Quake 4

Corporal Matthew Kane prepares to take out the Strogg Nexus with his Rail Gun.

The Quake 4 single player mode continues the story of Quake II by pitting the player against cyborg alien race known as the Strogg. The game follows the story of a Marine Corporal named Matthew Kane who is joining the elite Rhino Squad.[11] Following the success of the protagonist of Quake II in destroying the Strogg's leader, the Makron, Rhino Squad is tasked with spearheading the mission to secure the aliens' home planet Stroggos. In the course of the invasion, the squad ship is shot down and crashes in the middle of a battle zone, separating Kane from his companions.[12] Kane rejoins his scattered team members and partakes in the assault against the Strogg.

After performing a number of tasks, such as destroying and capturing Strogg aircraft hangars and defense systems,[13][14] Kane and his remaining squad members make it to the USS Hannibal. There they are given their next mission: infiltrating one of the Strogg's central communication hubs, the Tetranode, with an electromagnetic pulse bomb in the hope that it will put the main Strogg Nexus in disarray. Kane is tasked with defending the mission convoy,[15] which takes heavy casualties. After many setbacks, including the destruction of the EMP device by a Strogg ambush, Kane is left to complete the mission, assisted only by Private Johann Strauss (Peter Stormare) and Lance Corporal Nikolai "Sledge" Slidjonovitch (Dimitri Diatchenko). Strauss figures out a way to destroy the core by shutting down its coolant systems. As Kane reaches the entrance to the Tetranode, however, he is greeted by two rocket-equipped network guardians, as well as the newly constructed Makron, which easily defeats Kane and knocks him unconscious.[16]

When Kane awakens, he finds himself strapped to a conveyor belt in the Strogg "Medical Facilities", a structure used for turning those captured and killed by the aliens either into protein food or additional Strogg units. In a long and gruesome first-person cutscene, Kane is taken through this "stroggification" process which violently replaces much of his anatomy with bio-mechanical parts. Before the final controlling neurochip implanted in his brain can be activated, though, Rhino Squad bursts into the facility and rescues Kane.[17] After escaping through the Strogg medical facility and Waste Disposal plant, fighting off zombie-like half-stroggified humans along the way, Kane is forced to combat his former commander, Lieutenant Voss (Michael Gannon), who has been fully stroggified into a powerful mechanized monster but retains his own consciousness long enough to warn Kane.[18] After defeating this threat, Kane and the remaining marines finally make it back to the Hannibal.

The commanders realize that Kane's Strogg physiology has opened up new possibilities for defeating the Strogg, as he can be used to infiltrate locations and teleportation areas previously impenetrable and/or fatally harmful to human forces. The new plan is to directly target the Strogg Nexus Core, a huge centralized brain-like structure which controls the alien forces. The Marines are tasked with infiltrating the three data towers adjacent to the Nexus: Data Storage, Processing, and Networking. There, they will deactivate the Nexus' shield and power up the teleporter used to access the Nexus and send Kane in. Once inside, Kane will travel to the center of the Nexus to destroy the Core Brain and its guardian.

After infiltrating the facility and realigning the data nodes powering the teleporter, and destroying its fearsome "Guardian" creature,[19] Kane reaches the Nexus core. There he meets the Makron in a final showdown and kills it. This accomplished, he destroys the Core and returns to the Hannibal. Celebrating with Rhino Squad afterward, Kane receives word that he has new orders.[20]

The Xbox 360 version of Quake 4 was released at the launch of the Xbox 360 and is Xbox Live compatible. There have been major issues with frame rates for the console adaptation, earning it the award for Most Aggravating Frame Rate/Best Slideshow in the GameSpot.com Best and Worst of 2005 list. In addition, the Xbox 360 port of Quake 4 has very long load times and Xbox Live glitches that result in problematic multiplayer experiences, as documented by game review sites as well as on Activision's support pages for the Xbox 360 version. This version was initially priced the same as the PC Special Edition DVD and features the same content. Aspyr Media published and released Quake 4 for OS X on April 5, 2006, initially only for PowerPC based Macs, but later as a universal binary compatible with both PowerPC- and x86-based Macs.[21] id Software continued its tradition of supporting Linux, with Timothee Besset of id releasing a Linux version of the Quake 4 binary executable. The binary could be downloaded for free from id's servers and it requires a licensed copy of Quake 4 for Windows or OS X in order to run.[22] The Linux installer was made available two days after the release of the game itself.[23] The game's budget was $15 million.[24]

Having worked on the theme music for Doom 3, Clint Walsh and Chris Vrenna were hired to work on the theme music for Quake 4. Vrenna produced while Walsh composed the theme music.

