People love bitching about how many first person shooters exist for the Xbox 360, but on the positive side (aside from them all being good) each one has something to offer and takes place in a different time period. Now personally, I've always had a love for murdering aliens, so Quake 4 was easily my most anticipated FPS for the system. Having played the lighting quick PC version I was all geared up for some brutal Strogg smashing, and while the game provides copious amounts of brutal action scenes and looks fairly next generation, it's a step slower than its cousin, and folks, that just doesn't sit well with me.

It's not cool because for months id and Raven Software have insisted that the game was not a port but developed from the ground up on the Xbox 360, and then John Carmack praised the hardware, and then I was assured by representatives from both camps that it would be just as fast and as pretty as its PC counterpart, but the final product is anything but. Now that doesn't mean that it's an ugly looking game. It's not exactly the graphical jewel of the 360 launch lineup and some of the textures are Xbox quality all the way, but it's still a very attractive title. Aircraft zoom overhead, bodies are launched through the air, lots of highly detailed creatures attack en masse, and the gunplay is brutal as all hell. But the frame rate stutters during some action heavy sequences and for some reason I can see these weird white lines around dark scenery. Then there's the loading, which is easily 20 plus seconds whenever a save file is accessed, and the audio isn't consistently good. Sometimes I can hear things clearly, other times voices are muffled when I look away from the person speaking. All of this is just weird coming from a developer (id) that has made a living off advanced technology and Raven, which usually puts out good stuff. After all, Perfect Dark Zero, Call of Duty 2, Condemned, and King Kong are all polished and run smoothly, so I fail to see why this game needs to be the lone exception.

Despite the technical shortcomings this is still one hell of a game. The sequel to Quake 2, you play as marine Mathew Kane, a fearless bad ass that's assisting his fellow marines in the battle against the Strogg, an alien race hell bent on mankind's destruction. The adventure is almost over before it begins due to a well placed Strogg rocket to Kane's drop ship, but it doesn't take long for him to regroup, wrap his hands around a machine gun (or a blaster, a nail gun, and a shotgun, among other weapons) and rip through his adversaries with reckless abandon. An action heavy and ultimately linear FPS, Quake 4 excels at shoving lots of ugly creatures in front of you and you'll happily mow them all down. Satisfaction comes from not only blowing the Strogg network to charred bits but also the shallow yet well told story, which takes some dramatic twists, the best of which involves Kane being transformed into a Strogg.

Unfortunately, the gameplay isn't particularly sophisticated since it's smothered by mundane objectives. KANE...GO HELP THAT GUY! KANE! GO MEET SO AND SO! KANE! DEACTIVATE THAT THING! And this goes on and on. I was moved to complete the adventure because I wanted to see how the story unfolded and the combat's enjoyable, but damn! Where's the innovation? Even the vehicles, which include a hover tank and a mech with rockets strapped to it, fail to ignite much excitement.

The multiplayer is also somewhat disappointing. Rather than attempt something new the developers just shoved plain old Quake III style death matching and capture the flag into the game. It's sort of fun on the PC version, but on Xbox 360 its noticeably slower and seriously lacking when compared to Perfect Dark Zero's online component, especially since it supports up to eight people! Eight!?! Are you kidding me?

Quake 4 should be renamed "resting on our laurels" because there's nothing about it that jumps out at me. The single player game is cookie cutter and the multiplayer cowers in fear from the shadow of the upcoming PC title, Enemy Territory. I like the game and don't regret purchasing it (and the bonus disc that includes Quake 2 is very nice indeed), but it's not even close to being a must have 360 launch title. But if you're planning to pick up several games on launch day, you might as well toss this one onto the pile.