Quake IV (Xbox 360) > Reviews > Nice game - shame about the bugs

Author's product rating:   

Playability & Enjoyment	OK -
Addictiveness	Not exactly addictive but certainly playable
Graphics	Good
Difficulty & Complexity	Average - suitable for most
Value for money	Limited value

Advantages:	Frantic adrenaline ride
Disadvantages:	Frame rate drops when things get very busy  -  not all levels work OK

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

In response to some comments; I've extended the review.

I decided to start off this game in 'Corporal' difficulty level.
It took a while to figure out how to fight and when to run but after a few goes everything fell ito place.
You get some real adrenaline rushes during the game - great.
I don't have HD so can't comment on the HD graphics but the standard graphics are quite nice.
The array of different weapons is very good - I particularly like the Dark Matter gun.

The game starts with a fairly long video sequence - corpses and debris floating in space - followed by the arrival of three ships full of marines - this has an 'Aliens' feel to it - the ships look just like the marines ship in the film Aliens.

At the end of the opening sequence you (Kane) are dumped unceremoniously into the thick of it and you start by recovering consiousness.

Save the game immediately or the first time you get killed you have to resit throught the long opening sequence.

You start off with a pistol only which can be used to fire rapid shots or one huge power shot by holding down the trigger until the pistol glows blue - you pick up other weapons and weapon mods on your travels.

The exterior scenes in the game are quite good but are mainly sand and hills.

The interior scenes of which the game mainly consists tend to be very dark and you will find yourself using the torch on the pistol or machine gun all the time - it would have been nice to have some more well lit interior sequences to the game.

There are a lot of levels and you get to ride in the walker and the tram at some point and shoot up loads of baddies while walking/riding to your next location- this is a nice break from the continous slog against all manner of tough beasties on foot.

The STROG come in lots of types from the simple foot soldier which can be seen of with a few pistol shots to a 60ft rocket powered gorilla which takes a lot of firepower to bring down.

Cut scenes are quite good and there is one where Kane has been captured where he is subjected to Strogification - gruesome.

I would recommed you save the game frequently - Strog jump out from the most unexpected places.

Game saves require a Hard Drive or Memory Module and take up about 1.5 Meg of space each.

You soon run out of space on a memory module when you are saving every few minutes.

Also when saving, the save is given a timestamp based on the XBOX console time and date. Unfortunately this gets reset when you unplug the console from the mains and it can be difficult to find a specific save if they are not in proper date sequence - leave the console plugged in or remember to set the date and time every time you switch on.

So I finished the game
(quite surprised how easy it was to kill the end of game baddie, just two shots required - I won't give the game away, that would spoil your fun)

Now I decided to have a go on 'General' difficulty level:
Surprisingly easy - once you have honed the combat techniques in easier levels.
Unfortunately when I got to the tram hub station (about 3/4 through the game) the weapons stopped working properly - there were no bullet, laser, explosion visual or audio effects .
The game could still be progressed and the weapons still killed the enemies but losing the weapon effects kills the game stone dead in terms of playability.

I emailed Activision who said that Microsoft had thoroughly tested the game.
I don't think that can be true as MS bought the game from Activision as a direct port from the PC - surely they would not expect to have to test it. Testing is the game developer's responsibility.

I was told to download a patch from the internet - at which point I reminded them that it was an XBOX 360 game - they just went quiet - probably no way to get a patch for the game on the XBOX360.

The price of the game (£39.99 at Play.com) even if it had been perfect is a rip off - it is after all just a direct clone of the PC version (£12.99 at Play.com) - all XBOX 360 games are way overpriced.