ok, so i am schizophrenic - so what.
my total frustration over the quake guy slowness has totally dissolved (i try not to spoil anything, so i'll keep it vague) and now it's not only fantastic looking but also great fun. thank god, as i really wanted to like this game. and now i love it!

first f.e.a.r and now this. brilliant. 

Finished my second run through last night, awesome stuff, looked around a bit more, found some more things than the first time, I even appreciated my teammates presence this time through.

Multiplayer is very addictive, fast and brutal. Does become a bit spammy when there is to many on the map, which is to be expected, but when the numbers are right...ROCK. Gets better and better the more you play.

Vehicles... :( 

I do say, I believe I found some wierdness lunaran. The jumpads in mp are targeted to info_location entities (the sucessor to q3s target_location), as if it where a common garden variety target_null. Outrageous, I could hardly believe my eyes, I had to have a brief lie down. And don't get me started on info_locations not actually being used as they should, why in my day mumble mumble... 

Tinman: If it works why get all outraged? :) 

If it was just the game, and they dropped all the fucking retarded storytelling, and dropped the fucking retarded vehicle segments, it would be a very awesome game. As it is, it is just good.

SPOILERS:
The boss with that scarface guy who sticks his pole into the sparkly bits was fucking difficult. The flying fat thing that I thought was the Makron was also fucking difficult, but more bearable than the scarface guy. The final boss fight was a joke. Didn't even die once.
However, in the last 1/3rd of the game, I rarely had more than 70 health. I often had to complete entire levels with nothing more than 30, and then I had to run gauntlet around all monsters and just pray I never got hit.
This was on normal skill mind you.

Also on the latter levels everything ran a lot slower than usual for some reason.

Climbing those three identical towers was pretty meh. The first time it was cool.

This game has made me more anti-American. I fucking hate the fucking US marine corps now. Shut up. I promise (not a promise) this will be the last game i ever pay for that contains lots of marines running around and being oh so tough and mean and like glory and honour and shock and awe and shit like that because that was getting old already in q2.

Kinn: You are SO fat!





Conclusion: Go buy this game but remember to turn off the sound whenever someone (in the game) is talking to you.

Biff: You are SO old! 

agreed regarding fucking american marines... so boring.. 

CZG, no storytelling is better than crap storytelling. Also, would one of you raven employees like to explain why everyone knew about the plot twist before the game was even released, and how people at Raven feel about it generally? I've seen a lot of people complaining that it was spoiled for them in the previews because too much information was revealed.

Anyway, still no comments from me. I probably won't get a chance to play until Christmas, but I am kinda looking forward to it based on the decent feedback it has received (from people who I respect, rather than some hack journos with their tongues placed firmly on Gabe Newell's shaft).

Oh, how is the music? 

Well, As soon as I found out how to turn it off,(60 sec's after I first heard it)it was only a distant memory. What I did hear wasn't my thing. FYI,
seta s_musicVolume "0"
in the Quake4config.cfg turns it off, default is "0.5". There is no actual menu option to alter the music volume individually.
I never listen to game music, whether it be in game or not. Music is the first thing to be turned off for me.
The ambient sounds etc I liked alot, as I did with Doom3, it really helps build the atmosphere. The sound in general I thought was well done. Love the weapon sounds. 

therealthan> Also, would one of you raven employees like to explain why everyone knew about the plot twist before the game was even released, and how people at Raven feel about it generally?

i didn't know, but frankly, i wish i had - as i was completely frustrated until it. i even considered to stop playing - but i wanted to check out the amazing graphics, so i gave it another shot.

someone should release a mod which skips the lame vehicle parts in the single player campaign. 

The final boss fight was a joke. Didn't even die once....... This was on normal skill mind you

I found there was a GREAT difference between Normal and Hard Skill (whatever there Quake4 equivalents are, corporal/lieutenant wahtever) in the final boss fight. My first play through was on hard, and second time through I went normal, and on normal I could just basically stand there and blast away and that was that, not so on Hard 

Also, would one of you raven employees like to explain why everyone knew about the plot twist before the game was even released,

If you mean turning into a Strogg, it heavily featured in the promo video clip, released, presumably, by Raven.

If there's another twist, I dunno.

