I recently completed Quake 4, so here is a small review of my thoughts...
Quake 4 is a nice intergalactic war game with immense battle & sieges and massive air strike bombardments!
It features very memorable / epic scenes & some of the coolest epic Boss fights by far!
At one point you’re in lead of a hover tank convoy that is off to besiege the Strogg barrier control base that is also under a full scale bombardment from a huge earth-side battle cruiser.
(That spaceship specifically looked a lot like the space federation's frigates in Starwars III, at the siege of Korousant against the Star Destroyers. Those ships looked way cooler than the Star Destroyers.)
The war vehicles that you control are great! That includes Assault Tanks, Hover Tanks & a kick-ass Mech (Similar to Mech Warriors)
The Boss fights are devastating! They’re some of the best you have ever encountered on any FPS till now, really!
At own point (You’re in control of the Mech) you encounter a spider/strider/walker Boss and the huge fire powered used from both sides, leads to the partial destruction of the near by base.
All Bosses are huge, very bad tempered & will not rest until you’re one with the ground!
Other cool moments are:
The part where you control the hover tank and fight the 1st Spider walker Boss that ascends from the pit was such a cool fight!
The huge Guardian Boss that was chasing you all over at the 3 command towers was a pretty scary experience & the fight it self was pretty tough.
The part where you encounter the officer that was Stroggified and warns you to get back as he could no longer control the huge mechanical body. That delivered a shiver down my spine as to what I was going to face next.
Overall, the story line of Quake 4 is not that memorable, the ending sucked and the overall length is on the short side. The absence of a hyper BFG type weapon was below my expectorations.
The Dark matter weapon was nowhere near as destructively satisfying as Doom’s BFG9000 or Quake 2 BFG10K.
Also, the Stroggification scene of Kane was not as gory or scary as one would have expected it to be. I thought that it would have been shown form a third person perspective, like an FMV sequence rather than a “rail-train” trailer in first person view.
Also, one would have imagined that such a high-tech race like the Strogg, would have used laser beams to cut off the legs & arms rather than chain-saws?!
Personally I enjoyed it a bit more than Quake 2, but I can’t say that it introduced anything new to the genre and it was missing the wow factors of Doom3, Half Life 2 & Far Cry.
So if you want a shiver down your spine, play Doom3.
One that is not the faint of hearts, will absolutely love the dark/sinister & evil theme of Doom3. The atmosphere, story line, plot twists are all excellent and features the old-school gameplay that made the genre famous in the 1st place.
In Doom3 you’ll witness some of the most memorable FPS gaming moments.
A truly awesome remake of the original Doom.
But if Epic, Sci-Fi, War Drama with immense fire power is your cup of tea and don’t mind the short length, please make your self a favour and do play Quake 4.