Multiplayer

Know your FOV

Your FOV (short for Field of Vision) setting determines how much of the game world your monitor displays at any given time. Although your eyes in real life can see around 180 degrees without moving your head (if you include your peripheral vision), most games set you at 90 degrees to compensate for the fact that your monitor actually isn't going to be filling up your entire field of vision (with some games, like Halo 2, being even more restrictive than that).

Luckily, if you're looking for every bit of competitive edge that you can get, you can increase your FOV in Quake IV. To do so, open up the console by pressing alt+ctrl+` (the tilde key, located to the left of the 1 key and above the Tab key), then type "g_fov 90". (Without the quotation marks.) This won't actually do anything, since your FOV in Quake IV is already set to 90, but if you want to try increasing it, you can try setting it to 100, 110, or even 140 if you want a real fisheye experience.

Higher FOV settings will allow you to see more action on the edges of your screen, and let you spot enemies that might normally be off-screen to you if you're running with an FOV of 90. Many professional players run with FOVs of 120 or more, but the higher you go, the more distorted your view will become, and it can become a detriment to your gameplay if you go too high. Still, most players will benefit by jumping to an FOV of 100 without seeing too many drawbacks. Try it out and see if it works for you; you can always knock it back down to 90 if you wish.

Unfortunately, FOV settings entered directly into the console aren't saved from game to game, so if you want to use these online, it's best to enter the command directly to your command line. Find the shortcut to Quake IV on your desktop, right click on it, and you should be at the Shortcut menu. If you find the line that reads:

C:\games\q4\Quake4.exe

And add this command to it: +g_fov 110

C:\games\q4\Quake4.exe +g_fov 110

Then you'll automatically switch to 110 FOV every time you boot up the game. You can change that number to whatever you like, of course.

It's All About Instinct

Although Quake IV multiplayer is a much different beast than many multiplayer games that have come out over the past couple of years, in that it lets you actually survive taking a bullet to the head or a rocket to the chest; unlike most hyper-realistic games, battles are going to take a bit of time to play out. There are very few one-shot kills available to you here.

Video Walk-through

Using the railgun well requires reflexes, skill, and a bit of old-fashioned luck.

Watch It »

Thus, most battles are going to be won by the player with more experience and the better ability to anticipate enemy movements. If you've ever watched a demo or a movie of a professional Quake III tournament, then you'll know that winning in multiplayer is all about anticipation. Knowing where your enemy is going, how they'll move, where the corridor they're taking heads, and so on.

This isn't so much a tip as it is a warning: getting good at Quake IV will require a good amount of practice and map-learning. Many players of Quake III will have an upper hand on you if you're new to the game, since so much of Q4 multiplayer is based on Quake III. You can still be good at the game if you don't devote three hours a night to practicing your l33t skills, but the more you play, the better you'll get at things like leading with rockets, hitting people with the railgun from far away, hitting people with grenades while they're in midair, and so on.

Practice makes perfect. Until you've put in a good number of hours in the game, you can expect to get knocked around a bit by the old hands. Quake IV is really no different than any other game in this respect, but it does require a much different skillset than most games do, and there are going to be a bunch of Quake III players transferring over with most of their skills intact.

Don't Forget The Strafe Jumping

Strafe jumping is a classic aspect of id gaming, and has been featured in almost all of the Quake engine games (and even before that, you could strafe against a wall in Doom to pick up speed). If you ever watch a demo or a movie of a professional game, you'll notice that most of the players will be hopping around and moving much more quickly than you normally would. This is normally a result of strafe jumping, which allows you to jump while moving forward and pick up a bit more speed.

Strafe jumping is pretty easy to perform, although it takes some getting used to. Instead of just moving forward with your forward movement key, you're going to jump as often as possible while holding down one of your strafe buttons. If you want to move forward, you can alternate strafe keys while you jump, i.e. jump+strafe right, jump+strafe left, and so on, repeating. If you want to bend around a curve, you can just use keep holding down one of the strafe buttons while jumping and moving your mouse.

It can be difficult to make sharp turns while retaining the momentum you gain from strafe jumping, and making a 180 degree turn is almost impossible. It's also worth noting that many of the maps of Quake IV are perhaps a bit less suited to strafe jumping than the more-open maps in Quake III, since they often have more claustrophobic corridors that tend to sap your speed. Still, strafejumping is worth learning, if only to help you get to the powerups more quickly.