Weapons

Quake IV has a good collection of classic Quake weapons for you to play around with. Most of the weapons are the same in singleplayer or multiplayer, but the singleplayer weapons will eventually be upgraded with modifications, while the multiplayer weapons won't need to be reloaded.

Blaster

The Blaster is the first weapon you'll wield on Stroggos, but isn't as piddling as you might think at first glance. While it's certainly a weak weapon when compared to almost anything else, it's still quite capable of taking down weaker foes, especially if you click the fire button like a madman; it has no automatic fire capabilities. That said, its rate of fire is excellent, allowing you to pop off simultaneous shots with almost no downtime between them. The blaster also has no ammo requirements, making it a workable sidearm for occasions when you want to preserve ammo.

The blaster also has a secondary firing mode, allowing you to charge up a shot by holding down the alt-fire button, then letting loose with one massive blast of energy. This is rarely going to be worth the time it takes to fire, though, at least not on the higher difficult levels, where you'll be better served by just jamming down the primary fire button and taking people down with a stream of weaker fire.

Machinegun

Although the machinegun is another weapon you'll acquire early on, it's likely going to be one of the weapons you're going to be using the most. There's not much to say about it, really; if you press and hold the attack button, you'll send out a stream of pretty accurate fire at a target, doing good damage. You also don't have to reload very often, allowing you to keep up a stream of fire in a firefight for a long while. Although these don't sound like particularly impressive benefits, the machinegun is powerful enough and accurate enough to be a standby weapon for most of the game. When you consider that it can also be used as a quasi-sniping rifle with its alt-fire, and that it has an underslung flashlight, you'll probably come around to the strengths of the weapon. Know it, love it.

The machinegun will come in handy throughout the singleplayer portion of Quake IV.

The machinegun upgrade that you eventually obtain will double the clip size of the weapon, allowing you to dish out much more hurt before you have to reload.

Shotgun

The Shotgun doesn't appear until you pass through a few trials by fire, but it'll be a welcome addition your arsenal when you do finally pick it up. It's similar in nature to the shotguns found in most other games, and if you've played Doom III, then it should feel especially familiar. There's nothing exceedingly special about the weapon; you point it at something and a bunch of pellets hit it. Obviously, the closer you are to your foe, the more pellets will connect, and the more damage you'll do. This isn't a weapon to use on something at long distance, in other words.

When you get your Shotgun upgrade, which doesn’t occur until fairly late in the game, you’ll be able to load clips of shells, instead of having to load them in individually. This will increase the ammo capacity to 10 rounds, as well as greatly shorten the reload time on it.

Grenade Launcher

The unpredictability of the grenade launcher can make it a liability in some combat situations, where you may wind up hurting yourself or your AI teammates just as much as the enemy. When you fire a grenade, you'll lob an explosive projectile up into the air with a parabolic arc. If you get good at aiming these, then you can usually place them where you want them with a good degree of precision. Alternately, you can just lob grenades like a crazy person into the middle of a group of enemies and wait for them to detonate. Grenades explode on impact with a target; otherwise they take around four seconds after firing to explode.

One of the best ways to use grenades, since they don't travel very far, is to get the attention of an enemy, then back away from it while laying grenades in their path. You can bounce them off walls to try and lob them around corners, as well. In multiplayer, grenades are best left in the hands of the professionals. If you become a master at predicting the arc of a launched grenade, then you may be able to get a good number of frags with it, but if you're a more casual player then its unpredictability may make it difficult to get frags. On tight maps with a bunch of players, though, it can sometimes be profitable to just chuck grenades all around the map, especially on maps with walkways above lower battlegrounds. Random frags still count!

Also note that you can use grenades for grenade jumping, just like rocket jumping, but it's much more difficult to time the explosion correctly.

Hyperblaster

The hyperblaster is functionally similar to the hyperblaster from Quake II, for those of you who remember it. It's essentially a rapid-fire laser that shoots energy bolts that, all things considered, do pretty decent damage. The bonuses here are a large ammo clip, plenty of overall ammo capacity, and efficient damage dealing. The drawback is that the bolts travel somewhat slowly when you're attempting to hit something at long range, making it easy for your targets to dodge. This is more of a problem in multiplayer than in singleplayer, of course.

Anyway, in multiplayer, you're probably going to want to use the hyperblaster as primarily a defensive weapon. If you find yourself losing the upper hand in a fight, find a corridor to retreat through, and waggle your hyperblaster's beam back and forth across the corridor so that anyone attempting to follow you can't help but take damage. Even opponents with good health and armor will often prefer to simply try their luck elsewhere rather than pursue you through an almost unstoppable stream of plasma. The hyperblaster can still do excellent damage in close-quarters combat, as well, though, especially when paired up with a quad damage mod.

Nailgun

The nailgun works well against Gladiators, since it isn't reflected by their energy shield.

Ah, the nailgun. This delightful little piece of Strogg weaponry fires, well, nails, or at least shards of metal, at your opponents. It does a bit more damage than the machinegun, although its projectiles do travel much more slowly. Like the hyperblaster, then, it's a bit more difficult to actually hit people with, especially over long ranges. Since the machinegun is hitscan, it'll likely be a better weapon for most multiplayer encounters, excepting those that take place at close range.

In the singleplayer game, you'll eventually be able to upgrade your nailgun with extra firing speed and an extra-large clip, and then, later on, actually mod it further to allow you to lock on to enemies with your scope and let the nailgun's projectiles home in on them. After it's fully upgraded, it's a pretty decent weapon for dealing with low-level Stroggs, but is definitely not something you want to be using at anything beyond medium range.