Brief Hands-On Report--Aspyr released Quake 4 v1.4.2

Aspyr Media just released a free patch (v1.4.2) for the game Quake 4. This update is available as a free download at this MacGameFiles Web page. It's a whopping 383MB download.

According to Aspyr,

This is an official update for Quake 4. It will fully update any previous version of Quake 4 to version 1.4.2. It is recommended for all users.

This update affects pure server and protocol consistency, and adds a number of other multiplayer fixes including support for QUAKE 4 TV. The read me has a complete listing of bug fixes as well as directions on how to operate QUAKE 4 TV. This update will be necessary for Mac users attempting to play multiplayer against PC users with the PC 1.4.2 patch.

The list of fixes is huge, too long to publish here. There is a Read Me file with the update that lists them.

We downloaded and installed the 1.4.2 updater. We have ben using v1.2 because we could not run the demo to test the speed at which the game runs with version 1.3. Unfortunately, the demo does not run in v1.4.2 either, giving us an error message that the version number expected was 12 but got 10. So we can not determine if v1.4.2 is faster or not.

Also unfortunately, the saved game points were also lost. But this happens with each update. We played Quake 4 v1.4.2 through several maps without encountering any issues. It played very well, seemingly faster than v1.2 or 1.3. [Bill Fox]