Quake 4

[ToddMcF2002]

Apparently I'm on a shooter tear. 5th time I've installed it and this time I'm playing. Half way through already, thumbs up mostly. Once again I'm late to the party. Dual core and widescreen support FTW, game looks fantastic for its age and runs amazingly.

The only complaint I have really are the vehicles. Its neat that it breaks up the gameplay with some variation and it reminds me a bit of Shogo M.A.D. but the implementation isn't that great. The machines just don't feel right IMO. Better off on foot killin' I say!

Now I have the original Painkiller box lying around somewhere....

[JDR13]

I enjoyed Quake 4, although it might be the weakest of the Doom 3 Engine games.

Painkiller sucks bigtime (imo), don't waste your time. Look for a copy of Prey instead.

[Jaz]

Yeah, I didn't like the vehicle thing, either. Grossed me out. Hated it in Half-Life 2 as well. Everything else about Quake 4 was rather neat (although I still think Q2 was better in terms of atmosphere). I liked Tech Strauss... Ludger Brink reborn.
Doom 3 was not Doom (at least not for me), so I was very disappointed when I played it back then. Nowadays I like it a lot better than I did back then; it's still not really Doom for me (too much System Shock in it), but it's a good game in its own right IMO.
Prey is pretty neat, reminded me a bit of Soul Reaver (due to gameplay mechanics) - but it's a bit short. I played just a demo of Painkiller and afterwards had no interest to play the full game.

[Thaurin]

Painkiller sucks bigtime (imo), don't waste your time. Look for a copy of Prey instead.

What?! Painkiller ruled! It's deliberately old-school and has some cool guitar riffs going on when the action goes down. :)

[DArtagnan]

Gotta play this some day....

[JemyM]

What?! Painkiller ruled! It's deliberately old-school and has some cool guitar riffs going on when the action goes down. :)

I got a troll warning when expressing my opinions on the game on gamefaqs.com.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

With the expression "cool guitar riffs" I rather think of "Frets On Fire".

[ToddMcF2002]

I just finished Quake 4 and it is definitely a worthy titles, but not in the league of FEAR or HL2. I thought towards they forgot the essence of the run-and-gun. Staying on the move with no time to save the game, dodging and strafing obstacles with the shotgun on hoards of soldiers... that's my idea of a good time! I don't like bullet sink min-bosses anywhere near as much and toward the end that's what you get in spades.

Its a quality game though and I enjoyed it, certainly some solid creative sequences!

[ToddMcF2002]

As part of my FPS marathon here, I'm posting to say of the last several games I've played Quake 4 is the standout for gameplay in terms of fun factor. I'm installing Painkiller right now. Or I'm trying at least, so far my laptop doesn't like these ancient CDs...

[Thrasher]

Yay, Painkiller! I loved it for the panic against old school hordes of monsters and fantastic atmosphere. Some great imaginative weapons, too, like the painkiller and stake gun. Fun mini-games like shaking gems out of your enemies using the PK. Damn hard secrets and jumps, too. One of the few games I've replayed on harder difficulties just to access unlocked levels. :)

[ToddMcF2002]

Yay, Painkiller! I loved it for the panic against old school hordes of monsters and fantastic atmosphere. Some great imaginative weapons, too, like the painkiller and stake gun. Fun mini-games like shaking gems out of your enemies using the PK. Damn hard secrets and jumps, too. One of the few games I've replayed on harder difficulties just to access unlocked levels. :)

I was up till 2:30 playing freakin PAINKILLER last night! Got up at 5.... so tired ha ha

[Thrasher]

Ouch! At least you have a smile on your face (I hope)! Nothing much more fun than killing demons in imaginative ways. :)

[ToddMcF2002]

Ouch! At least you have a smile on your face (I hope)! Nothing much more fun than killing demons in imaginative ways. :)

The game is a hoot no doubt. I keep telling myself just a "few more minutes" and "one more checkpoint" or "I'll just see what this area looks like" and then....its 2:30AM LOL. Yes its great! I've owned it for years and I think I bought it on the day it was released. I'm glad I'm finally taking a crack at it. Mindless sure... fun, you bet! :)

[ToddMcF2002]

Ha ha if you haven't seen this video "review" of Painkiller check it out. Absolutely no footage but it is hilarious!