Now if Amazon would HURRY THE CUNT UP AND POST MY FUCKING GAME "DISPATCHED IN 24 HOURS MY COCK" THEN I MIGHT ACTUALLY KNOW... 

 

because it's somewhat of a gameplay feature aswell as a twist. They needed to say -something- to get peoples attention, and I think it worked.

Though yes, it would have worked very well as a surprise too. 

how does it actually affect gameplay ? 

looking forward to this - I'll prolly play it in about a month I'm guessing. I agree with others in that I value the feedback from actual Quake fans (i.e. you guys) much more so than the agenda-filled shit you read in the media reviews.

Not over the moon about all the story/cutscene bollocks though. Carmack has actually said in his own words that he feels it's a shame that when you make a game nowadays, you basically have to make a B-movie as well, and they can't just concentrate on what makes a game, well, a game.

In a similar vein, I'm guessing they felt they had to put vehicles in just because it's what their consumers expect from an FPS now. It's a shame because I always feel that the Quake series should be "pure" - free from cruft and just concentrating on the very essence of FPS. 

You run faster, you reload faster, you get 25% more health and armor, you can use strogg health stations scattered around the world, and (I might just be imagining this though) the text on the strogg monitors becomes readable. 

SPOLIER
about the text on the strogg monitors: you can actually see the text changing when the brain 'something' implant is being made on the monitor where the brain scan is displayed. The stroggification is well designed after that (hud changes, move faster), I loved the fact that you could hear both strogg and marine radio transmittions. Noticed on the second run through the game. It really should be played on hard once you get used to the weapons. 

if that would make him do things the way they want instead of "what they have to". 

Lunaran, someone told me you were responsible for Lost Fleet. Thank you! The map is great, it's the best of the out-of-box maps, I just had a 2vs2 on it and quake 4 felt like a completely different game. 

Yay! Most of the maps seem nicely clipped 'n' caulked, shouldn't take me too much time to slap in some botclip and shake that sexy aas.
Oh except for q4dm2 terrain mesh will make baby bot cry :(, I will need to do a bit oh work on that.
A chunk of patch on stairs of the edge too, no problem.
Patch stairs on ctf1 should be ok after a quick n nasty botclip wedge.
And finally ctf3 with a few patch floor edges to brick up.
I would say it gives me something to do while waiting for sdk, but I've allready got plenty to do and don't mind if the raven lads take your time :P
I don't know if I'll spend that much time on my bot, a quick port in the very least. I do know of some more experienced bot authors lined up to have a crack at their own. So people won't have to put up with the retardedness of my bot (if they don't want to). 

finished the game, liked it alot! everything rocks there.

sometimes american soldier bots blocked my way, but that's ok. and i wish the main hero betrayed humans and joined stroggs and didn't destroy their main brain... personally, i didn't want to destroy it... 

Just getting the shit setting up right.

Firstly - I've solved a problem with using the zoom / alt fire mode crashing the game - updated video drivers so was obviously a problem that the old drivers didn't support the visual faggotry zoom mode entails.

Secondly - the god-fucking-cunting-awful headbob, I can't believe that put something this awful in a game but there you go. I've half-solved this by adding the following commands:

seta pm_bobpitch "0"
seta pm_bobroll "0"
seta pm_bobup "0"
seta pm_crouchbob "0"
seta pm_runbob "0"
seta pm_runpitch "0"
seta pm_runroll "0"
seta pm_walkbob "0"

to the Quake4config file. BUT each time Q4 quits, it resets that config file and removes those commands. So I have to copy and paste them in each time before playing.

Anyone got any ideas how to get those commands in permanently??

Thirdly - anyone know how to reduce the HUD size?? Looked on the Cvar list here: http://hwspirit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=129 but couldn't find nowt?? 

Er... put those commands into autoexec.cfg like you would do with any Quake-engine game?


...Duh 

Oh yeah silly me, I should have known that Quake 4 would function in exactly the same way as all the other Quakes as it's so similar in engine and in how things function, and remember exactly how I got commands to work with previous Quakes from the last time I had to tinker around with such stuff which was only 7 years ago with Quake 2 WHATEVER THANKS GENIUS. 

write-protecting config.cfg?
that was an old q1 trick too.