Reviewed: October 2, 2007
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Activision

Developer
Splash Damage Ltd
id Software

Released: October 2, 2007
Genre: Action
Players: 1-24

9
10
9
10
9.4

System Requirements:

Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars is the ultimate example of just how far the gaming community can go. Created by Splash Damage, under the leadership of Paul Wedgwood who was lead designer for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, and also worked on QUAKE III mods, as well as being a clan leader himself, this latest installment in the QUAKE universe blends all of the multiplayer excellence from those previous games with familiar QUAKE races and events then combines them with all-new tactical elements to create a stunning chapter in the QUAKE saga and introduces some revolutionary new gameplay.

The core gameplay of QUAKE Wars is designed around class-specific gameplay tactics. Whether you choose the GDF or the invading Strogg, you must pick from one of five professions; Soldier, Medic, Engineer, Field Ops, or Covert Ops. The Strogg side has the same professions, only with cooler names like Aggressor, Technician, Constructor, Oppressor, and Infiltrator. Regardless of the names, your duties are pretty much the same, although you’ll have some cool race-specific hardware to get the job done.

Your chosen class dictates the weapons and tools you can use as well as special deployable units like turrets and radar. You can change your class at any time by going into a Limbo screen and picking a new class and default weapon. This change will take place the next time you respawn or you can force the respawn immediately.

Employing an arsenal of weapons, vehicles and deployable armaments, players engage in an action-packed test of skill and coordinated teamwork through a series of combat objectives. Persistent character growth and achievements reward players for teamwork, while clearly defined mission and class objectives guide new players to meaningful contributions on the battlefield. For whatever reason, your personal growth and achievements only follow you for the duration of the current campaign and then they are reset. Not only do you feel slightly cheated when this happens, it hurts the overall incentive to play this game for the purpose of ranking up and unlocking new abilities and toys for future sessions. Just ask anyone who has played the Call of Duty 4 multiplayer beta.

At first glance it would be quite easy to dismiss ET as 'just another multiplayer combat shooter', but once you dig beneath the surface you'll find an engaging and surprisingly complex, tactical shooter ready to challenge you every step of the way. Gameplay in Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars is all about conquering and securing enemy territory and pushing forward, or it can suddenly swap to where you are the defender, forced to hold your team’s front line against the invaders.

Players must work together using their vehicles, deployables, and character class abilities to complete objectives, defend valuable installations, or execute massive assaults. Teamwork has never been more important. Medics will need to scour the battlefield for injured soldiers and get them patched up. This allows the injured player to jump right back into battle rather than respawning at some location back in friendly territory then having to make their way back to the front lines.

I’m a dedicated sniper, but I quickly learned that if you don’t have a spotter, or at least somebody to watch your back while you are focusing through your circular scope, you will likely get killed by the enemy who can easily sneak up on you in this vulnerable situation. Likewise, covert ops and mechanics will need infantry cover while they are repairing equipment or hacking enemy installations.

Sadly, Enemy Territory offers no support for voice chat, which makes coordinating with your teammates virtually impossible. Sure, you have a massive selection of pre-recorded voice commands and status indicators you can choose from a branching tree menu, but who has time to wade through conversation menus in the heat of battle. Voice chat is promised in a forthcoming patch, but it really is something that should have been ready from the launch. As it is, the lack of any real functional chat system will only hurt the team aspects of game design and send people into Lone Wolf mode.

Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars is comprised of 12 massive levels that span the globe, each telling an important part of the QUAKE story and the Strogg invasion of the planet Earth. There are even some subtle plot points that fill in some important historic moments for fans of the original QUAKE titles.

The mission maps are enormous with multiple mission goals, sub-goals, and spawn points. Gameplay is progression-based, so the offensive team is always moving forward through each mission checkpoint while the defending team simply tries to hold them off for the chosen time limit. While the defenders can never retake a mission objective they can retake spawn points forcing the enemy to spawn farther away from their current goal. Opponents can also disable or even destroy each other’s deployable units forcing you to repair or rebuild them.

The levels are designed to encourage the use of all character classes working alone and as a team. You’ll need that engineer to build a bridge but you'll want a soldier nearby to provide cover fire and a medic to heal them as needed. Covert Ops cannot only snipe that Strogg from a half-mile away, he can then disguise himself in Strogg armor. The trick here is that he will also assume that player's nametag, so if that same player spots him after he respawns...well, there might be some explaining to do.

The gameplay is designed to allow players of every skill level to jump into a match and make a sizeable contribution to the overall mission. Every player’s choice of character class, along with their actions play a critical role throughout as they gain rank, upgrade skills and provide specialist abilities necessary for victory.

There is a fantastic system in place to help guide players through the linear mission structure. It helps new gamers adapt very quickly to the complex inner workings of a team-based tactical shooter by generating instant mission goals based on events and the direct actions of others. Just hit M at any time and you'll be told what needs to be done. Whether you choose to do it or merely go off and engage in random combat is up to you.

To help players learn the various tools and how they work with the interactive environments there is an excellent context-sensitive use command that will auto-select the right tool for the job at hand. With so many classes, each with their own weapons and tools, this is a great tool, especially for new gamers.

Each class plays a very specific and integral part of the overall team. Soldiers are the firepower of the team while medics keep the team alive and engineers keep the machines running. Field Ops is in charge of deploying units such as artillery and auto-firing turrets designed to selectively target vehicle and human (or Strogg) targets. Covert Ops can sneak behind enemy lines to recon an area, deploy radar scanners, and even assume an enemy disguise to infiltrate further than any other class.

