Quake IV / YMMV - TV Tropes

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Anti-Climax Boss: The Makron can feel anticlimactic because, at this chapter of the game, you're armed with a Hyperspace Arsenal of automatic weapons, explosives, and carry the game's BFG, a dark matter gun. The room also has excellent cover from your arch-nemesis (including an upper floor in the second phase). It's even less intense if you had the foresight to hoard BFG ammo as the black-holes also neutralize the Makron's teleport dropper ability and there's no reason not to spam it since it's the final level. On top of all that, they can sometimes get stuck on the level architecture, letting you score free hits.
Breather Level:
- The Intermission levels have Kane going around the USS Hannibal, without gunning down anything or anyone.
- The Putrefaction Center level is set between two draining, enemy-heavy levels (Recomposition Center and Waste Processing Area) and is lighter on enemy count. It also features a Puzzle Boss.
- While still a Rail Shooter level, "Tram Ride" is still less demanding than the two areas set between it (the Data Storage levels, including Tram Hub Station, and the Data Processing levels).
Contested Sequel: While considered So Okay, It's Average on its day, many in the "Boomer" Shooter community^note still loathe the game for, what they feel is, betraying the tenets of the Quake franchise such as the removal of long jumps, slower movement and the focus on "corridor shooting" rather than arenas with verticality. However, others feel that the game was wrongly misjudged due to nostalgia and releasing in a bad time (close to F.E.A.R and Call of Duty 2, both of which stole Quake IV's thunder) which led to many never giving the game a chance and missing out on a solid, if a little unoriginal, shooter and causing the franchise to never have another story-based game^note, as following Quake games are multiplayer-only spin-offs.
Demonic Spiders: The demonic attribute becomes especially noticible on General difficulty
- Berserkers are incredibly fast for their durability and being hit at melee range isn't feasible because they can hurt you severely. Grunts are like an easier form of the Berserker but still not to be underestimated.
- Gladiators are tough, have a railgun mounted on their shoulder and often use the laser shield which absorbs bullets and deflects the projectiles. While their railgun can be broken with enough damage, this will just cause them to advance on the player non-stop with the shield staying on most of the time, and in close quarters, they become much harder to deal with.
- Heavy Hovertanks are a handful to fight on foot and their homing rockets need to be kept track of because they hurt a lot. They're even worse at the Boss Rush in the Nexus Core. In vehicle-based levels, they also tend to pack the punch, and they come in packs too.
- Tactical Strogg with Hyperblasters can be incredibly dangerous. If one takes you by surprise, you can find yourself dead in seconds from a hail of blaster bolts. The Machine Gun & Railgun Tacticals are sometimes worse because their weapons are Hitscan and very accurate. Being railed without armor is a guaranteed One-Hit Kill on General difficulty.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Matthew Kane himself has his fans due to becoming an Empowered Badass Normal after his Stroggification. He also resembles RoboCop. Some Quake fans were hoping to see him become playable in Quake Champions as he has only appeared in this installment.
- Strauss gets points for being Plucky Comic Relief in the otherwise dreary plot with the weight of heavy casualties on the story's shoulders. It helps that Peter Stormare makes the character his own and that Strauss grows more courageous over the course of the game and acts as a supportive radio companion for Kane in final acts of the game.
- Bidwell also stands out for being a respectable subversion of Drill Sergeant Nasty as Rhino Squad is up against cyborgs who want to capture them alive and painfully perform Unwilling Roboticisation on them. Voss also greatly respects Bidwells legacy, and takes his death hard.
Even Better Sequel: Quake IV took the gameplay in a different direction from Quake II with more strategic encounters than the run-&-gun feel of Quake II (which played a lot like Doom). On higher difficulties, enemies are a serious threat and running at them "guns blazing" isn't always the best solution. Quake IV is also more story-driven than Quake II with a cast of professional voice actors to help immerse the player in the war against the Strogg. The causalities of war are emphasized with a sense that Anyone Can Die. It also helps that the weapons have good balancing so that they're fun to experiment with and each one excels in different scenarios. Interestingly, those who played Doom³ may have felt this title was a major improvement over it thanks to the better flashlight system and more interesting and varied enemies to fight. The only failing is the multi-player, which is widely considered underwhelming and/or too derivative of Quake III: Arena.
Game-Breaker:
- The fully-upgraded Nailgun in single-player slightly edges into broken by virtue of aiming for you and having a good rate of damage. Limited ammo prevents it from doing all the work for you, but if you use it in the right encounters, and on dangerous targets, it really takes the pressure off.
- The Grenade Launcher is excellent at medium ranges thanks to Artificial Stupidity preventing enemies from reacting to the grenades. Lobbing grenades and taking cover will let you easily chew up groups of ranged enemies while keeping you protected from return fire. Plus, later levels keep you pretty well stocked on ammo. If you're out of grenades, the Rocket Launcher is a suitable alternative.
Goddamned Bats:
- The early Strogg enemies go down in a pair of shots, but can be found in big numbers in order to compensate.
