While Doom was the game that would make id Software a gaming-household name in the early '90s, over the years, the company shifted its focus away from the Doom games. As PC hardware and 3D acceleration became better and better, id became much more focused on engine development. Those engines were the underlying technology that powered the games in the Quake series, which began in 1996. Quake was among the first PC first-person shooters to let you take your multiplayer matches onto the Internet, and over the years, the series has become synonymous with great technology and exciting multiplayer. Now, in 2005, the roles of id's games have reversed a bit. The company's most recent engine is the one built for Doom 3, and Quake 4 runs on this same engine. Furthermore, Quake 4 wasn't even developed by id internally; it instead outsourced game development to the capable minds at Raven Software, who have turned in a fantastic-looking game with a great single-player campaign. The multiplayer, however, is underwhelming. In Quake 4, you play as a space marine named Matthew Kane, who has recently been assigned to Rhino Squad. In keeping with first-person shooter storyline tradition, Kane doesn't speak, but the marines around you will more than make up for the lack of chatter coming out of Kane's lips. You're the new guy, and some of the squad's even betting that you won't even survive for one day. With the Makron assumed dead, your squad is taking part in an operation to take advantage of the disarray and mop up the rest of the enemy forces on the Strogg planet. But your drop ship gets hit and comes down hard, killing a large chunk of your squadmates at the opening of the game. From there, you'll pull yourself up out of the muck and get down to business. Eventually, your squad will get extracted back to a capital ship for reassignment. Here, you'll get to explore the ship, similar to how you could explore Voyager in Raven's Elite Force games. Then you're back out on a new mission designed to disrupt the Strogg communication network. And the story continues from there. While the story itself isn't particularly gripping, it's designed well enough to keep you interested in what's happening. There's also a potentially interesting plot twist in the game that, unfortunately, was revealed by id Software almost immediately, when the company first started talking about and showing off the game. We won't repeat it here, in case you've managed to stay away, because we have to imagine that the twist would have been a lot more interesting if you didn't see it coming. Just know that a few interesting things happen in the game, but they don't totally change the way the game is played or anything like that.