Enemy Territory: Quake Wars review (PC)

Any of you still playing Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory? It was a free popular multiplayer expansion to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, developed by Splash Damage and released in 2003. 4 years on, Splash Damage is back with another Enemy Territory game, except there’s been a fairly radical change. As is obvious from the title, the game has shifted from WW2 into the Quake Universe, and with that comes a whole new range of vehicles, weapons and maps.

Déjà vu

The first thing you’ll notice playing Quake Wars is that it bears more than a striking resemblance to Battlefield 2, and indeed 2142. It’s has the same tried-and-tested formula of two teams attempting to complete objectives dotted around the map, while killing the opposition in the process. As you complete objectives, you gain control of parts of the map once belonging to the enemy, hence the title.

You can choose to play on one of two sides: the GDF (Global Defence Force, or humans to you and me) or the Strogg, an invading alien race. There are differences to both sides, namely the weapons and vehicles. The GDF weaponry relies on you having to physically reload once the ammo is spent, whilst the Strogg guns have unlimited ammo but overheat from excess usage.

Within each side there are 5 different classes for you to choose from. There’s the engineer, which handles repairs of vehicles and construction of buildings/weapons, the soldier which handles demolitions, and the medic which, as you’ll be amazed to hear, heals and revives people. You then have the Covert-ops, your stealthy sniper class that has the ability to hack enemy structures and vehicles, and finally Field-ops, which deploys artillery and missile systems and calls in air strikes. This class system will be familiar to anyone that played the original Enemy Territory, or indeed any of the Battlefield games.

However, what sets Quake Wars aside from the likes of Battlefield is that you have to choose your class depending on the situation. If you can’t progress until a bridge has been prepared, then obviously you’re going to need an engineer to sort it out. If you’re getting bogged-down, you had better get a Field-ops to call in an airstrike, and so on. If you press the M key during missions, a list of objectives will pop up. This list contains all the current missions for your currently selected class, and after selecting one you’re then tasked with completing it. It’s a great system that has been implemented well.

You just got owned... again

If you’re not too hot with FPS titles you’re really going to hate the first few hours of Quake Wars. Make no mistake, once you’ve been mauled for the fifth consecutive time it won’t be long before you’re in corner adopting a foetal position and sobbing quietly. This game is harsh – really, really harsh.

Sometime after you’ve recouped, collected yourself and wiped the tears from your eyes, you begin to realise just what Quake Wars is all about. There’s no room here for Medal of Honor-style Rambo missions. Oh no, if you run off from the pack guns-ablazing it’ll be game over for you before you even think about pulling the trigger. Quake Wars is massively focussed around team-based play. You really feel like you’re helping out the team, doing things for the sake of victory and to not just level-up a la Battlefield. There are upgrades available to you once you’ve earned enough XP, but these only last as long as the campaign does and you’re required to re-earn them.

You’ll also find a multitude of vehicles in Quake Wars, ranging from helicopters of the attack and transport kind, to tanks and single-seat buggies. The attacking-based vehicles are all incredibly effective against the enemy, but on the flip side, they’re ridiculous weak against turrets. You can forget about gunning-down the enemy from your chopper if there’s an anti-air turret deployed, for example, and there are even turrets of the anti-personnel kind thrown into the mix.

As for the maps, well, it’s a fairly varied bunch. Spread over 4 campaigns, each containing three levels, you’ll be fighting in desert-like conditions, obliterated cities and frozen wastelands. The level design itself is fairly standard, and while it’s certainly no Crysis, the attention to detail does shine through in some places. Disappointingly, explosions are rendered in 2D – a decision that I cannot quite come to terms with given how good the rest of the game looks. One thing I was massively impressed with however was the draw distance. It’s all thanks to ID’s MegaTexture technology, which uses one massive texture instead of multiple, smaller textures; in layman’s terms, it allows you to see really, really far.

Rank me up

For me, however, I don’t see myself devoting much time to Quake Wars when games such as Call of Duty 4 have been released. There’s not really much reward for your actions, due to losing your earned upgrades, and while some people are quick to dismiss the rank systems of Battlefield and Call of Duty 4, I believe they’re one of the main reasons why people continue to play these games. Despite this, Quake Wars remains very popular online and is generally regarded as being an excellent multiplayer title, and I would tend to agree.

It’s fair to say, overall, Quake Wars is one of the better online FPS titles we’ve seen in a while. I’d rate it similarly to Battlefield 2142, purely for the team-based interaction and gameplay, but it doesn’t have the “must play, need upgrades” system that Battlefield has nailed. It’s not without its issues, and you can forget about playing against bots in a single-player scenario, but it’s quite clear to see why many people in the online community have begun to refer to Enemy Territory as “Crack Wars” – it’s terribly, terribly addictive.