- The flying enemies also go down in a pair of shots, but have hitscan machine guns which deal quite the damage.
- Vehicle-based levels have the rolling turrets. Fast movement, fast (un)packing and deal quite the damage.
- Also from the vehicle-based levels, the Hornet, which is quite the downgrade compared to II. They move fast, come in groups, and in certain occasions also bring other nasties such as the aforementioned turret. They don't deal the damage to be classified as Demonic Spiders, though.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- By way of an Easter Egg in the first level, players will find that the Player Character of Quake II is called Bitterman, despite him not having any selectable multiplayer skin. Quake III: Arena revealed in the manual that this is his nickname, and also reveals that the Strogg experimented on him, leaving him more alien than human. All of this becomes even more disturbing when this game shows this Stroggification scene in full detail with another Player Character.
- Also related to II, the Expansion Pack Ground Zero has a level called "Ammo Depot" containing a secret where you get a Strogg disguise, allowing you to pass undetected throughout enemy lines back to the "Munitions Plant" level as long as you don't fire. To defeat them, you must become one of them, indeed.
Idiot Ball: Some characters exhibit iffy judgement while behind enemy lanes, and end up either captured or killed.
- When Scott Voss meets Kane in the Strogg Medical Facilities the second time after being separated, he becomes too distracted by his conversation with Kane, and ends up captured when a Tactical in a people jar awakens, breaks out, and takes Voss away down a pit. This is rather jarring considering that he's established as a seasoned, Reasonable Authority Figure. Voss ends up fused onto a Humongous Mecha as the boss of the Waste Disposal Facility.
- Jeremiah Anderson ends up at least captured from Curiosity Killed the Cast. He inspects a dead body that was experimented on and becomes trapped in a seal-able room from a glass enclosure coming down. It would have been better to have Kane "take the point" considering he's now the stronger (Stroggified) combatant. His fate is left unverified.
It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The multiplayer mode caught a lot of flack for being far too similar to Quake III, to the point of actually reversing a few of the changes that single-player made to its structure (such as the reloadable ammo clips and the replacement of the Blaster with the Gauntlet).
It Was His Sled: Even people who've never actually played the game tend to know that Kane gets turned into a strogg.
Player Punch: The Stroggification of Voss, and Anderson's death at the hands of a Scientist.
Power Up Letdown: In single-player, the over-penetration upgrade for the Railgun is hard to use consistently as enemies rarely line up nicely for you rip em' a new one. It's at least, pretty helpful later in the game when Berserkers rush at you in pairs, and you can herd them into a line without risk of hurting yourself via grenades or rockets. It's also a letdown as over-penetration was standard on the Quake II Railgun.
Signature Scene: The Stroggification scene is the first thing people remember when talking about this game. Everything, from the ambientation, to the whole process being shown without subtlety, to the Controllable Helplessness, makes this scene one of, if not the, most memorable scenes from the game.
Slow-Paced Beginning: A strange case in that the game quickly throws you into the thick of combat and has you quickly introduced to the basic Strogg types one by one. However, the entire first third of the game is often criticized for being objective-to-objective gameplay, led around by your squadmates and not having much in the way of player agency, which, when coupled with your relatively slow movement speed and fairly generic arsenal, can make things feel rather generic and tedious. Once Kane gets Stroggified, however, the rest of the game is mostly the player operating the vehicles solo and tearing their way through the enemy, as the game really comes into its own, made even better with your much faster movement and increased health & armor, while the more creative weapons and upgrades get rapidly doled out into your hands, making the combat more enjoyable.
So Okay, It's Average: General reception during the time of release, both by critics and fans. It was overshadowed by the release of more cutting-edge shooters like First Encounter Assault Recon which was released one day earlier on October 17, 2005, and later, Call of Duty 2 one week after. Quake IV was hidden in the shadows until its rediscovery through bargain retailers and later digital distribution.
Special Effect Failure:
- The outdoor graphics basically consist of one big background texture that looks like an extremely crappy matte painting. Evidently the designers realized how bad it looked as you spend the vast majority of the game indoors.
- Sometimes, the world textures look Off-Model. In the first map, "Air Defense Bunker", the dirt textures at the beginning, by the crashed drop ship, look tacky compared with the rest the game's texture quality, due to looking like a blurry mess.
- There's a point in the game where you're supposed to be able to understand Strogg Language thanks to a Universal Translator you "acquire", but during the Strogg Medical Facilities chapter, one of the translated sound files plays shortly before you gain this upgrade, and you hear "transfer approved" (in the English version) over the speakers at the beginning of the chapter.
Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
- The upgrade for the Hyperblaster enables the bolts to ricochet off of level surfaces, similar to the Ion Ripper from Quake II :The Reckoning.
- The upgraded Rocket Launcher works like an improved Phalanx Particle Cannon (also introduced in The Reckoning) thanks to the 3-rocket-burst function, and is very effective for carpeting a group of enemies with Splash Damage and unleashing heavy damage in a short time.
