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Latest update:  Quake 4 Do you remember how I don't think I need to write a wall of text about what the Quake series is. Quake 4 was a disappointing sequel to Quake 2. Why disappointing? Probably because people came in with the expectations of having more of Quake 2, when it was nothing like that. This draws parallel to Doom 3, which tried really hard to be first-person Resident Evil. Quake 4 is more reminiscent of a futuristic single-player Call of Duty. Is the game bad, though? No (although some sections are poo poo). In Quake 4 you take the mantle of CORPORAL MATTHEW KANE during the Second Invasion of Stroggos. This second invasion, according to the story, was possible because the protagonist of Quake 2 did a Quake 2 on the Strogg, leaving them vulnerable for a full-scale assault. Now, following in Bitterman's footsteps, Kane must waddle at a leisurely pace through the depths of Stroggos and... do... something? Wait, is there even a task? The LP Post-commentary, maximum difficulty. On this occasion I am consciously depriving myself of fun in favor of schadenfreude value, because the game stops being fun on maximum difficulty 1.5 hours in: everything kills you in two hits, everything takes two full clips to kill, and you are extremely slow. I will die a lot. A LOT. Spoilers Feel free. Kane becomes a Strogg 2/5 of the way into the game. You become faster and slightly more durable, learn Strogg, gain the capacity to absorb Stroyent and end up killing everything in your path. Technical stuff 1. The game runs like poo poo on modern systems. Specifically, the textures get hosed on any settings. This is fixed by loving around with the game's config files. 2. The game has lots of chatter and no subtitles. To that end, I added my own as best I could. Now, these take a long time and a lot of effort, so the updates will not be frequent, maybe once a week at best. Videos          
nutri_void fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Aug 5, 2018 |
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Jan 2, 2018 22:42
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| # ? May 8, 2024 05:17 |
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Ooooo Quake 4! Been meaning to see/play this.
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Jan 3, 2018 01:31
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I loved this game when it came out; your bog standard shooter for the time but still really fun and looked great for the era. It got some flack for departing from the gameplay of Quake 2 and Quake 3 but really the market itself had moved away from that style of gameplay as well so I don't blame the devs for moving more towards the 'story telling' gameplay in 4. Like everyone else who played the game the Stroggification process you go through about half way through is what I remember most. Never really played multiplayer for this so I have no idea what that was like but I do vaguely remember the online focused tie in released a bit later called Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars. It was supposed to be a lot like Wolf: ET in that it focused on team based online play, and I think they wanted to tap into some of the same popularity (I was still playing Wolf: ET at the time as well) but it never really took off and I didn't find the game had the same sense of community. I recently picked it up during a Steam sale because I can no longer be bothered to insert the DVD sitting not 4 feet away from me and was unhappy to see the game locked in the lowest settings for some reason. The guide below should help save anyone a lot of trouble in fixing what needs to be fixed: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=175832751 If you don't trust the file or aren't using Windows 7 you can also take a trip down memory lane to the late 90's/early 2000's and manually change the file yourself to the values specified.
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Jan 3, 2018 02:33
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Got this game earlier in the year on sale, it was fun enough.
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Jan 3, 2018 03:32
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Not sure why you're doing this to yourself, honestly. Seems like playing on max difficulty just surgically removes all the fun?
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Jan 3, 2018 07:44
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I thought Quake 2 was also a terrible disappointment. I mean, that's what I gathered from the Proteus/Suspicious LP way back in the day. Still, I liked both of them! Quake 2 and Quake 4 were okay in my book. I didn't like Quake 1 or Quake 3, but the even-numbered games I was okay with. And having "Raven Squad" dispensing upgrades throughout the game was kinda-sorta funny. Also, I liked that not all of your squad-mates were just there to get killed to show how badass the Strogg were; some of them were badasses themselves! Someone on SA did a great LP of Quake 4 before... can't remember the guy's name, but I always thought of him as "Brendan Fraser if he were an LP-er". I think all of the videos are gone because he used Viddler?
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Jan 3, 2018 10:32
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Reading your intro post, I went: "Man, it'd be funny if he did closed captions for sound effects and music, too." And you did. I love your style, Alexey.
