QuakeCon 2005 was a mini E3 of sorts because there were some cool and flashy booths and NVIDIA brought soon-to-be released titles such as Auto Assault, Stubbs the Zombie, Fable, and Bet on Soldier, but while those games are impressive id and Raven Software stole the show by unveiling a playable demo of Quake 4. It was actually the first time that the masses as well as the press could get their hands on it and believe me; I managed to play copious amounts of this incredibly fantastic first person shooter.

The most important thing to note here is Quake 4, despite being developed by Raven under the watchful eye of id feels very much like every Quake title that's come before it. With that being said, the game's incredibly fast and the majority of its ten weapons (all of the symbols for which have been pulled from past games in the series) are pretty much the same despite some slight modifications and technical differences. Take the machine gun, for example. The cone shaped monster from Quake III Arena has been modeled to look like a standard assault rifle and it even comes with a scope you can zoom by rolling the mouse wheel. However, just like its predecessor it's still pretty useless unless you're pounding your adversary and he or she isn't armed with anything else.

Other weapons include the gauntlet, which is basically a melee device with a saw blade attached to it, the hyper blaster, which fires energy pulses, the shotgun, the rail gun, the grenade launcher, the lightning gun, the good old fashioned nail gun (which has been transformed into a mini gun-like device), and finally the DMG or dark matter gun, which was unfortunately not available in the map that I played.

There were only two maps available, the most used being The Fragging Yard, a rusty and industrial complex full of ramps and jump pads. It's big enough so that you really get a feel for its sense of scale, as climbing up into a tower makes the people down below look like ants, but it's small enough that you won't be alone for very long. In fact, it's possible to step on a jump pad and fly all the way across the map, and both sides have two of those, so if you'd like you can just keep bouncing back and forth. Of course, when two combatants take the trip from opposite ends only bad things will happen, and several times during play I fired a well placed rocket at my opponent's midsection and just flew through his gibs.

As for the other maps, a representative from Raven doesn't know how many will be included when the game ships, but as of this writing there's already 9 created maps, some of which include remakes of classic levels from previous Quakes. There was another map that was shown at QuakeCon, a CTF map, but there isn't anything particularly special about it. It's merely two command posts (where each flag is kept) connected by a series of walk ways; standard issue fare.

As for the gameplay, Quake 4 plays as smooth as melted butter and is as quick as one of John Carmack's tricked out Ferraris. The game just flies, so PC gamers will feel right at home, but console people who are used to Halo 2's normal pace may be immediately kicked in the teeth. Survival all depends upon your aim and how well you jump around, because unlike in other games a rocket to someone's head won't necessarily kill them. Since I'm used to Halo 2, I would fire a rocket right at a guy and feel a false sense of relief because I assumed that I could take that frag to the bank, only to discover that he rebounded from the blast and zapped me with lightning.

Multiplayer is sweet but I really wanted to test drive the single player component, which was actually at the show but no one save id and Raven were allowed to touch it. However, it looks $#$%&$^ amazing.

In the game you play as Mathew Kane, a new recruit who's just entered the war against mankind's greatest enemy, the Strogg. Quake 4 is actually the sequel to Quake 2, so now that the marine from that game killed the Strogg's leader, the Macron, Kane and his new comrades are sent to the aliens' home world to wipe them out. Sadly, things don't go according to plan, and this is displayed in a truly spectacular cut scene that really captures the essence of the game and sets a dark and violent tone.

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