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Quake 4 Performance Review
By Vijay Anand
Category : Graphics
Published by Vijay Anand on Thursday, 20th October, 2005


It's Time to Frag - Quake Style!

Quite a number of us have been nonchalant that the next installment of the highly successful Quake first person shooter game, would only be in stores either during Christmas this year or next year seeing that Doom 3 only made it out August last year. So what's the connection with Doom 3 and the new Quake 4 you ask? Well, both games are by the same developers, id Software, so it's only natural for the uninformed to assume that it would be a while longer till one can lay their hands on the continuation of the classic. However, both games utilize the same game engine (albeit updated for the new Quake) that id software toiled to recreate the nightmare Doom 3 masterpiece last year (environmentally speaking), and this is the very reason why Quake 4 was developed much faster than anticipated and it's here today!

Click me!! The opening scene of Quake 4.

Just a heads up for those of you who have not been following the Quake storyline, the new Quake 4 is not a continuation of Quake 3, but that of Quake 2 which was the last in the series to have had a proper plot. Quake 3 was named Quake 3 Arena for a good reason and that's because it was a multiplayer only game given a new game engine then. So essentially, Quake 4 continues a classic game that first debuted 8 years ago in 1997. If you remember playing Quake 2 back in the days of the Riva 128 and Voodoo graphics cards (brings back fond memories, don't they?), the finale is the destruction of the Strogg's (the alien race) planetary defense system. Now with that out of the way, in Quake 4, you continue the onslaught to rid of the war-hungry Strogg race entirely off the face of the planet. Don't get put off by the one-track FPS genre objective, as this time you are not a one-man show going at it alone. With the planet's defense system taken out by yours truly (Corporal Matthew Kane who is yourself), your convoy is able to land on the planet and thus begins the battle between the human and alien race on a massive scale. Like Battlefield 2 and the Day of Defeat, Quake 4 gives you a sense of operating and functioning as a group and if an important member gets eliminated, your mission might just abruptly end and you would have to restart from the last checkpoint or saved gamed slot. As far as the learning curve and adapting to the game is concerned, you might have just guessed it – none to speak of. So long as anyone has played FPS styled games, you'll be quite at home with Quake 4 shooting baddies in no time.

The main menu of Quake 4.


The configurable game options available in the settings section.


Adjust you graphics and audio settings in the systems section.


The advanced graphics settings.


The advanced audio settings.

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