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/57-Painkiller

[xSamhainx]

I'm dying to play some every-man-for-himself deathmatch, I used to stay up for days playing Quake II & III, Soldier of Fortune(fun w/ C4!) and in the war-torn rubble of COD1 (which was the last one that I really got into). I havent played DM in almost a decade, and it's kinda calling my name lately.

I want the explosives freaks lobbing grenades all over the place, rocket launchers, campers perched high atop somewhere hidden that after I get sniped 5 times I go hunt them down, and subsequently camp out myself for a while until I get taken out, etc. Start out at the bottom the of the leaderboard every match, then after 4 hours youre fighting to keep the top. Total mayhem, fun stuff like in the old days of Quake II deathmatch.

I look at the crop of current FPS games and not sure where to go - I dont want to spend top dollar first and foremost, chances are I'll burn out in a couple days. And I dont want team or objective gameplay. I looked into getting COD1 on steam and it appears there's not much of a community. It probably would be laughable these days to put COD or SOF on a pc and go for deathmatch w/ people that have been playing the game since 2002. It undoubtedly looks like hell too.

I have Stalker on steam but havent installed it, does that have decent DM? Anyone got any recommendations?

[JDR13]

I'm the same way Sammy, I used to play quite a bit of DM, but I haven't played in years. Some of my friends were really hooked on Quake 3, and had their own clan for a few years. I really enjoyed it for awhile, until it started getting a little overly competitive.

Not sure what the current rage is regarding FPS deathmatch. I've never heard anyone mention the multiplayer in Stalker, so I don't think that has much of a community. I know the Modern Warfare games are quite popular.

[Jaz]

Sammy, don't go modern - play UT3. While I preferred the old ladder system over 3's story mode, regular MP deathmatch vs. bots is just as much fun as it used to be since the original UT. It's cheap nowadays. And graphics are still good.

[Thrasher]

Hey Todd, if you're still itching for more pain, definitely don't miss the Battle Out of Hell expansion. It has some of my favorite levels - like Loony Park, Leningrad (love the anthem playing in the background), and the fantastic Stone Pit, plus a nice selection of new weapons. :)

[ToddMcF2002]

Hey Todd, if you're still itching for more pain, definitely don't miss the Battle Out of Hell expansion. It has some of my favorite levels - like Loony Park, Leningrad (love the anthem playing in the background), and the fantastic Stone Pit, plus a nice selection of new weapons. :)

Oh I've got my eye on that! I'm around Chapter 3 map 3 and I'm just loving it. Its so much fun I'm going to go back and try the map challenges to get some cards. I haven't tried using any of them, but I understand I can revisit maps from the level "wheel" and it all counts toward my card inventory? It really is a cool game!

For multiplayer I used to run a Clan for the original Unreal. It was alot of fun, scheduling clan battles and doing ICQ and all that old shit, dealing with interclan drama etc. Hilarious. I tried UT3 and Quake 3 but I never was competitive. Anyway, that was 1998!

[Thrasher]

Yep, you can always go back and replay levels for the cards. A really big challenge is the five star chellenge. Get all 5 stars in all levels and become uber Daniel. LOL!

