Quake for the PC has always been one of the best looking first-person-shooters you can find. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for its console counterparts. The impressive graphics that we have come to expect from the PC versions usually don’t translate well when they make their way to our favorite consoles. In the past this was mainly due to the limited graphical capabilities of the various consoles it was being ported to. Well now we have a console that rivals a high end PC. Unfortunately Xbox 360 version of Quake 4 is riddled with slowdown and other graphical issues.

But we have all learned that graphics aren’t the most important part of a game. And when it comes to a first-person-shooter we need to take into account the story-mode, multi-player modes and the on-line modes. Fortunately the single player mode of Quake 4 is relatively good. The story picks up where Quake II left off, and you begin your campaign with a new recruit named Matthew Kane. Your transport gets shot down, and you must take on the enemy forces of the Strogg planet with a handful of your squad mates. You eventually make your way back to a human Capital Ship, where you can explore a bit, and then continue your missions.

During a good deal of your missions you will come across fellow Marines. They will help you and they add a good deal of gameplay since they aren’t completely useless. Some of the Marines are medics who will heal you and others are engineers who can repair you armor. You also have your normal slew of weaponry from machine guns to rocket launchers. There is enough variety to the weapons at your disposal to keep you interested, and as you progress through the game you get the ability to upgrade your weapons to make them much more useful. To make things even better, you can pilot several vehicles in the single-player campaign. The vehicle segments aren’t long enough to be intrusive, but are welcome and keeps the game fresh.

I found the single-player campaign relatively satisfying until the frame-rate began to drop. In certain areas the entire game even slowed down making things very difficult. This level of slowdown wasn’t expected, and I haven’t seen it on any of the other Xbox 360 first-person-shooters. I can’t really explain the slowdown. Quake 4’s graphics aren’t as sharp as several of the other Xbox 360 launch fps’s, yet they don’t suffer from this problem. But if you can live with the slowdown, then you should be relatively satisfied with the single player campaign.

Quake 4 also has several multi-player options. You can play four players on the same console via split-screen. You can play against up to sixteen via a system link. Luckily Quake 4 also has Xbox Live support. You can only have eight people in a match, but it is enough to keep things going. Unfortunately the slowdown continues to be an issue in the multi-player areas. This takes a great deal of the fun away from the matches, and really holds this game back.

The music and other sounds are par for the course, but the voice acting really makes the game. Also they included a second disc which contains some behind the scenes videos and (surprisingly) the full version of Quake II. I actually had more fun playing Quake II; mainly because the slowdown was such an issue with Quake 4 and it was no where to be seen in Quake II.

Quake 4 could have been a great game if it would have had a couple more months in development. It needed some fine tuning that it just didn’t get. If you have a decent PC, then I would suggest skipping the Xbox 360 version and getting the PC version which doesn’t have the slowdown and other graphical issues that the 360 version does.