F.E.A.R. is great, what's Quake 4 like?

I'm not a huge fan of shooters so I bought the one I thought would be best, F.E.A.R. and although it's remarkably overhyped, it's still pretty damn good. It's very intense, close quarters, blood, guts, sparks, smoke, explosions, doors blown off the hinges stuff. Really good AI for the most part too. The bad guys sneak around behind you, turn over furniture, create, take and use cover, vault over railings, dive through windows, cover each other, etc. Level design is repetitive and cliched, but the designers really just knew what levels suited the game they've made. If they had more variety, the new levels wouldn't work. Plays really smoothly despite the overinflated system requirements. Not quite HalfLife 2, but it does empty it's bladder all over Doom 3 ( which admittedly isn't difficult. )

So what's the one I didn't buy like? It's the Doom3 engine, so presumably it's horribly dark with repetitive levels, but it's also Raven, so it ought to be *fairly* decent. Is it?

F.E.A.R's engine sucks and Quake 4 is just like boring Doom3 mod.

Are the load times any better in the final product? I recalled the demo taking a little over two minutes on my slightly-above average setup.
(AMD64 3200+, 256mb GF6800 GT, 1gb 2700 DDR Ram)

Also had an issue with the demo where the game would run incredibly choppy after loading a quick-save, only solution I found was to change the screen resolution, then change it back if I had the patience.

As for Q4, GameSpot thought it was fairly decent on its own merits.

I will have Q4 tommorrow. It isn't out today here. I think it will be amazing.

The load times so far are very short. I have the same amount of ram as you.



I've had that in other games, but not this one.



You must be playing it on a TRS80 or something. It's about on a par with the HL2 engine, which has yet to be bettered IMO.

If you're comparing it to HalfLife2, then I would say this engine is MUCH better when it comes to physics.

In HL2 multiplayer I always get stuck on varous debris that is littered on the ground.. ie. the physics doesn't work very well when it hampers the player.

FEAR's physics works great AND it never hampers me at all.
Graphics - on par or even surpasses HL2 engine. I especially like the bullet holes in the ground and on the walls. Lights and shadows feels good.

The graphics feels a bit jerky sometimes though, even when I lowered the settings, it jerks when the camera moves quickly around. Halflife2 was better in this aspect on my computer.
(I have a very good computer, so it should run these games like a dream)

I believe that is due to the game not having cached the graphics in the video memory, and instead insists on doing it on-the-fly, which results in a bit of jerking, you get that on slightly-above average vid cards playing Doom3 on Ultra detail.

Q4 is meh, played better games, nothing special. but its not so horrible its not worth playing.

FEAR rules, if your having issues playing it upgrade

I get an error about not finding a pak file while installing
Q4. >:(

FEAR is the first shooter I've been really impressed with. ever. like... as in ever.

I didnt play FEAR, but AREA51 is the game whats much more better than DOOM3 even its not technologicaly advanced as DOOM3 engine...

I liked Quake4 better than FEAR

Ha, the first shooter I was really impressed with was DOOM.

Checked out the gamespot videos FEAR got 9.1 Quake 4 got 8. That's quite low fora quake game. Tbh the dark stages in doom peed me of in the end, always squinting at the screen is anoying. The odd dark place is fine but the whole game? gimme a break. F.E.A.R. looks better but perhaps a tad repetitive and Quake 4 has that sci-fi other-worldness which helps me "escape". I'll probably play both.

Quake4 is like a Best Of compilation of Quake II, Quake III and Doom III, but rubbish.

There's no point buying it for the deathmatch if you've got Quake 3 because it's identical, yet slightly worse. New engine and there's a grenade launcher, but it's not so finely tuned. The rocket launcher's rubbish.

All the reviews I've read for Q4 say the multiplayer is poor and the single player is great, which works for me because I never play multiplayer modes.

BTW, does anyone have any tips for killing those Venom ( Spiderman ) style bastiches you meet shortly after the rooftop drop? They're shredding me to pieces on a regular basis. The only method I've found so far is setting sticky mines for them, which kills them in one but it's a bit wasteful on sticky mines and I've not got many.

I am not too excited about Quake 4. I have a feeling people are getting bored with remakes that are riding a ten-year-old wave.

I'm getting bored with FPS period. It seems to me that there's only so far you can go with it until you get the next breakthrough of immersion that doesn't rely on just graphics.

I tried fear and thought that the AI and particles were unusualy good, But the general graphics were generaly too dark and samey. Seems that all these new engines rely on a kind of film niore look in order to hide their limitations. Maybe when we all have the next gen shader 3 cards as standard we will finlay get some decent lighting with some reflected light hitting those shadow areas.

Still things are moving along, but I'm finding myself drifting towards RTS, RPG and adventure games. Maybe it's just that I upgraded my PC vid card and can appreciate those games more.

Actually, Quake 3 had a grenade launcher too. Problem was that it sucked.

Anyhow, Resident Evil 4 and God of War now have some real competition for Game of the Year with FEAR. Best $40 I've spent on a game ever.

Seriously, this game is undescribably kick-ass.

Oh yeah, I saw some camoflauged dude in a sewer area. Are those the 'Venom' guys? Creepy as heck that was. Kept thinking he was gonna rape me when I walked by.

