Made by Ravensoft, the classic franchise returns, and as usual, it’s Quake’s multiplayer that saves the day and will keep this game on your hard drive for months to come. Quake Four’s campaign itself isn’t as good, but it’s worth playing through anyway. The Quake 4 storyline picks up where Quake 2 left off (Quake 3 Arena didn’t have a single-player storyline): with the Space Marines fighting the Strogg (an alien race who are much like the Borg from Star Trek, only more Goth), this time on their home planet of Stroggos. You take on the role of Corporal Matthew Kane, a member of the elite Rhino Squad, as the Space Marines attempt to annihilate their alien nemesis. Unfortunately for you, your landing craft gets shot down in the middle of trench warfare, and you’re separated from your unit. Afterwards, it’s off to the races as one superior officer after another sends you off to retrieve someone, destroy key locations, and infiltrate deep behind enemy lines. Sometimes you’ll be accompanied by game-controlled team members – usually a technical officer who can repair your armour, and/or a medic who can heal you up to full health.

It’s almost unfair to pick apart Quake 4’s single-player campaign, because multiplayer has always been the series’ strength, and this outing isn’t any different. As stated above, Quake 4 continues the story of Quake 2, only it adds the best multiplayer arena features of Quake 3, along with some pretty mint graphics (it’s a Quake game so you wouldn’t expect anything less) and realistic sound; the thrill of shredding evil alien hordes and fragging your friends.

One complaint some people are going to have with this game right off the bat is that the level of gore will probably offend some of the more squeamish players; you may find it difficult to keep the real and game worlds separate, because of the immersive gaming experience. One example of this is when on Stroggos you actually get turned into a Strogg, which is pretty cool, if not too graphic. The Stroggification process is quite graphic, as they insert a huge hypodermic needle into your chest, cut your legs off, and have some big buzz saws riveting stuff onto you, and all this happens as you watch on helplessly. Quite honestly, if video games hadn’t already desensitized me to violence I would have been pretty disturbed by that particular scene.

One of the cooler aspects of this game is that after you are turned into a Strogg you can actually understand the shit that’s coming in over the intercom. When you’re a playing as a regular marine and you hear shit chiming in, you think that you’re pwning the Strogg, but when you turn into a Strogg and you can understand what they’re actually saying, you realize you weren’t pwning them, they were pwning you. You hear them talking over the intercom about you, and you find out that they’ve been tricking you into thinking that you’re winning, all the while they’ve actually been luring you into traps. Its little things like that that make some video games a step above the rest.

The bottom line is, if you are a first-person-shooter fan, Quake 4 is a must-have. A strong story line and robust multiplayer features are enhanced by amazing graphics and sound (and weapons!).

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