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Jan 3, 2018 10:38
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PurpleXVI posted:Reading your intro post, I went: "Man, it'd be funny if he did closed captions for sound effects and music, too." And you did. I love your style, Alexey. I know, right? He's close-captioning the *ominous music* in the beginning, and I'm thinking, "It'd be great if he could put in "pew-pew" noises for the guns. And then the space-ships appear, and there's the *pew-pew-pew*! Crane Fist posted:Not sure why you're doing this to yourself, honestly. Seems like playing on max difficulty just surgically removes all the fun? I kinda-sorta agree with this. Challenge is one thing, if they increased the number of enemies or improved their AI or aim, but straight-up increasing their health/gimping your weapons? That's not very much fun.
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Jan 3, 2018 11:04
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Yay, it's good to know that the subtitles are worth it! I won't be able to caption absolutely everything like this, or else the LP will take years, but I'll try to pull an YET like this whenever I can  painedforever posted:I kinda-sorta agree with this. Challenge is one thing, if they increased the number of enemies or improved their AI or aim, but straight-up increasing their health/gimping your weapons? That's not very much fun. Crane Fist posted:Not sure why you're doing this to yourself, honestly. Seems like playing on max difficulty just surgically removes all the fun? Mostly because I can. I've beaten it before on max difficulty, so I can savescum my way through it again on camera. I'll be cutting things out, have no fear painedforever posted:Someone on SA did a great LP of Quake 4 before... can't remember the guy's name, but I always thought of him as "Brendan Fraser if he were an LP-er". I think all of the videos are gone because he used Viddler? This LP is also available on the Internet Archive!
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Jan 3, 2018 16:37
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Chiming in as another maniac who beat this on maximum difficulty, although I had way too much free time on my hands back then. Thing about Quake 2 was that sure, everyone played and loved it, but that was multiplayer. Quake 2's SP campaign was rear end, endless orange and brown corridors with uninspired enemies and zero effort put in level design. Quake 4 not being like it is a good thing. It has a lot of obvious shortcomings, but I still like it a lot and ocasisonally replay it, but I'm generally willing to forgive a lot to a game that contains some variation on the weapon you get last in this one. Spoiler: it's a loving black hole gun. Black hole guns redeem any game they're in. Thing is, it's a solid long singleplayer shooter that came at a time when that was more of a rarity and it does a lot of things right to keep the player interested, with the unlocking of upgrades and good sense of progression with the levels. Also: quote:Do you remember how all id Tech 4 games were hyped up disappointments? Quake 4 is one of them. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Jan 3, 2018 |
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Jan 3, 2018 18:33
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anilEhilated posted:Wolfenstein 2009 is utterly fantastic and anyone who disagrees can kiss my Leichenfaust 44. Good point, the OP has been amended accordingly
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Jan 3, 2018 18:46
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anilEhilated posted:Wolfenstein 2009 is utterly fantastic and anyone who disagrees can kiss my Leichenfaust 44. Too bad you can't buy it on Steam anymore 
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Jan 3, 2018 22:30
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anilEhilated posted:Thing about Quake 2 was that sure, everyone played and loved it, but that was multiplayer. Quake 2's SP campaign was rear end, endless orange and brown corridors with uninspired enemies and zero effort put in level design. Quake 4 not being like it is a good thing. The opinion changed about a year after release (for some reason), but when it came out, Quake 2 was praised for its single player. Like, check out this review from 1997 quote:There are gameplay achievements, as well. Most notable, of course, is the inclusion of a well-crafted, mission-driven single-player game. As players of its previous titles know, id has never been much for storylines, and while Quake II won't win any interactive fiction awards, it does make a credible effort to pull you into the game emotionally as well as viscerally. As you advance through Quake II's multisection levels, an increasingly ominous sense of purpose takes hold. And by the time the prison doors are opened and the factory is breached, it is difficult not to experience a certain tinge of horror, and perhaps even fear - both of which spur you on in a way altogether different from the deathmatch adrenaline rush that made the original Quake so famous. The graphics being amazing for the time probably helped a lot with that.
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Jan 4, 2018 00:44
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Aces High posted:Too bad you can't buy it on Steam anymore I thought you were joking, but wow it's gone. Return to Castle Wolfenstein is still there though.
