Multiplayer madness
Surprisingly, Quake 4 multiplayer is hugely successful, offering a lush, fast-moving experience that is much closer to the Quake III Arena (and the underrated Quake III Team Arena mission pack from the PC) than to Quake 2 or DOOM 3. Indeed, where multiplayer was DOOM 3's biggest weakness, this feature is magically turned into Quake 4's biggest success. How they accomplished this, given the overhead of the DOOM 3 engine, is a mystery. But Quake 4 multiplayer is every bit as good as that of Quake 3 Arena, and that's quite an accomplishment, given that game's timeless popularity in the online world. Evidence of Quake III Arena influences abound, from the style of the available power-ups to inclusion of two familiar outer space maps that will have Quake III Arena fans cheering with delight.
The Xbox 360 multiplayer experience lets you switch between Xbox Live and system link, as you'd expect. I wasn't able to test the system link option, but Xbox Live includes a number of variants. You can jump into a Quick Match, in which the system automatically finds other players of your skill level, based on your ranking, or you can perform a player match, where you can invite a contact from your Friends list to join in.
You can also choose a custom match, where you select the game type (Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Arena CTF, or Tourney), game length (a Quickie with a 10 minute time limit and 5 frag limit, Average, and Endurance) and match type (Ranked or Player). Optionally, you can perform a private match, in which you get to configure the play mode, map cycle, maximum number of players, and other options.
Conclusions
Visually, Quake 4 one of the sweetest-looking game titles I've ever seen, and it's a wonderful show-off title for
Microsoft's latest gaming rig. While the title as a whole isn't as successful as Call of Duty 2, Quake 4 for Xbox 360 does nicely highlight how its suddenly possible to create games for a console that are the equal to those on a high-end gaming PC. While the single player version is unlikely to draw me back as did PC games such as Half-Life 2, Far Cry, and DOOM 3, I'll be playing the multiplayer version of Quake 4 for some time to come, on both the PC and Xbox 360. Highly recommended.