The Bad Stuff

As much as I enjoyed the singleplayer campaign in Quake 4, there were some inevitable disappointments. Like other games in the genre such as Doom III or Half-Life 2, Quake 4 increases the tempo near the end of the game but it never feels quite right. No matter how carefully the designers set up the encounters, there’s a sense that they’re simply throwing more enemies at the player because they can. Foes who appeared in singles and were often given mini-introductions earlier in the game are later tossed in haphazardly like so much chaff. In fact, the latter part of the game does not feel like it was play-balanced very well. One trick we recommend is to use all weapons – from the weak to the uber – regularly. Focusing on any particular Strogg killing device will lead to the kinds of ammunition shortages that cry out for United Nations humanitarian relief.

The single most infuriating Quake 4 experience is the multiplayer browser. You could not possibly design a worse one if you tried, without making it completely non-functional. Take for example the filters to choose between punkbuster and non-punkbuster servers, or those that are not empty or not passworded. Now, you would think that this would be a simple list of checkboxes – “not punkbuster”, “not empty” – but oh no, that would make sense. Instead, you need to sort them using the columns up top – and hoping that you are the psychic twin of whatever sadistic designer decided on this. Otherwise, there’s absolutely no way you’ll ever find a non-punkbuster server that isn’t full, isn’t empty, and doesn’t have a password – without having to scroll through the entire list.

The scrolling appears to be bugged – our trustworthy mouse wheel simply did not work. No, we had to scroll through – one server at a time – by clicking on the lowest server in the list. To be fair, unlike the terrible filter mechanism, this doesn’t seem to be a deliberate attempt at gouging your eyes out and sexually violating said empty socket; this appears to be more of a bug since the mouse wheel will scroll one server down, but then you have to click again. Unfortunately, this affected both my Logitech and Razer mice. This is, quite honestly, only the second time in my life I’ve wanted to install GameSpy Arcade. Yes ladies and gentlemen, the in-game browser is that bad.


As mentioned earlier, Quake 4 just doesn’t offer anything new in multiplayer. This is a badly missed opportunity and one that we’re having some problems understanding. Quake offered speed and intensity. Quake II offered a more tactical, slower game. Quake III healed the rift in the community by finding that elusive middleground. Quake 4 is just… more Quake III. When we initially heard about this, we assumed that would apply to the movement code and weapons and footsteps – we didn’t think that it would literally offer nothing more than Quake III had. There’s deathmatch, team deathmatch, CTF and Arena CTF – and that’s all she wrote.