Just look at the speed and precision some players have while playing DM in Halo 2 or Call of Duty 2 with only a controller in their hands. It seemed no more than logical that one of the ancestors of the shootergenre would bring its fourth offspring also to the living room, in this case on the Xbox360. Quake 4 on PC disappointed in multiplayer, but thanks to a varied singleplayer campaign and of course the great graphics, ID Software and Raven did succeed to save the furniture. Something we really can't say from their console port!

It's not the content that screws things up. The campaign is identical to that of the PC version, despite a couple of tweaks and details, and can lean on the same qualities. The storyline that continues after Quake2 stopped, again puts you in the muscled body of a marine, just after it gets known that Makron, the big boss of the Strogg, has died. This is the moment to attack the alien homeworld and of course it's you, Matthew Kane, who gets to do the final blow. That this won't go easy and without the necessary plot twists is obvious.

The storyline is quite enjoyable, but the surprising plot twist that unfortunately was known long before the game got released, lacks a bit of its impact. On top of that it doesn't change anything to the gameplay, but that's not really necessary as that's reasonable fine.

The biggest problem you'll experience during your 15 hour adventure, is of another, purely technical, matter. Although the detail of the grpahics, especially the textures, is a bit lower than on PC, themakers didn't manage to keep the framerate stable. Once the action becomes intense and more models and explosions arrive on screen, the framerate drops enormously. Sometimes the previously mentioned chaos isn't even necessary to result in shaking images. If this would be occasional you could forgive it, but sometimes it even reflects on the speed with which the game reacts on your input and for a shooter that's deadly.

This is very unfortunate as this doesn't only weaken the gameplay experience, but also because the graphics are for the rest quite cool and beautiful. They're not so inspired, we know after all the corridors and hallways, futuristic bases and research facilities, but they are well done here. Also the sound is at a good level, with the necessary powerful effects while shooting and more than decent acting. The music isn't really noticeable, but this goes nicely with the atmosphere. Some more work could have gone in the mixing though, as sometimes you really need to get close to someone if you want to hear what they're saying. You'll more than once be forced to play with your volume button.

As said before, the game plays as you're used to from Quake 4. What did bother me enormously though, especially on the higher difficulty levels, is the bad load- and save-system. You need to go through a lot of menus to be able to do this and you'll look back at Call of Duty 2 and the great way it was implemented there. Even more, it's the reason why I quit playing the game on that level and I doubt that's supposed to be your reaction. The aforementioned World War 2 shooter felt a lot more fun that Q4, but that may be a purely subjective choice.

"New" compared to the previous Quake games are of course your team mates. These cannot be given orders, but they do react intelligent and are a real help during the more hectic parts. Some of them can even restore health and armor, something you'll definitely need. Also the necessary vehicles are present to bring some variation. The missions that you get to use these are a lot easier than on the PC, something you really can't say from the rest of the game.

As always you have a whole arsenal of weaponry and no maximum amount of guns you can carry. Little surprises here, but I'm sure Doom 3 fans will be happy to notice that the machine gun has an integrated flash light! Next to this and the simple blaster, you also get the shotgun, hyperblaster, railgun, nailgun and of course the "Dark Matter Gun", the biggest gun of them all. Personally I had the feeling that the new weapons weren't constantly a leap forward in firepower so that you'll soon head back to the same choices, IF you find enough ammo for them of course. Something that does bring a solution to this problem are the upgrades that add little improvements or changes to your weapons. Al in all this element remains one of the strongholds of the game!

Another strong point should of course be the multiplayer. After all, it's Quake! But here we don't only experience the same problems as with the singleplayer campaign (framerate drops), but also the smooth feeling is absent. Where Quake 3 Arena immediately grabbed you by the balls with its charm and playability, Quake 4 disappoints. Also the modes are very uninspired (DM, TDM, CTF) and offer no innovations or improvements of an old formula. You get little extras compared to Q3 and although that shouldn't be a problem as such, the gameplay couldn't appeal to me much this time.