I just received Quake 4 today and only played for a few moments. I didn't even have time to play multi-player yet, however I have a few strong opinions stemming from my experience with Quake 2.

First of all Quake 2 was the best FPS as far as I'm concerned. I play it daily and have made skins, mods, maps, maps and more maps. Just this week I was working on a simple mod to list as a server on gameaholic. Knowing much of the insides and outs of Quake2 I'm impressed with a lot of the similarities.

For one, the Quake2 style Quake Symbol on the cover was kept. This gear looking Q is pretty much only seen as an installation splash screen on the quake2 disk. This impresses me.

The transport ships in the intro are very similar to the original. Although that's getting a little nit-picky, the intro to both quake2 and quake4 are impressive. Raven did a wonderful job keeping the same look and feel for the intro. Quake 2 starting with a close up on the quad featuring a audio clip with the backstory and then simple audio transmissions explaining more. Basicaly not really using the direct aproach. The best thing to compare to these 2 intro's is the Starship Troopers movie.

The pak files used are .pk4. Quake1 was pak, q2 pk2, nobody cares about the horrible quake2 mod (also known as quake3), and now .pk4. I'm sure they're similar files in type and the packing technology is similar, but the little things count. Keeping on this subject I'm kind of mad that it's q4base instead of baseq4 for the base folder.

gamex86.dll. Anyone who's made a mod or has been serious about hosting a server remember's this filename. Cogs and UT style add-ins are retarded and I'm glad to see the actual game dll being a game dll.

Starting with things I've found annoying but having little effect over my loyalty to Dagoth-Carmack I point out the weapon order. It's nice to see that in DM the lightning gun and nailgun are back but the weapon list goes: Blaster, shotgun, supershotgun, machinegun, chaingun, (grenades is the next in g_items.c), grenade launcher, rocket launcher, hyperblaster, railgun, bfg2k. I will absolutly never get used to pressing 2 for my machinegun! I even still have trouble with Doom's weapon list.

What apears to have supposed to have been the infantry have the legs of a parasite. I mean what's with the dog legs on the monsters equiped with chainguns who prefer to hit you with it instead of shoot it. The gunner on the frun cover looks superb however. I have a feeling that's what my marine will turn into as described on planetquake.

The look and feel, apart from no +use function(thank you for keeping it the same) are as if this is a mission pack for Doom3. I mean I loved doom 3 but when I'm running down the same corridors I expect to see Imps teleport in, but isntead they're infantries that simply look like the commando's anyway. Doom 3 was awesome so more Doom 3 is nothing to complain about.

I'll keep looking for similarities. I'm upset that they're trying to make the deathmatch like quake3. It'd be easier to just play quake3. You don't even need to have a serial number in quake3 because ofa  screw-up. A tribute to Quake or Quake2 would be great but just another UT rip off is lazy. That's ok, that's why I'm here to make mods. Catch The Chicken IV anyone?

P.s. if you're going to replace the hyperblaster, why use the gun that even lagged quake1 more than the hyperblaster lagged quake2? Rogue expansion tried that and failed miserably. Speaking of which Quake4 needs a phalanx!

While on the topic, my wife gave birth to my twins this past week. I'm calling them my Quake two. What'ya think?

Just played multiplayer...

The only difference between Quake3 and Qauke 4 is that Quake4 froze, crashed, and ruined the brightness on my computer forcing me to restart.

Does the doom3 engine have a deathwish when it comes to multi-player?

Being honest, next to halo, quake4 is the worste deathmatch experience that I've had in my life. Thank you for ruining quake's deathmatch Raven. May God have mercy on your soul.

You played it for 10 minutes?

It keeps growing (for some) after a few days. Give Q4max 0.71 a try...

Rota! i remember seing you from msn gaming zone like 2 years ago and midnight rota taught me lots about freeze tag :P, anyways, if your disatisfied with Quake 4's multi why dont you invent some kind of Q2 mod for Q4, same jumping and movement speed and all that kind of stuff...but err..i dont know how in the world you would do that, i just play the games

I actually plan on it completely. I'm thinking of a mod for Quake4 that loads all the q2 files (.md2, .wal, .pak, .bsp) and can connect to quake2 servers using the lighting effects and other graphics from the Quake4 (doom3) engine. Eventually that same mod would allow quake2 to connect to games hosted in quake2.

I'm going to need lots of help. Please please somebody help me with this :-)

BTW what was your zone name?

Quote

Eventually that same mod would allow quake2 to connect to games hosted in quake2.

That's supposed to say allow quake2 to connect to games hosted in quake4...


BTW I just turned into the Strogg in single player... IT'S QUAKE AGAIN. I miss double jumps and bunny hoping however.

q4max is the only thing saving this game mp wise.

I've not tried q4max. I still play q2 dm on gamaholic. I did try q4dm again last night. It is agian disapointing. I also thought it was impossible to make a worse map than q2dm1, however q4dm7 (I think it's 7) is a remake of the edge without even using WATER!!!

As I play through single player I can't help but think how great multiplayer would be if they had:
the single player weapons
multi-player support for SP levels
Limited use of vehicles in a team mod
COOP

Face it coop wasn't coop until HEXEN coop! Far be it from Raven to remove one of it's greatest achievements. Also the HUB level concept which Raven all but invented should have been left in. I am going to admit that Elite Force did a great job at replacing the hub system by reusing levels.

Not quite done yet. Kids are running circle around me and they can't even crawl yet.

I do have to say that this game keeps getting better and better. Everything that I've had a problem with get's resolved as the game progresses. The weapon mods are pretty unnoticable until the Rocket upgrade, but anytime i complain about a weapon, the weapon mod takes care of it.

The POD was AWESOME! I was just thinking that if they didn't do that, then I'd have to try to mod it somehow. I wonder if we can get a mod team together to make a user expansion following Quake2 a little better. The POD scene reminds me of the intro video to Quake2 where "some fly boy clipped me" which is what saved him. What if we followed the guy who did clip him? I'm pretty sure the BIG GUN hits that pod but we can work something out. Basically instead of being right after Makron/Zorg is destroyed, make it concurrent like the Quake2 expansions.