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Id Software is known far and wide for not only creating the first person shooter, but, at various points, completely dominating said market. The first person shooter has grown into one of the most popular genres in video game history, and spawns as many crap games as it does quality ones. The PC gaming market is flooded with these games on a constant basis, and it gets hard to tell the good from the terrible, but rest assured, when Id comes to down, you stand up and take notice.

Quake 4 has an excellent, engrossing single player campaign that keeps you on your toes and firing away at Strogg scum. If you never played Quake 2, the word Strogg might not mean much to you, so I’ll re-cap: Quake 2 was based on a war between Humans and Strogg, an alien race of warriors. Quake 2 saw you in the role of an unnamed soldier on the Strogg homeworld, looking to lay the smack down. Quake 4 starts where Quake 2 left off, and this time, it’s bigger, prettier, and your character has a name: Cain.

Now that you’re up to speed, let me start off by saying that Quake 4, while running on the year-old Doom 3 engine, looks fantastic. The game takes every wow factor from Doom 3 and turns it up to 11. The areas are bigger, the lighting is superb, and the frame rate is, usually, smooth. Things start to stutter and skip a bit during larger-scale battles, but for the most part, the frame rate behaves.

Quake has never really been known for innovation, so the fact that Quake 4 doesn’t really do anything new can be overlooked on the grounds that the series has never been known for breaking new ground. Instead, we get the usual assortment of guns, including the Lightning Gun, the Rail Gun, Shotgun, Machine Gun, etc. The gangs all here, boys, lock and load. Each gun feels different than the next, and each can be used well in different situations. The arsenal is overall well rounded, if not very much by the books. Something gamers yearned for in Doom 3 has made its way into Quake 4: flashlights attached to guns. Rejoice. This makes the game far more accessible, even in spite of the fact that Quake 4 has many less dark areas than its horror themed brethren.

The games single player throws you in the role of Cain, a soldier on a mission to help take down the Strogg for good. You’ll receive your missions through audio queues either directly from commanding officials, or over your headset. You’ll find that while objectives, much like the arsenal, offer little new to the table, they’re enough to keep you going happily, blasting Strogg scum along the way. The voice overs are well acted, with each character feeling unique to the next. You even find yourself disliking, or liking, certain characters along the way, which is a nice touch.

Despite who you may or may not like, the single player campaign rarely has you running around solo. Unlike the previous Quake titles, Quake 4 lets you feel like you’re in the middle of a war by throwing teammates into the mix. The teammates, unfortunately, cannot be controlled in any way at all, but thankfully, they’re usually pretty quick on their feet, and sharp on the trigger. These soldiers hold their own, and while the A.I. almost always does a great job, there are a couple instances where your teammates will get in your way during a fire fight. I never died as a result of it, but some people may get more annoyed with them than others.

Since we’re on the topic of A.I., it’s worth mentioning that the enemy A.I. is pretty good, but not amazing. They make cover when available, and usually work in groups, but there are a lot of instances where they’ll stand out in the middle of a hallway unprotected, practically screaming ‘shoot me, please, kind sir’. Well, they probably wouldn’t say it like that, but...

Anyone familiar with the Quake brand knows that multiplayer has always been the key to success and long life for the series, and for the most part, Quake 4 lives up to the expectations many fans will have going in. Thankfully, the major issues found in the 360 version are missing in action on the PC version, leaving you with a much smoother, friendlier, and funner experience.

Unlike the Xbox 360 version, there are no stability issues when loading a game, and there is no forced time limit on lobbies. It almost seems like the problems with the lobby system on 360 were a bad dream, as this is how Quake multiplayer should be set up. Hopefully Id will realize the issues on 360 and adjust the lobby accordingly to something much closer to the smooth PC set up.

All the classic modes have come along for the ride over to the next gen wagon, including CTF, Team Deathmatch, Tournament and of course, good ol’ normal Deathmatch. The stages for multiplayer are all over the place in terms of artistic direction. I’ve seen a couple reviews spotting this as a negative trait for the game, but I see it as one of the best moves they could have made. If you look at Quake 2, or even Quake 3, none of the levels followed one likeminded direction, and because of that, you were granted a variety of fresh feeling levels that kept things visually exciting and appealing. Bonus points for keeping the trend.

Quake 4 is a far superior beast on the PC than the 360. Why certain choices were made regarding the lobby system, we may never know, but the fact that the PC version of the game was done right should keep many a gamer happy. The fast-paced action is all here, just like you remember it, only now it’s bigger, badder, louder and prettier. A must have for shooter fans.