Quake has gone through many identities since its inception, and the series never turned out the way it was originally intended. This seems to ring true for the entire franchise of Quake. Quake 1 was supposed to be a medieval fantasy first person melee fighter, but they couldn't get the mechanics to run properly in time for Quake to be finished. Quake 2 was supposed to be an entirely different game, but they couldn't figure out anything better for it. While Quake 2 was a mere shell of creativity over what is more a glorified test of mechanics, it did have enough of a storyline to grant it a deeper plotted sequel.
Quake 4 was created by Raven and they decided to make it even more Space Marine Military shooting and they doubled down on the concept. You're a famous soldier who is only known because he was the only survivor of a particular mission that killed the rest of his crew. You're fighting against the Strogg and you're part of the squadron that is behind enemy lines with a path to cut them off and cripple their efforts.
The game is good, but it does lack a through-line. It has all of the elements we love, including a very nice arsenal of weapons that fits in perfectly with the Doomverse guns of old. The shotgun is garbage, thanks to a very uneven spread, but the railgun is probably one of the best ones overall. It's a pretty standard shooter with some very dark themes and you'll see that it doesn't really fit with the rest of Quake, aside from a few elements.
Sometimes, the missions just drag. It's just kind of bad when you find yourself in hallways that look the same and keep shooting down the same stroggs over and over again. This is compounded when you get to the vehicle sections. The tank and the rail shooter sections are just a snorefest, especially when you get to the boss battles after spending forever shooting down strogg and strogg vehicles. This game could have used a bit more variety in both setting and gameplay, because sometimes the hallways just end up looking the same and you lose your way more than once if you're not careful.
It does a good job telling the story of the lengths they have to go in order to counter the strogg enemies. You find yourself going deeper and deeper into the strogg forces to find their nexus and their sources of power in order to disable them. This leads you to getting captured by one of the strogg overlords and processed into a strogg soldier yourself. You see, stroggs are huge humans who are implanted with machinery and brainwashed into becoming crazy cannibalistic soldiers. The process for your character is interrupted, but only at the last moment. You are now fully strogg, but you do not have the reprogramming.
They didn't do a great deal with this concept other than change up a few bits of game mechanics and your soldier comrades start looking at you funny. Other than that, though, I feel like there could have been more insight as to how this truly affects your character and teammates who now see you as one of the enemies. Obviously, they didn't have time to make it a Hall-mark movie, but more than what came of it would have been nice.
It's a fun game, but Quake 4 is definitely not one of the stronger titles in the franchise. It is one of the better titles to come from Raven and the graphics for the time were decent. There's just not enough excitement to make this game very memorable and sometimes, it can get a little too easy to just kind of drop out of the game because you feel like you've played these missions more times than is necessary and they felt very similar. Killing the strogg and getting stronger weapons is still fun, though, and if you have not tried out this title, then there are far worse titles for you to give a chance. It is very easy to find on the digital game stores for cheap, so giving a few extra hours of your life for it isn't such a tall order. It won't cut off your legs to replace them with replacements or nail a chestplate onto your body. No one said it would do that. Prepare for reprogramming, Virtua Strogg.
