QUAKE 4 ON XBOX 360 SKIN
QUAKE 4 ON XBOX 360 SOFTWARE
QUAKE 4 ON XBOX 360 PC

The game opens with what you think is your character looking out of a window and out into space…only it's not your character, and he's not looking into space, he's floating across it, with half a head and his guts tumbling out of his stomach. From the outset, things are being fought across a wide-open battlefield, and the design choices and values can be directly seen in the likes of Call of Duty, with massive set piece battles that serve as interactive cinematic moments. So what does this all mean? Quake 4 looks rather impressive. Id simply took the premise one step further and applied it to landscapes and architecture rather than just people and creatures.

QUAKE 4 ON XBOX 360 SKIN

The evolution really makes sense, as the Doom 3 engine was aimed at being able to create extremely realistic character models using translucent texturing and normal mapping, which created a realness and density to a person's skin not yet seen in gaming. Quake 4 is wide open, with massive creatures and vehicles, while Doom 3 is constricted and laden with ambience. Compare Quake 4 to Doom 3, and you'll have a difficult time seeing that these games are really built off of very similar engines. It makes for some complicated stuff to explain and understand, but the results are unmistakable. You can take a Mega Texture of a desert landscape and wrap it over a very large area, and the texture will also know to give off dust clouds if someone's running or driving over the surface, and that a certain amount of light will reflect off of rocks and dirt in the texture. Keeping it in layman's terms, Mega Textures are not your simple texture maps that give the polygons color and tone they also contain information crucial to calculating light reflection, refraction, texture, density and physical characteristics that determine how each object interacts in terms of its physics modeling. The Doom 3 engine makes use of a new technology called Mega Textures, which, like Quake 3's Nurbs and Doom 3's normal mapping, are not the easiest things to explain. No matter the result, Id has evolved the Doom 3 engine, which gives Raven quite a palette to do a great many things.

QUAKE 4 ON XBOX 360 SOFTWARE

This time around, Id Software and Raven have sought to dismantle the reputation that Id can only do deathmatching and focused on a game with a compelling single-player experience. Quake 3 Arena was a straight tourney-style game without the Strogg or Space Marines. Quake 4 goes back to finish the 'story' that began in Quake 2.

Fast forward 10 years and five different graphics engines and deathmatching and broadband connections to this year's incarnation of Id's formula: Quake 4. Heard of them, have you? They're the good people who revolutionized gaming with Doom way back when you know – the game that everyone on TV always mentions whenever a kid who wears lots of black does something bad.

QUAKE 4 ON XBOX 360 PC

Buy 'QUAKE 4': X360 | PC | PC Special Edition

Quake 4 on xbox 360