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Jan 4, 2018 10:09
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These subtitles are wonderful. Everyone remembers the stroggification, but thinking back on this, I strongly remember liking the more eccentric members of the supporting cast at the time (I vaguely recall Cortez being able to drop Light Tanks like they're nothing?), and also immediately finding the Strogg text readable.
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Jan 4, 2018 10:46
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What really gets me is there being so little head-bob when you move.
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Jan 4, 2018 19:27
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I'm not sure why you're playing this on the kind of difficulty you steadfastly refused to play on in your Doom 2016 LP, but more power to you. The subtitles for the Stroggs and the noises were a cute touch.anilEhilated posted:Quake 2's SP campaign was rear end, endless orange and brown corridors with uninspired enemies and zero effort put in level design. Quake 4 not being like it is a good thing. From the limited amount of exposure I've gotten because of this video: the graphics look much better and more colorful in Quake 4, but I've never liked the "go in a straight line to advance the plot and repeat the process over and over again" style of FPS that was so abundant in the last video game generation. Plus, exploration to get hard-to-find secrets will always feel rewarding. At least it's not also a cover shooter with regen health that only allows you to carry two weapons at a time. The characters are also good, so far at least.
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Jan 4, 2018 19:55
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anilEhilated posted:Wolfenstein 2009 is utterly fantastic and anyone who disagrees can kiss my Leichenfaust 44. The game went to Hell literally and metaphorically when it went to Hell.
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Jan 4, 2018 20:25
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get that OUT of my face posted:I'm not sure why you're playing this on the kind of difficulty you steadfastly refused to play on in your Doom 2016 LP, but more power to you. The subtitles for the Stroggs and the noises were a cute touch. Ultimately, the difference is that I can beat Quake 4 on maximum difficulty, I've done it before in not too distant past, but I can't beat 2016 Doom on maximum difficulty, at least not yet. I tried
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Jan 4, 2018 21:05
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DOOM is also all about pacing which the difficulty effectively destroys; Quake 4 plays a lot more conservatively even on the lower difficulties.RoboChrist 9000 posted:And while Doom 3 was a terrible Doom game, I felt like it was fun and neat until you went to Hell.
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Jan 4, 2018 21:26
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:I also recall really enjoying Prey. The original Prey was pretty inoffensive, I think that was about the best thing you could really say about it, though. The plot was uninspiring, the weapons were generally a bit lame and after the first half or so it felt like they'd blown their load of neat tricks and it was just repetition until it ended. Competent, but uninspired. RoboChrist 9000 posted:And while Doom 3 was a terrible Doom game, I felt like it was fun and neat until you went to Hell. My main issue with Doom 3 was that it was a combat game, with unavoidable combat, where the combat wasn't fun because the encounters were almost all the same "you are in a hallway, a thing rushes at you, shoot him fast." and the weapons sounded, at their most ferocious, like someone furiously popping popcorn.
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Jan 4, 2018 22:14
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Alexeythegreat posted:Quake 4 was a disappointing sequel to Quake 2. Wait, what?
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Jan 4, 2018 23:26
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azren posted:Wait, what? Quake 3 was just a multiplayer arena game. A pretty awesome multiplayer arena game, at the time.
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Jan 4, 2018 23:35
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Dilb posted:The graphics being amazing for the time probably helped a lot with that. That seems to have been the consensus on the early Quakes but I've never thought they looked good. Mostly because of the horrifically low poly counts, but the dull, dull color schemes don't help.
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Jan 5, 2018 02:17
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malkav11 posted:That seems to have been the consensus on the early Quakes but I've never thought they looked good. Mostly because of the horrifically low poly counts, but the dull, dull color schemes don't help. Quake games looking amazing is one of the best cases of "you had to be there" I can think of. I can remember Quake 2 looking absolutely lifelike when I first saw it. I think it was a demo kiosk in an Electronics Boutique back when those existed. The fact that it was fully 3D combined with the fact it could do more than like five colors made it realistic looking compared to everything around it. Yes, even a couple years later it would be easily outclassed by other titles, but man, at the time it was hard to ignore how much better it looked than almost all its contemporaries.