The rest of the music was composed by Raven's audio leads, Zachary Quarles and Kevin Schilder.

Quake 4 was re-released for the Xbox 360 and PC on June 19, 2012, with publication handled by Bethesda. In Europe, the game was launched in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Benelux territories. It was released in the United Kingdom on June 22. Unlike the original Xbox 360 version, the Bethesda re-release does not include the port of Quake II.[25]

Like its predecessors, Quake 4 can be modified. This led to Quake 4 versions of popular mods from previous versions of Quake, such as Rocket Arena,[26] and Quake 4 Fortress (the Quake 4 version of Team Fortress Classic).[27] Quake 4 Fortress was abandoned before its creators considered it complete; instead they released an alpha version complete with source code.[28] In the competitive gaming scene, there were two principal mods, Q4Max[29] and X-Battle.[30] The online Quake 4 competitive community was split between the two mods.[31][32] A number of the online leagues switched between X-Battle and Q4Max, such as ClanBase EuroCup[33] and GGL.[34] Despite this split in the online community, the offline professional LAN tournaments run by CPL,[35] ESWC,[36] WCG,[37] QuakeCon,[38][39] and WSVG[40] all used Q4Max. Members of both the Q4Max and X-Battle teams joined forces with Adam 'SyncError' Pyle of id Software and developed another mod, Delta CTF,[41] which brought Quake II-style Capture the Flag to Quake 4.[42] Another notable mod is SABot,[8] which successfully implemented multiplayer bots in Quake 4 less than a month after the SDK was released,[43] despite this being a feature that some reviewers criticised Quake 4 for not including.[44]

Sometime in 2018, it was revealed that there were plans for Quake 4 expansion called "Awakening" but it was cancelled due to unknown reasons. Former Raven artist Vitaliy Naymushin released several 3D models that were to appear in the expansion.[45] In 2021 the Quake 4 game DLLs were adapted for use with the open source Dhewm 3 engine derived from the released Doom 3 source code; this has since been used to port the game to AmigaOS.[46]

Quake 4's PC version received a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA),[64] indicating sales of at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom.[65]

Quake 4 received generally favorable reviews regarding the PC version of the game, with game database Metacritic giving the game an aggregate review score of 81/100.[49] Websites and magazines such as IGN and UGO praised its single-player campaign, graphics and Hollywood voice-acting, but complained that its multiplayer was too much like Quake III's. GameSpot gave Quake 4 an 8.0 and it also said: "The single-player is great fun, but the uninspired multiplayer leaves a lot to be desired". PC Magazine gave Quake 4 a good review for both singleplayer and multiplayer gameplay.[66]

The original 2005 Xbox 360 version of the game fared slightly worse with critics when it was released but still received generally positive reviews, scoring 75/100 on Metacritic.[50] The only exception for that is 1UP.com, where they gave the PC version a score of "B−"[51] but the Xbox 360 version a score of "B+".[52] Electronic Gaming Monthly gave a mixed rating to the Xbox 360 port. It panned the single-player campaign for not being creative enough to compete with other games such as Half-Life 2 and noted that the game ran poorly on the 360. IGN scored Quake 4 8.1/10, saying "Quake 4 is one of those games that will appeal to console gamers who haven't owned a PC for years. The single-player campaign is varied and pretty interesting, getting better after you're Stroggified. The enemies go from dumb and running right at you to diverse and more interesting in the second half of the game, and there are a few cool boss fights worth your while. The gory graphics and excellent lighting are well done and they'll appeal to many gamers looking for a fast, shiny game to just let loose on".[67] GameSpot gave it a worse rating than the PC version: 6.6. They also wrote: "There's a good game in Quake 4, but it's buried under several layers of highly disappointing graphical performance issues".[57] X-Play gave the Xbox 360 version a 3/5 and the PC version a 4/5.

Quake 4 was a finalist for PC Gamer US's "Best Multiplayer Game 2005" award, which ultimately went to Battlefield 2.[68]

• Ravensoft's official Quake 4 site
• id's official Quake 4 site