Quake 4
Playtime: 7.1 Hours
Finished 08 August 2026.Played on Lieutenant difficulty, which is this game's analogue for Hard mode. Played on 1080p at maximum settings; the game requires an autoexec CFG when running on Ultra graphics to load in the textures properly, otherwise all textures will be stuck at the worst LOD for some reason, making the entire game look ridiculously flat and terrible. Other than that, a quick Windows Regedit fix was needed to enable the Steam overlay (for my screenshots!) but the game ran perfectly fine with or without it.
This was a massive departure from the faster gameplay of Quake 1 and 2, though the gritty atmosphere is certainly turned up to 11 in this game. Quake 4 came out during a period in time where a lot of shooter games were trying to transition from the relatively abstract, simple shoot-em-ups to more narratively-driven experiences. The result is a competent if very stereotypical "space marine military bro" shooter with writing pulled from the dregs of the Action C-Movie script market. I'd say this is an awful Quake game given the pedigree established by the fast-paced games before it, but from a more "objective" point of view I'd consider it a mediocre to bad game overall.
The pacing and overall gameplay design is virtually unrecognizable compared to the previous games in the franchise. Given the action movie pacing, the flow of the game generally consists of lots of linear corridors serving primarily as vehicles to drag you from setpiece to setpiece. Because the game likes to throw a bunch of different marines into your "squad" during the missions, level and room design is simplified into straight lines and empty corridors, making sure that you're never confused where to go and that the bots never get themselves stuck. Lighting is terrible, with most of the game taking place in extremely dark environments (to invoke more of a "horror" atmosphere, I guess). If that wasn't enough, the game is extremely dull visually as well, almost entirely comprised of muted greyscale or brown colors and the same recycled industrial textures used from level 1 to endgame. It's virtually impossible to pick out where you are based on any screenshot because the entire game looks the same, making it feel drawn out even though the runtime is actually quite short.
Combat is nothing noteworthy to speak of. Guns actually feel pretty decent as far as looks and sound effects go, but where it falls apart is how enemies eat all your bullets for breakfast. I'm not sure if their HP scales by difficulty, but on Hard mode I felt that almost every single enemy except for the basic trash mobs had way too much HP. Regular melee dudes taking 5+ point-blank shotgun shots, the rocket launcher being incapable of killing ANYTHING other than trash with a single rocket, wasting 15 railgun slugs on one of the medium-armor assault bot things, etc. Damage even seems to have some degree of inconsistency, given that I've taken anywhere from 2-4+ rockets to kill enemy grenadiers (a fairly common enemy). With the basic machine gun doing quite a bit of damage and also being one of only two weapons to have a flashlight, I feel like the game just wanted to genericize itself down to making you a basic marine with just a simple assault rifle. It almost feels punishing at times to use anything other than the MG or shotgun, especially the explosives that do no damage to enemies but can scrap 100+ of your health just from self-damage.
The first third of the game is legitimately painful to play through; you move slowly and don't have most of your arsenal yet, plus every other objective spawns in another little marine entourage of oorah-shouting morons that shamelessly block your path everywhere. You get Stroggified after the first act of the game, which was legitimately a very cool scene (and very shocking for the time, I'm sure) - after which you move much faster, become a bit tankier, and start finding the more advanced and interesting weapons of the game. You also get the ability to bhop (similar to Q2 mechanics), though the closed-in rooms don't make this particularly useful at any point in the game. This is a positive change in pace, but not really redemptive of the rest of the irritations. Plus, I haven't even mentioned that there's somewhere between 5-10 on-rails vehicle and turret sections of the game, where you have infinitely regenerating health and get to spam whatever minigun or cannon at waves of brainless and boring enemies.
Surprisingly, I didn't outright hate my time with the game, though I can't say much good about it either. I guess I sometimes just want to play trash or basic game between better, more interesting experiences to reset my mindset or something, I don't know. Mercifully, this game is very short and ended just as all its bullshit really started to get to me.