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Jan 5, 2018 04:00
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It wasn't just the graphics, it was also the entire presentation. Quake 2 had a few puzzles where pressing a button would visibly open a door, or raise or lower lava or water, or make things explode. Something that I thought was cool was that some of the enemies had random death animations, like the machine-gun guys would lose their heads, would fire off a few rounds, and then fall over. The blaster guys would fall onto all fours, shoot, and then collapse forwards. That was amazing. Annoying, if you got shot, but amazing. Quake 4 had the entire war running in the background. Even in this first mission, when you're escorting the medic back toward the injured marine, you had that bombing run which you can watch right outside the window. And you had enemies tearing out of the backdrops and the floors, and even though you couldn't do the same, and it was all scripted, it looked really good and dynamic. And I enjoyed the vehicle and on-rails sections. Well, I say sections, it's the tank section which was cool, and so was the on-rail near the end of the game. In my opinion, of course. At the time. I can't imagine how I'd feel about it now, considering how many games I've played since then which have been objectively better in every way.
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Jan 5, 2018 06:02
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Dinictus posted:Quake 3 was just a multiplayer arena game. Yeah didn't they basically go "Eh people just really like this game for the multiplayer anyway" And did that. Though I guess it was still a pretty huge gamble to just release a multiplayer online game.
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Jan 5, 2018 06:10
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I mean LAN parties and net cafes were/are a thing.
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Jan 5, 2018 06:19
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Lazyfire posted:Quake games looking amazing is one of the best cases of "you had to be there" I can think of. I can remember Quake 2 looking absolutely lifelike when I first saw it. I think it was a demo kiosk in an Electronics Boutique back when those existed. The fact that it was fully 3D combined with the fact it could do more than like five colors made it realistic looking compared to everything around it. Yes, even a couple years later it would be easily outclassed by other titles, but man, at the time it was hard to ignore how much better it looked than almost all its contemporaries. I was there. I wasn't impressed.  There's a point before which 3D was just much, much uglier than the 2 to 2.5D of the time. It still ages worse, generally speaking, but back then it didn't look good to start with. For example, Hexen came out in 1995 and to this day looks loads better than either of those first two Quakes (though it's sure gotten pixelated).
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Jan 5, 2018 06:46
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I remember looking at pictures of Quake II and other PC games in magazines of the time. Admittedly, I was a console guy, but they really impressed me because they were miles better than what I was used to on N64 and PS1. Obviously, they've aged poorly, and so have a lot of the game mechanics, but I could have bought into the hype if I played them when they came out.
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Jan 5, 2018 06:57
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malkav11 posted:I was there. I wasn't impressed. It's all very subjective. I never liked Quake I. I liked Duke Nukem 3D (which was a 2.5D game). When it came to arena games, I hated Quake 3, and played the hell out of Unreal Tournament. A couple of other guys liked... y'know, that game with the jetpacks and the skiing downhill. But yeah, I was mostly in Unreal's corner. I think I played all of the Unreal Tournaments that came after, and I'm sad they stopped making them. I really liked the Assault maps.
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Jan 5, 2018 07:35
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Quake 4 was such a massive disappointment. You can bash Q2 for all its flaws, its lackluster attempt to have a story, some of the maps being uninspired or whatever, but at least it gave you plenty of free movement. Personally I still like the game, if only for the fact that the engine allows you to pull off some crazy stunts and trick jumps, which means its a great game for speedrunning or just loving around with the environment. Quake 4 on the other hand had nothing of the sort. You're constantly restricted to a grid, you're slow as gently caress, there's practically no reason to jump (this is probably my greatest gripe with modern shooters) and it's just.... bland. Just really, really bland. Nothing about it stands out. Really, they should've just called it "Generic Space Alien Shooter". Also godspeed, you masochist. My first and only playthrough of this game was on second hardest difficulty. I remember trying it out on hardest, realizing it's difficult for all the wrong reasons and giving up. So you have my sympathies.
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Jan 5, 2018 13:35
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malkav11 posted:I was there. I wasn't impressed. I can understand the perspective (not a pun) when it comes to early true 3D vs. the last 2.5D games. Developers and artists got crazy good at making those games look nice by the time Quake and others came along. By comparison early 3D games could be real ugly. That said, I'll always remember seeing that demo video and being blown away. Considering the computer I had at home barely ran C&C: Red Alert and the consoles at the time drew huge, obvious polygons...Quake 2 looked like a huge step up.