I'm only on Interval 3. I had to force myself to stop so that I wouldn't do an all-nighter playing it :|

Ditto. Shooting who-knows-what with whatever just isn't fun anymore... something bit more intellectual would be good these days.

I've only looked at the demo (fear) so far and was dissapointed as i just would have to run/fight through corridors again which i'm not interested at the moment. Hmmm would be interesting to see the time i already spent by beeing in corridors, cellars, swamps...anyway i'm hoping for Alan Wake! :O)


Greetings,

taumel

Taumel: you missed out air ducts.

FEAR only took 5 hours to finish on hard. I'm disappointed. :( Nice story up until the point where it went nowhere and the game finished.

+BlackD

@Grey *lauging* Yes i forgot, look at my knees. Even a carpet cutter has better knees... ;O)

Quake4 mini - review
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you enjoyed quake2, you will LOVE this game. I rate it 9.2 out of 10.

It is sheer brilliance. Exciting stuff. Play it on liutenent minimum though for the challenge. VERY exciting!

Brilliant graphics - needs a good card though.

Quake 3 grenade launcher is good.

Q4 has nothing really new. There's variety in the missions (being a gunner for transports, climbing into a mech) but the progress of play is very poorly scripted.

Some parts are so linear you might just as well be playing a 2D platformer, whilst others are so open and sprawling that you keep trying to hit TAB to bring up a map screen.

Also, the engine may be all-singing all-dancing but can someone please explain to me how you can have perfectly black shadows in an outside environment? Play to the 'trenches' level and you'll see what I mean. It's a very distracting thing to notice and seriously disrupts the suspension of disbelief.

Q4 is, however, better than Doom 3. I got so bored with Doom 3 that my eyes stopped functioning in order to save my brain from melting.

If only Raven had used some of the same level-design techniques of Q2, Q4 would have been far more appealing. Instead, we have dark'n'dingy levels and almost pointless cutscenes with dreadful voice acting. Please guys, I want to actually see what's going on. Your engine may have awesome shadows, but without something like global-illumination or even just a default ambient-light level, the shadows detract from visual appeal.

In summary, it's worth a download and a 15 minute blast, but it is not worthy of my hard earned cash. Not one I will be playing again and again.

D'oh! So it did. So then there's absolutely nothing to recommend multiplayer over Q3.

Looks fantastic to me, disregard people who complain. I know best and thats that.

Don't think so. I didn't spot any "Venoms" until I entered Armachem, which I believe is Interval 4. You'll know them when you see them.

It looks rubbish, (quake 4) can't believe how pixelated and low res everything looks even in 1024x768 high quality with everything turned up.

Could almost be a quake 2 game the texturing is so poor. and the lighting inside the first indoor area you walk into is pretty awful too. Glad I only borrowed it. Not even sure I can be bothered to go faurther than these first couple of rooms to be honest.

Just sent the last half hour trying to get it to look better and having to restart everytime I change a graphics setting. Very disappointing when you consider the gameplay itself is very old school indeed, so all I was looking for was some nice graphics :(

Evak: "can't believe how pixelated and low res everything looks" hehe, so you won't like Doom much then.

Just beat FEAR after about 8-9 hours of play.

I'd say the $40 pricetag was justified -- tad short of a game, but it makes up for it with sheer awesomeness. Plus those gun battles are genuinely fun. Only gripe is I didn't get pistols more often... those were fun as heck.

I'm going to try the multiplayer a bit later, I hear it's a blast with melee.

My favourite is also the twin guns :)

What graphics card was that again..? :)

I was playing FEAR mutliplayer a bit ago. It's just as awesome as the singleplayer. Slowmo is a bit iffy, since only one person can use it at a time, but aside from that it's fun as heck. Particularly dual pistols. I kicked ass with'em.

I've got a geforec 6, but appart from a few spot effects and higher resolution, the game looks similar on almost any video card from a geforce 3 and up thanks to the low resolution textures and normal maps.

Just finished fear... most awesome. Good ending too. First FPS I've ever finished. :)

Good ending? Maybe you should finish some others. ;)

+BlackD

I'm looking forward to anything from Unreal3

Like that new one Project Offset.

Project Offset doesn't use Unreal 3, it's proprietary software.

WAIT WAIT WAIT! BACK UP A MINUTE!

Quake 4 is released?!! Only thing ive heard about it was a video a few months ago.

For people with slower cards might I suggest medium detail and 800x600? Quake4 is more fill rate limited than anything else...

hehe One eyed Jack. I had a Geforce 3 until about 3 weeks ago. Might have caught you out there ;P

But to be honest I was amazed that with a Geforce 3, doom 3 looked about 80% the same as a high end card, minus a few shader spot effects. in 800x600 medium detail it ran in the 20-40's most of the time that there were no other characters around.

new card runs superfast, havent chacked the FPS but if there is any slow down it's not visible.

http://panics.roosterteeth.com/home.php

That was made in F.E.A.R. It's hilarious.

The thing with Doom 3 and Quake 4 is, FPS is locked at 60 maximum. This is just one of the things I dislike about both games.

Certain websites say you can "seta com_fixedTic -1" and it removes the limit, but it actually doesn't.

Actually it isn't fixed on my pc for some reason. I use the console to check the actual fps. Only the LOGIC is fixed.