Every significant action in QUAKE Wars is rewarded with XP, so as you kill the enemy, complete mission goals, or actively perform your support role duties like healing and repair, you'll start to rise through the various ranks and earn top honors on global leaderboards.

Make no mistake about it, Enemy Territory is a multiplayer-only game, either online, over a LAN, or in lieu of human opposition you can recruit some of the best AI-controlled drones the gaming world has ever seen. Programmed by none other than John Dean, creator of the Fritz Bot from Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, the bots were only added to QUAKE Wars with the strict stipulation that they be indistinguishable from human players.

Bots are fully configurable, so you can allow them to actually complete mission objectives or have them serve in supporting roles only. They will act just like human players with occasional friendly fire, complete with an apology before healing you. They'll taunt the enemy, drive vehicles, pilot aircraft, and deploy high-tech weapons. I ended up playing with the bots for about three days before the multiplayer servers came online, so I got some good experience with the AI, and was totally impressed with just how well they perform. It would have been nice to be able to order them around or assign them to specific mission objectives, but more often than not I found them to be as good (and sometimes better) than the people I ended up playing with online.

There is a fun and diverse selection of vehicles for both sides that include ATV's, APC's, tanks, attack choppers, an air transport ship, boats, and in the case of the Strogg, a giant mech robot. Many of these transports have multiple seating slots allowing you to carry passengers who often can man some sort of turret.

There is an incredible level of balance to the gameplay. For every unit and deployable item there is a counter unit to balance the tactical warfare. If the Strogg can setup a turret your covert ops can hack it or disable it with an EMP grenade. There is even a balance of abilities across all the classes and the unique skills that they possess.

You’re going to want a speedy broadband connection to the Internet when it comes time to play Enemy Territory online. I’ve played in matches ranging for 8-on-8 to full 12-on-12 and while there has been some lag at times, I attribute most of this to the fact that I was playing against people overseas who got the game almost a week before it released in the US. The official online matches sponsored by Activision and Splash Damage were flawless. And even when there was minor lag, it only manifested itself as other characters warping a few feet ahead. I “felt” it more since I was sniping most of the time.

Perhaps the single best compliment I can pay Enemy Territory is that it far surpasses HALO 3 in almost every way; visuals, map design, game design, and an overall sense of teamwork, especially once they get the voice chat issue patched. With objective-based missions and class specific agendas for all the players, it is so much easier to get involved with Enemy Territory than it is any other FPS where you merely run (or drive) around jumping and shooting with no real goals other than racking up frags.

The levels are quite huge with objectives set far apart. As long as you have at least eight players it’s pretty easy to stay in the action, and there is usually an ATV or other vehicle that can speed you back to the frontlines if you end up having to respawn further back.

Character models are exquisite, although the GDF come off as all too familiar clones of the soldiers we see in games like GRAW and Rainbow Six. At least each class has a unique look with specific equipment, and the weapons all have distinct models whether you are carrying them or have one slung over your shoulder. The Strogg have far more impressive models, both in originality and complexity of design. I actually got shot once while I was crouched over a fallen Strogg examining the facial textures. No really…I swear…I wasn’t tea bagging!

Vehicles are really impressive when viewed from far away or from within the cockpit. You can control each vehicle from a chase view, and only then do these models start to fall apart in design and textures. I loved the brightly lit cockpits, the map overlay on the dash that matches my mini-map, and sometimes, even my name appears on the dash. Many vehicles have multiple slots for additional passengers, gunners, etc.

Architecture is fairly simple, especially for human structures. Interiors are usually sparsely populated or entirely empty with the exception of perhaps a spawn computer or a random crate. Primary objective locations definitely have more detail in their designs than the incidental buildings between these goals. And once again, the Strogg wins the war for originality for structure design and texture details.

There is an extensive library of prerecorded voices for both GDF and Strogg that you can pick from a menu system. I tried to use them a few times and got killed for my efforts, so I now simply follow my team around and determine what they are trying to do and how best I can support them. Until this game gets voice chat support the teamwork aspect is nearly non-existent. Of course you can always opt for a third-party VOIP option like TeamSpeak.

iD Software continues to piss me off with their core game engine that won’t recognize my 7.1 audio system. If I have my speakers set to 7.1 in Windows Control Panel then I only get 2.0 stereo in the game. This forces me to go out and change my sound settings before and after each session of Enemy Territory, since most of the other games I am playing either support 7.1 natively or just don’t care. I am forced to admit that the surround sound is quite good in Enemy Territory and even helps locating and targeting enemies in these massive 3D environments.

And you can be sure by then there will be expansions and mods to enhance the original experience. After all, this game was created by modders, and they will be making their tools available to the QUAKE community, so Enemy Territory is only the first stage of an evolutionary process of growing game design.

It would probably be a good idea to reiterate the fact that Enemy Territory is designed as an online experience, so if you don’t plan on playing with real people over the Internet your mileage (and satisfaction) may vary. As impressive as they are, the AI bots are merely stand-ins for you to learn the lay of the land and the structure of the missions and objectives. The real gameplay awaits you when you join that first server.

Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars is a revolutionary online experience and a paradigm shift in tactical multiplayer game design. This is the online game that the world has been waiting for, and if your PC isn’t up to the task, or you simply prefer playing your games on the console, Enemy Territory is headed to PS3 and Xbox 360 soon so nobody gets left behind in this fight to save our planet.