Enemy Territory: Quake Wars PC Review
After playing its beta we were extremely impressed with id’s latest offering to the FPS table. Only a series of braindead decisions, tweaks and maps could really mess up their final release. With a sigh of relief I can honestly say that the QuakeWars: Enemy Territory you will find on the shelves is a very sturdy package, holding together a wealth of diverse classes, vehicles and gadgets in mission-based gameplay executed to perfection.
If you are looking for something novel and fancy, you’ve chosen the wrong shooter. Quake Wars uses the objective-based play that went down well in the freeware Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and includes elements from other successful multiplayer FPS’s, Battlefield included. Instead of the Allies vs Axis scenario found in the original Enemy Territory, its basically humans vs aliens, as the Global Defense Force struggles to protect key structures of Earth from the invading Strogg. Quake fans will be able to place the storyline of the game within its context, but for most of this online shooter it becomes irrelevant.
In this past week, whenever I dropped QW:ET into casual conversation (as you do), fellow-gamers would reply, “Oh you mean the Battlefield-type one”. Yes, it does have much in common with the BF series: team-driven play, vehicles, large maps, persistent stats, and character classes. Except what developers Splash Damage have managed to do successfully is to add their own unique spin on these elements to create something which is far from a simple hybrid.
Take for example, the character classes. Players are likely to approach the seemingly-generic assault, medic, engineer, sniper and special ops divisions with familiarity, but after spending decent time with each, will realize how different they are from previous incarnations. Unique abilities give these classes, and the resulting gameplay, more depth. For example a GDF Covert Ops (somewhat a sniper equivalent) and Strogg Infiltrators both have the handy ability to assume the identity of a downed enemies to get behind enemy lines.
Units on both sides also have a wealth of deployable structures, such as turrets, artillery and missile strikes. These are spread out across two character classes, one controlling defensive, and the other offensive deployables. These become essential when the action is outdoors.
The inherent dissimilarities between human and alien also creates the much touted “asymmetric gameplay”. Evidently much more than a marketing buzzword, this means that besides looking and feeling different, equivalent Strogg and human classes also possess different abilities. While GDF Medics can use medi-packs to heal teammates and defibrillators to revive them, the Strogg Technicians carry no medi-packs and can turn unconscious GDF corpses into Strogg teammates. And because their weapons run primarily on energy, all Strogg units never run out of ammo or require ammo packs like the GDF.
With the alien Strogg possessing understandably powerful attributes, you would expect it to be a pretty one-sided affair. Yet the gameplay has been tweaked to a fine balance, with every side’s weakness complemented with another strength. A few minor kinks remain from the beta however, with the Strogg railgun completely blowing the GDF’s sniper rifle out of the water in terms of accuracy and power.
From your first spawn in the game you may find yourself confronted with a bunch of esoteric symbols and messages communicating your teams objectives and status. While this may serve to intimidate some noobs, the icon system quickly proves itself intuitive, easy to use, and does well in being unintrusive to gameplay. You soon learn that each side shares a primary objective, necessary for progress to the next objective on the map. These include things like taking out enemy radar and blowing up gates to gain access to enemy territory. Secondary objectives constantly shift, and are relevant to which class you are playing – such as repairing vehicles or structures if you are engineer.
The end result of this objective-based gameplay is incredibly concentrated action, around a particular point on the map. Since this is where all the action is, players are by default required to dish out some degree of teamwork, as going lone-wolf will only result in dying quickly or wasting your own time. There is also a sense of progression being made, as there becomes more meaning involved in every battle, rather than the pointless capturing of control points. And while I’ve experienced many nail-biting BF battles with a ticket margin in single figures, they’re somewhat different to a Quakewars scenario where your engineers manage to hack a mission objective within the final seconds of play.
Another thing I loved about this game was that despite having many nifty devices and vehicles at your disposal, the action was grounded at an infantry level. Sure, there is much strategizing, building anti infantry/vehicle turrets and launching artillery attacks, but solid run-and-shoot action seems to subserve all of this. Not to mention the vehicles in Quake Wars, which, despite possessing a good feel and look, lack the certain oomph you would expect from them – the meanest of all heavy units can be taken down by a rocket or two. So unlike games like Battlefield where players run for vehicles and aircraft, idly waiting for their respawns, Quakewars encourages you to run bravely on foot into battle. Besides, there are many mission objectives where aircraft or vehicle access simply is not possible.
Quakewars’ ranking and XP system is seamlessly integrated with all the action. While you continue to play, you will earn medals and persistent ranks, provided you are playing on ranked servers. Other in-game rewards exist, such as new weapons and boosts to abilities such as sprinting), but they will disappear as soon as your 3-map campaign has ended. As similar reward systems become the norm in online shooters, there is always a looming potential for gameplay to be compromised: players may abandon teammates while trying to achieve some ridiculous reward like surviving a 50-foot jump. This was generally not the case in my online experience with QW, although a couple of times a teammate seemingly striving for a medic medal revived me when I was instead wishing to respawn.
It’s times like this when communication is essential. And bafflingly, Quakewars has provided us with no integrated VoIP support whatsoever. This was an issue unresolved from the beta version (despite many beta players demanding it), so whether or not it comes about in a forthcoming patch remains hazy at best. Those without Teamspeak will have to deal with pre-recorded voice commands – once you’ve got them memorized its not so bad, but having to press a 3 key sequence to simply spot an enemy unit can mean a quick end to your life.
Visually, QuakeWars does not disappoint. The character modeling shows incredible attention to detail - you might be able to spot and even read the text on a GDF soldier’s helmet visor HUD. And the Strogg just look downright badass. What may detract from their presentation are the relatively slapdash character animations that they exhibit – however you’re probably back into the action before you have time to even notice it.
You’ll find the vast open environments of the game a treat. Their size also works well with the game – because play revolves around several focal points, its hard to get lost and have to wander across miles of terrain. There’s no fogging to interfere with your sniping, and the view of the world around you is as clear as day. But this has its downside though, because you’re then able to make out the sparseness of some of the game’s 12 maps. You’ll also notice the environments in QW possess very little vegetation, much to the disappointment of snipers. A couple are also a little dull in terms of structures to run around, and there isn’t much in their presentation to suggest that this is a war-torn futuristic world we’re fighting in. Most of the buildings are largely intact, and there’s no rubble and ruined objects to be found. You could explain this away by saying that the Strogg have not yet invaded Earth, but will probably tear it apart once they do.
Overall, the pace of play is very fast. You are always spawned close to the action, but usually in a safe place. And apart from firefights ending very quickly, tasks like deploying turrets happens in a matter of seconds. However, this never becomes overwhelming because gameplay progresses very smoothly. So even if you start off being killed frequently, within a few rounds your skills should have the chance to develop quickly because you are always given many chances to take part in the action.
The core of Quake Wars – team based gameplay focused around objectives, allows the game and its combat to flow incredibly well. If you add into the mix persistent statistics, you get an online shooter with loads of replayability, as players can strive for something more than in-game objectives. Sure, these elements have all been done before, but in my opinion, have never come together in as tight a package as this. This consolidation represents the next logical step for the genre, and as such, most FPS veterans should give it a shot. It may appear tougher for novices, but given a few persistent hours they should find themselves won over. The lack of integrated VoIP support and untapped visual potential are the main factors bringing this solid package down to a 87/100 rating.
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