do you remember the old "Total Conversion" mods for Doom1 and Doom2?
I once made a Star Trek "Total Conversion" mod for doom2.  it took me 2 years to complete.  
I replaced all the monsters, weapons, player sprites, sounds, etc.
(it was called "NCC1701.wad" and it was available worldwide (for free) through an FTP service called "CDROM.com")

back in the day there were thousands of these "theme mods" available for Doom1 and Doom2
(ranging from the Simpsons, to Star Wars, to Beavis and Butthead)


^^ this is basically what Raven did with Elite Force.  
they made a "total conversion" of the quake3 game and sold it as a retail product.
(it was nothing more than a star trek "theme-Mod" for Quake3.
similar to all the countless theme-mod creations made for Doom1,  by fans like me)

^^ This has become Raven's Niche in the FPS market.
they no longer create "games" like heretic or hexen.
they create liscenced "total conversions" for themes such as "star Trek" , "Star Wars", "wolfenstein",  etc
(and they do it very well)

they have a "cookie cutter" production philosophy which concerns itself with changing the artwork and textures in each of these title..
..but the gameplay is always the same.

for all intents and purposes : these are all just liscenced "theme mods" of the SAME GAME,
which are made at the request of the franchise-holder *shrug* (paramount, lucas, id, etc)

Well, it is most probable that Quake IV is DooM 3 TC.

Mmm I think JK 2-3 is a bit more unqie than EF mind you JK3 had alot of holes in it but JK2 was cookie cutterish

May I ask, how can a brand game be possibly unique in any way?

D'sparil
There are alot of dffreances in JK2 than EF, EF is a basic TC of Q2.
Jk2 uses the same enigne but has alot of new thigns in it  and just overall more fun  *L*

I agree with what you're saying, Cobalt. At least in reference to the multiplayer aspect of raven's games. Every raven game since EF has had a multiplayer aspect which is just a quake 3 clone. JK2 was only different because of lightsabers and the force. They make a really nice SP that doesn't play anything like Quake3, but the MP is just Q3 with new artwork. And invariably inferior to the SP aspect of THE SAME GAME. I've always hated Raven's insistence on making seperate executables for SP and MP. I still think that if JK2 MP was the same game as SP then it would have been awesome. But it wasn't. It just looked the same.

This practice also serves to all but destroy any possibility of cooperative play, which is one of the things I love, and think there's not enough of these days.

Why should they care? They got our cash now. Poor show Raven/Id, very poor show.

Not to mention sicne they use a Online password system for the SP as well as MP you can forget about refunds unless you get it from a localy owen store >>