I'll keep it short, pros and cons:

Pros:

Looks
Combat
Being part of a squad
Voice acting
Some inspired level design

Cons:

Minigames keep disrupting the immersion
Hyperlinear, absolutely dumb gameplay
Crappy arcade music
Monsters have potential, but aren't used well
Lack of ambient sounds (compare Doom3)
Huge, empty levels (especially 2nd half)
Plastic-y, toylike look and feel
No ambushes, highly predictable attacks


The repeated, forced vehicle rides and running around on a spaceship ruined the game for me, in the end. Sorry, I did not buy a podracer. I wanted an FPS.

I ended up cursing and godmoding through the vehicle sections to get back to the game. The problem was, the game is a total dictatorship. If you don't follow suit, some superior will shout at you to get your ass over to where he wants it to be.

There are no other options besides the objectives, either. You simply cannot do anything else in the game. There is only one way. This is also reflected in the level design, especially in the game's second half. What's there is designed to visually impress you (successfully, for sure), but has little practical value.

It's not a coincidence that when you're not on some vehicle, you're likely riding a lift or conveyor, and jumping off is punished by death.

Sigh.

To say something nice, though, the combat in the true FPS sections was all right. Being part of a squad also felt nice, but I think it could have been done way better. Fighting with the squad was the best part of the game. It's constantly disrupted by "cool" minigames though, and you're constantly ordered around with very little other things to do. 

 

in the second half IMHO. 

I buy games to play not to watch.

Regimented level design with irritating subsections inbetween . . .

It's a shame that most games are now designed b lawyers and accountants instead of games designers. 

to play too. 

But there's thousands of games out there that are 'must play' so something needs to shout pretty loud to get my attention now.

Still need to play the Thief series, for example. 

if you haven't played the thief games, then i'd say you'd better off getting those instead. way more fun and original than quake4. the graphics might not be great these days though. and i dont know if they play with vista or new video cards. 

Basically its only installers that have a problem - but then the thing can be installed on another machine and just copied over.

In any case, I'd still need to find time to play - and my time will soon be mostly spent on nappies. 

I liked it quite a lot, but I think it is a fair criticism. The vehicle parts were shoe-horned in and the whole thing was totally on rails - unlike the more exploratory feeling hub system of Q2 itself. The general Q2 vibe was good, as were the monsters, it did seem to be a case of modern "interactive movie" gaming spoiling the fun of simple old gaming. But still good IMO. 

Worth buying as a budget title, yes.

Worth playing -

yes, for the few really good levels, and for educational purposes.

It's a fast playthrough, too. Two evenings max.

Thief is worthy, so is Tomb Raider 2. 

Quake 4 is nice. I played 1-2 weeks. The vehicle sequences suck badly. Much better than Q2 to me. Best plain scifi FPS since Half-Life (I guess) for me. 

And I played it 2 times since. 

to be an excellent compromise between Old School shooty fun and New School gimmickry [vehicles/scripted moments/etc]. I think if Raven had taken it fully in to the 21st Century it would have lost its Quakeyness. 

I have it for the 360. It's boring as all hell. I can't get into it. The maps are small and the vehicle thing is lame at best.

It had potential but Raven dropped the ball on this one. 

I like scripted sequences, like a marine getting his head smashed into a window by a Strogg. That's cool with me. But you can have scripted sequences in a less linear game, too. 

I sometimes prefer linearity, sometimes not.

I tend to finish linear games much rather. Never finished Fallout, Fallout 2 and Albion. Even though they are great games, I could not finish them by not knowing how to proceed.

Quake 4 is a nice game for people who like straight FPS. 

a fan of supposed 'linearity' in games. In my experience non-linear games tend to be full of quite boring missions that involve lots of walking to and from fairly arbitrary locations to pick up items or kill copy/pasted enemies. Fair enough, maybe you can choose which mission to do at any given time, but seeing as most of the time all of the missions are boring/repetitive/pointless, I'd much rather have one long exciting mission that will hold my attention for the duration of the game. 

Well, the game is pretty descent: there are very good visuals here and there, nice gameplay, but the game improves itself after stroggification.

The end battle in the nexus is quite easy when you have understood what to do... and that you can simply ignore the monsters at the bootom, and just get rid of the others onto the platform... I was expecting something harder...

Anyway, overaal, the game is good. If I have to rate it I would give it 16/20... (I would compare it to Doom3, with more lights :P )

Now I have to buy a new PC if I want to play new games (L4D, QuakeLive, etc...) 

shouldn't really requite a new computer, ts just quake 3 kinda and made browserfied 

non-linear games tend to be full of quite boring missions

That may be the case if the actual game-mechanics suck and it isn't even fun to do stuff in the world. 

I�m playing Q4 at the moment and i�m having great fun also :) loved the part when we were defeated and tranformed in half men half strog... the rail gun is a fun blast :p 

That may be the case if the actual game-mechanics suck and it isn't even fun to do stuff in the world.

I'd love some examples. For my part, I guess I've only played the very mainstream 'non-linear' games, like GTA, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Boiling Point, etc. all of which have a few very good missions, diluted by hundreds of dull "follow this NPC without getting spotted" or "kill twenty rats" ones. 

Just finish the game today!!!

The Nexus :) nice ending!!!

I enjoy the game a lot, but i still prefer old stile games, with swards and medieval stuff

Not worth to waste my time for map for it� but is much better then Q2 

Just finish the game today!!!

The Nexus :) nice ending!!!

I enjoy the game a lot, but i still prefer old stile games, with swards and medieval stuff

Not worth to waste my time for map for it� but is much better then Q2 

double post suck hard :\