Enemy Territory Quake Wars delivers one of the craziest multiplayer first person shooters out there.
User Rating: 9.5 | Enemy Territory: Quake Wars PC
Back in 2003, you'll remember a freeware multiplayer game called Wolfenstein Enemy Territory that was all the rage. What made it unique was the way the gameplay was focused on completing objectives and not on capturing flags or fragging the crap out of each other. Fast forward to today and id Software with Splash Damage has refined that formula with 2007's Enemy Territory Quake Wars. The story is paper-thin and serves as a prequel to Quake 2 and Quake 4 where in the year 2065 the Strogg has arrived on Earth to harvest a fuel called stroyent, coming into conflict with Humanity's Global Defense Force. It's all pretty irrelevant cause when it comes down to it, you pick a side, choose a class, and shoot the crap out of the enemies face. Now its all a bit more complex then that actually. Each side has 5 character classes: the Soldier/Aggressor, Field Ops/Oppressor, Medic/Technician, Engineer/Constructor, and Covert Ops/Infiltrator. All classes are perfectly balanced. Now I only played the Strogg mostly cause...well, they're cooler but each class has an equivalent ability on the other side, though it's just a different name. Now the gameplay is objective based, so on each map, every class is given a different set of objectives and teamwork is required. For instance, soldier classes might need to defend a certain area in a timeframe or destroy defenses that require explosives. Or, if you're the engineer class, you might need to construct defenses or repair a vehicle. Covert ops classes will need to hack into objectives at an enemy base. This means you can never sit around and do nothing while someone else does the work; you'll always know what to do because it says on the left side of the screen, plain as day. Teamwork is somewhat of a problem unless you're playing with a group of friends because you'll meet a lot of noobies or miscreants that just don't cooperate. However, there's always the LAN option so you can play with friends that you know. The vehicles also deserve special mention. While it seems the Strogg have more powerful vehicles, both sides are balanced and a smart player can easily overpower the other. Both have the standard light vehicles, aerial vehicles, and heavy weapons vehicles. The Strogg also have two special vehicles known as the Icarus and the Cyclops. The Icarus is a light anti-gravity pack that allows you fly short distances and deploy stroyent bombs and the Cyclops is a giant walker with dual plasma cannons. It's slow but powerful but can be easily taken down or disabled by a smart opponent. As for the graphics, the game uses the aging Doom 3 Engine which holds up pretty well. It's been enhanced with a new feature called MegaTexture where each map is just a giant texture to avoid tiling and repetition. Sound is pretty good, weapons have a big kick to them but the Strogg voices are somewhat humorous with the announcer going "10 Earth Minutes Remain!" While most people will still stick to their Battlefield 2 or Battlefield 2142, I must say, Quake Wars is a lot more fun due to the objective based gameplay. As of Patch 1.5, the game is a lot more noob friendly with pop up hints to show you the way. You can also play with AI bots to get a feel for each map and the bots put up a very good fight. Overall, one of the best multiplayer first person shooters out there.
