripped Quake 3 apart and put in the dom3 engine, everything that you expect in q3 is in q4 multi, ok so the weapons are different (kinda) but everything else is the same.

Fear is great. Especially the multiplayer, that is really fun!
Great a very scary single player too.
The game looks very well done, the distortion shaders they use are really cool looking.

I wasn't really too impressed with the F.E.A.R. trailer I saw.  It's a tactical shooter with a high gore factor, and for the life of me I don't understand what's up with the "Matrix-style spacewarp explosions", and MUST we do bullet-time yet again?  Oh, and did I mention the gore?  I don't play games for a high blood-and-guts factor.  Yeah, I like Quake gibs, but gibs are a little cartoonish and have a nice slapstick factor to them.  I play games primarily for fun, and F.E.A.R. just doesn't look like it's a very fun game.

I played the fear demo it does a good job of making you feel more in the game than most fps games, kinda like every half-life game.
The bullet time bs is cause you somehow have the ability to slow time down for short periods.
I'm not sure how they work that into the story but it is an interesting gimmic.

I don't care much for the 'bullet-time' (which isn't called that, but 'slowmotion' in the game). It's only a nescessary feature at harder skill levels and not a central part of the game (like it was for Payne) - needless to say that's where they got their inspiration (+ the matrix).

The plot-hook for the "slowmo" effect in f.e.a.r. has to do with the main character's apparently heightened senses. I forget exactly where, but they DO say that your response times are "off the charts."

f.e.a.r., in my opinion, walks that tight line between plot and action rather well. It's not a blatant haunted-house like doom3 was, but they pull enough stunts to creep you out. All in all, it's been a fun ride so far, and there's a ton of attention to detail.

kudos to monolith for yet another apparent sleeper title :b

 You forgot blood and no one lives forever