I heard PC gamer gave Q4 a 70...
Final Verdict:
Highs - Loads of action; gruesome visuals; Q3DM17 with Doom 3 graphics
Lows - Uninspired gameplay; Stroggification plot twist goes nowhere; no multiplayer bots.
Bottom line - This old-school shooter suffers from a lack of 21st-century game design. Over the course of its 15-year existence, developer Raven Software has been pushing the boundaries. It raised the bar (orlowered it, depending on your view) for hyper realistic gore with Solider of Fortune and went where no developer had gone before with Star Trek: Elite Force - not just one of the best Trek games ever made, but also one of the best shooters released in 2000. One of its few non-shooter efforts, X-Men Legends, has become the best selling X-Men game ever. And no list of Raven winners would be complete without its collaborations with id Software, most notably the Heretic and Hexen franchises.
So why is it that Quake 4, Raven's recent teaming iwth id, plays it very, very safe? A solid shooter, it's nonetheless a throwback to a time before Half-Life and Half-Life 2, Call of Duty, and Far Cry - an era in shooters when all you needed was a big gun and an even bigger boss monster to aim it at. And unlike other Recent "retro" shooters like Painkiller and Serioius Sam, Quake 4 doesnt offer inventive level designs, unique flair, or a budget price tag.
But there is one boundary it pushes: How much you're willing to pay for a 10-hour retread campaign and bot-less Quake III-style multiplay."
"As much as it pains me to say it, there isn't a single fresh idea in Quake 4. Gameplay is a Frankenstein's monster of bits and pieces from earlier games stitched together into a serviceable lump that may satisfy lovers of pure shooting mayhem, but is all stuff we've seen many times before. Worse, the borrowed parts were moldy to begin with."
"Graphics play heavily into Quake 4's multiplayer mode, which is essentially a "Best Of" Quake II and III's multiplayer gameplay (and maps). My favorite deathmatch map of all time, "The Longest Yard", has been made-over, courtesy of the Domo 3 engine, into "The Longest Day," while "The Edge" (from QII) is now "Over the Edge" and Q3's last map, "The Very End of You", has been reimagined as "Xaero Gravity"."
"All told, there are five multiplayer modes: Deathmatch (9 maps), Team Deathmatch, Tourney (1v1ranked competitions on DM maps), CTF (5 maps), and Arena CTF. The style is pure Q3 - fast action, lots of power ups (Quad Damage, Haste) and the single-player's limp Blaster gets the boot in favor of the razor-bladed Gaunlet for humiliation kills."
It then whines for a while that there are only bots and... you'll have to find people to play with (er hello. Internet?), before concluding:
"Because those 10 hours may be filled with good, solid shooting action (albeit time-warped from 1997), but they're not the great 10 hours we've come to expect from Raven and id."