- The Nailgun appears to be a Retcon of the Chaingun from Quake II. It has rotating barrels too, but behaves like the Super Nailgun from Quake. By extension, in single-player, it also acts as an improved ETF Rifle which was the Nailgun in Quake II: Ground Zero.
- The Dark Matter Gun fills in for the BFG 10k creating a black-hole projectile that causes lesser enemies to die, be drawn in, and orbit the shot. Larger enemies take significant damage instead, until they die and also get drawn towards the vortex.
That One Boss:
- Voss's Stroggified self, who's just about as deadly as the Makron, if not more deadly. Made of Iron, fast for his size, armed with Rocket Launchers and a Dark Matter Gun, can summon Mooks, and recharges his health up to three times. It takes a lot to bring him down, even at Training Level! And what's more, it doesn't help that he's a Tragic Monster.
- The Nexus Core simply because of the enemies that may teleport in while you're trying to knock out the brain. If you're really unfortunate, you may find yourself beset by some nasty enemies like Heavy Hover Tanks or Iron Maidens and hardly able to focus on defeating the main target. Plus, there's no extra armor inside the arena, only two stroylent health stations. This part can make the Makron feel like a friendly sparring match.
That One Level:
- Interior Hangar in the hardest difficulties becomes a very tedious Escort Mission, since it requires you to protect one of your teammates who's carrying powerful demolition charges. He's very vulnerable to enemy fire and this section is filled with enemies. Worse, though, you are his only company, as the previous three marines who accompanied you up to that point (including a medic and a technician) are recalled just after your squadmate arrives.
- Perimeter Defense Station is where the game takes a jump in difficulty thanks to being separated from backup for about half of the level with limited healing items. You're fighting for your life against ambushes in tight spaces that can leave you dead in seconds on higher difficulties, so there's a slim margin for errors. You are given the Nailgun, but it's not upgraded yet so it's only a decent weapon in this chapter.
- Strogg Medical Facilities is a noticeable jump in difficulty partly due to the fact that you lose all your weapons and — to a lesser extent — need to pick up replacements for arsenal as you trek through the facility. The level has multiple ambushes with Berserkers in locations where you'll have little time react plus your new Rocket Launcher you find is a suicidal proposition against them if they're up in your face. You also face some dangerous encounters with Gladiators in cramped quarters. Like many difficult levels, you don't have a partner to heal you or repair your armor so you're forced to make the most of the limited armor and health that is lying around. Much of the key to this level is proper memorization of each encounter which tend to have narrow margins for error, especially on the General skill level.
- Recomposition Center really shows how dangerous Tactical Strogg can be. The exteriors area has crack shots camping around making it dangerous to rush in guns-blazing. You'll likely need to keep the quick-load key handy on the harder difficulties due how accurate the machine gunners are. The pinnacle is an area just before you reach your objective with a Gladiator who has Tacticals guarding their flanks. To make the situation more difficult, a Tech Marine insists on staying behind alone rather than accompanying you to fix your armor. He ends up being unceremoniously captured at the end of the level.
- Nexus Core has good reason to be very difficult, being the penultimate level and it gives you the fight of your life before the Final Boss level. You're often forced into confined spaces and ambushed by deadly foes, such as an Elevator Action Sequence with an ambush by Iron Maidens and a Gladiator at the bottom. You also have a boss rush to contend with, the Heavy Hover Tanks being troublesome to deal with especially (their rockets can hurt you from behind cover). Once the Boss Rush is over, the final stretches are a relief in comparison to the previous encounters, but don't get too relaxed.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Sergeant Bidwell's departure from the story due to him dying from a Harvester impaling him can be a shame as he's a major character behind the success of Rhino Squad. We never get to see him interact and psychologically support Kane after Kane is brutally Stroggified as this could have provided some interesting character development between the two.
Vindicated by History: The game wasn't a blockbuster hit on release and considered So Okay, It's Average at that time. However, as the game was re-released through digital media , the single player campaign gained its fans thanks to memorable characters, a memorable plot twist about half-way through, interesting weapons, and arguably taking better advantage of the ID Tech 4 engine capabilities than Doom³ did. The game also improved the flashlight system in Doom 3 by integrating it into the versatile Machine Gun and Blaster, had more challenging and varied combat encounters than Doom 3, and a more impressive and action-packed Final Boss to end the game with a bang.
Visual Effects of Awesome: Sure, it may not look all that amazing by today's standards, but modern video cards can easily run the game on Ultra Mode to show the game in its full glory. In 2005, running the game in Ultra was even more of a treat, with dynamic shadows, very crisp character models and the re-imagined Strogg designs being quite a step up from their Quake II counterparts. It helps that the art style isn't strict realism, so the visuals may be appealing even today. Additionally, the game showed that the ID Tech 4 software can handle long draw distances, the hover tank level showing this well. The fights against huge bosses through out the game, are like icing on the cake.

YMMV / Quake IV

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