[Jaz]

For multiplayer I used to run a Clan for the original Unreal. It was alot of fun, scheduling clan battles and doing ICQ and all that old shit, dealing with interclan drama etc. Hilarious. I tried UT3 and Quake 3 but I never was competitive. Anyway, that was 1998!The first MP battles we had via LAN were with Doom, later Half-Life, then we expanded into a clan when Team Fortress came out. We played LAN party tourneys and challenges, nothing big, but it was a fun time. We tried Unreal MP, but when UT came out in '99 ("You bleed better than you shoot" :) ), we played that to relax. While I loved Q2 even in MP, Q3A disappointed me somewhat - the toons were too colorful, the levels too small IMO, so UT and all that followed became our primary chill-out shooters. We played several CS and DoD tourneys (DoD being my personal favorite for team games), then there was some intra-clan drama and we split up. Or rather, scattered in all directions. While I found refuge in a US based internet clan - people who met during playtesting the (then mod-based) Red Orchestra- , it was over pretty soon after Sonny was born because I ran out of time fast. But sonny would have witnessed several clan games, had he not slept in his cradle beside my computer desk...
Hm. I still played from time to time after that, even the old - local - clan members came together again, but, well... we're old farts nowadays. Reflexes aren't what they used to be, and playing a tourney against a bunch of 18-year-olds? Ah no, thank you. So nowadays the only 'MP' I still play is against bots, and the vanilla UT3 bots (the game is from 2007 and thus relatively new) are still rather well-suited to my needs :).

[ToddMcF2002]

You got that right, reflexes are certainly NOT what they used to be. I'm officially retired from online FPS, I'll stick to MMO's with Hobbits for my online play :) For FPS I have to actually play smart now instead of relying totally on reflexes. The biggest difference I notice in FPS gaming after being away from it for...almost a decade... I'm 40 now... is my wrists and thumb tendons near my wrists develop a form of carpal tunnel. Perhaps it is carpal. Hurts like a mofo, but I keep playin!

Anyway. Long day working on my car and under it doesn't help - wiring and gauge work, taking half the dash apart to feed cables etc. The wrist/thumb pain makes working with hand tools a battle. HOWEVER, I just beat Alastor and I'm in chapter 5 of Painkiller. I have to say, having spent some time with the Serious Sam series in the past, this is alot better. Just a notch less frantic and the atmosphere in the game really is a step above. Oh and the gore and physics really deliver :) I got about 1/2 through SS2 and just lost interest. Painkiller grabs me. I like and dread the bosses, but its the hordes that make the game.

Off to chapter 5!

[xSamhainx]

Thanks for the suggestion Jaz. I'll have to look around a little bit

[Jaz]

@Sammy: UT3 doesn't have as many characters as UT2003/4 or even UT99, game modes are different, too, but the atmosphere in MP is pretty much the same. The story mode main character, however, is super unlikeable...
But the Johnson bot is back (liked him very much in '99... such a level-headed bot :) ). Not playable in the vanilla MP game, though. You need to cheat to be able to play as Johnson (and somebody else I forgot), but I don't have the slightest idea who borrowed my UT3*, so I can't test that ATM.

@Todd: I was forced to play shooters - tourneys as well - without sound for several months, when my soundcard had died and I was too stingy to get me a new one. That actually forced me to play smart - good training. It's interesting to see how much you actually depend on your ears.

I liked SS over Painkiller. But I never played SS2, just the first one and SSSE.

*It's not just the reflexes that go downhill. No sir.

[JDR13]

I might have to give Painkiller another chance someday. I have the "gold" version that includes the original and the first expansion.

It does have some nifty atmosphere, but I found it too repetitive, and the lack of variety in weapons was a big downer for me.

Better than Serious Sam? Noooo way. :)


@Jaz- I played a bit of Serious Sam 2 and didn't like it. It just seems to be missing something that SSE1 and SSE2 had.

[Thrasher]

The fun with Painkiller weapons are the special combo attacks.

I found SSE1 and SSE2 a lot of fun, but prefer Painkiller for its additional features like challenges to get cards and the physics based tricks in adddition to the atmosphere. Also, there a reclever jumping and camping tricks you can try whereas SS was more about reaction times to handle the hordes.

i tried the SS2 demo and was non-plussed...

[ToddMcF2002]

Finished Painkiller. The final boss was far too easy, not sure what they intended there. But overall, I was EXTREMELY impressed and I have to say this game is ridiculously fun. Kudos to People can Fly.