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Jan 5, 2018 14:11
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Lazyfire posted:Quake games looking amazing is one of the best cases of "you had to be there" I can think of. I can remember Quake 2 looking absolutely lifelike when I first saw it. I think it was a demo kiosk in an Electronics Boutique back when those existed. The fact that it was fully 3D combined with the fact it could do more than like five colors made it realistic looking compared to everything around it. Yes, even a couple years later it would be easily outclassed by other titles, but man, at the time it was hard to ignore how much better it looked than almost all its contemporaries. Oddly enough, I think I have a better (and a kind of fresher) example of this "you had to be there": the first Far Cry. Its graphics were beyond anything seen by that point... then half a year later HL2 comes out and everything in Far Cry suddenly looks like a Ken doll. Now it looks like poo poo Wugga posted:Quake 4 was such a massive disappointment. You can bash Q2 for all its flaws, its lackluster attempt to have a story, some of the maps being uninspired or whatever, but at least it gave you plenty of free movement. Personally I still like the game, if only for the fact that the engine allows you to pull off some crazy stunts and trick jumps, which means its a great game for speedrunning or just loving around with the environment. Quake 4 on the other hand had nothing of the sort. You're constantly restricted to a grid, you're slow as gently caress, there's practically no reason to jump (this is probably my greatest gripe with modern shooters) and it's just.... bland. Just really, really bland. Nothing about it stands out. Really, they should've just called it "Generic Space Alien Shooter". Thankfully, today we have 2016 Doom, which gives you plenty of reason to jump... among other things 
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Jan 5, 2018 21:50
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Alexeythegreat posted:Thankfully, today we have 2016 Doom, which gives you plenty of reason to jump... among other things DOOM's gameplay does look fantastic. I never realized how important movement speed is until I saw you blitzing through the stages so fluidly.
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Jan 6, 2018 05:36
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Alexeythegreat posted:Oddly enough, I think I have a better (and a kind of fresher) example of this "you had to be there": the first Far Cry. Its graphics were beyond anything seen by that point... then half a year later HL2 comes out and everything in Far Cry suddenly looks like a Ken doll. Now it looks like poo poo Weirdly enough, I got this in reverse recently. I was flipping through some of the old GDQ speedruns and hit on some runs of Metroid Prime 1, and then I spent about fifteen minutes boggling at the fact that it came out around the same time as Deus Ex 1.
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Jan 6, 2018 06:10
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Wugga posted:there's practically no reason to jump (this is probably my greatest gripe with modern shooters) That's... weirdly specific?
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Jan 6, 2018 11:06
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Crane Fist posted:That's... weirdly specific? Haha yeah, reading that with no context does come out as rather weird. Let's put it this way: I liked FPS's when they were fast and relied on movement. Ever since bunny jumping was discovered in Quake 1 (it was initially a bug), it changed the game drastically, particularly from the multiplayer point of view, but it also gave people plenty of incentive to find different routes, go really fast, and perfect their movement, and jumping was key in it. It worked its way to quite a few games back in the day, and in Quake 3 it was implemented from the get-go. Fast forward a number of years and realism started to sneak in shooters and bunny jumping and all that had to go. Cue the sprint key. I'm not saying every modern shooter is bad and every game should have bunny jumping, but I just really liked that era in gaming and would like to see more of it. Yes, I'm a relic. Also you could argue that jumping ultimately started the whole speedrunning thing, but that's another story...
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Jan 6, 2018 12:34
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I spent a lot of time during my formative years playing quake 2 deathmatch (although weirdly never actually playing singleplayer). The weapon balance, level design and general mechanics - bunnyhopping included - just feel perfect. And the BFG10K was actually intuitive to figure out in terms of how its damage mechanics work. I've always been curious to see how quake 4 ended up...
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Jan 6, 2018 13:39
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So, here we get to try out the shotgun and get introduced to the Raven Squad, complete with Raven software insignia. This is also where the game kind of starts to pick up. This is also the first time we fight Strogg with more than one teammate. It will later be, on occasion, a bit problematic when squadmates inevitably end up in the way of either shooting or maneuvering. nutri_void fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Jan 6, 2018 |
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Jan 6, 2018 14:43
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