Quake 4 is gross

Written by Jake on May 26th, 2007 and posted in Game News
Tags : 3D, action, FPS, pc

I’ve followed the Quake series since the first version way back before 3D cards existed. It was a neat game but felt a bit like a tech demo. Quake 2 upped the graphics quite a notch and I tried it with my first 3D graphics card, a Power VR – it looked great but was a bit slow. Not long after that I upgraded to a Voodoo 2 and wow, the game rocked!

Quake2 was set on the home planet of the Strogg. You had to infiltrate their city alone to kill the leader because your comrades were captured or killed. Along the way you fought many cybernetic enemies which were made from flesh and machinery fused together. At several points you saw humans (probably your colleages) being subjected to gruesome mutilations as they were turned into enemy soldiers or were just being experimented on. It was quite gross with saws, and drills and plenty of gibs, but not too bad due to the lo-fi graphics of the day.

Anyway Quake 3 was an arena shooter, not a single player game at all, so forget that one.

Quake 4 went back to single player gameplay and used the Doom3 engine (which was pretty good if a bit dark at times). Graphically it looks nice but I found a lot of the levels a bit samey and was confused at where I was, especially when I had to back track for some reason. There’s loads of plot items and cut scenes but I just felt like impatiently clicking them away. The fighting (shooting) is good but nothing special. Overall the game is OK, but it’s not the best FPS in my collection for sure – it’s somehow a bit souless despite all the fancy touches. I’d probably give it 3.5-4 stars out of 5.

So, anyway, the purpose of this post was to describe a bit that I played the other night which was gross! I was tired and a bit wasted and I found myself captured by the enemy and then I woke up strapped to a trolly on a conveyor belt. The camera viewpoint was from my eyes, and I saw my body lying down in front of me but I couldn’t move with the mouse, I just had to sit and watch it.

It was quite clever because there was someone else on a trolley in front of me and I could see what happened to them first! I saw their trolley stop and then they were thrashing around as they got injected with something. Then it was my turn and my character was yelling and thrashing as he got subjected to some kind of heinous treatment. But the treatment continued to get worse as I progressed along the conveyor belt. The next thing seemed to cut into me and do something horrible – it was pretty gross and I was feeling really affected by it at this point. Then I saw this giant rotating saw up ahead cutting into the person in front and I knew that it was my turn next!

I was thrashing really badly and then the giant saw swung down into my legs and cut them off above the knees. My character blacked out and then came too and had some metal legs welded on and then a few more horrible things done. I was actually feeling nauseous and started to have a ringing in my ears! Finally the conveyor stopped and I discovered that I had been turned into one of the enemy and I was just having my brain altered when my squadmates broke in and rescued me.

The whole sequence was pretty shocking, and I realised why the game had an 18 certificate. I’m not posting screenshots as it may be inappropriate for this blog. But anyway, some of you may laugh at my wimpishness but I’ve never liked operations on TV and the game really captured that horrific feeling well by using the first person view. If you want to see it yourself, you’ll have to play the game quite far before you get to it. The game can be picked up pretty cheaply these days – under £10 (especially on ebay), so you might wanna check it out; but make sure that you have a good graphics card.

Related Posts

• Huge list of free games!
• Just finished Serious Sam 2
• Duke Nukem Forever - Sneak Peak Video