Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Like last year, the PC made a very strong, very respectable showing at E3. Some of the most exciting games on and off the floor were for personal computers only. And certain games were extremely impressive--particularly the highly ambitious and awe-inspiring Supreme Commander from Gas Powered Games and THQ. But it was Enemy Territory: Quake Wars that stole the show on the PC for us.

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Watch Enemy Territory: Quake Wars onstage at GameSpot's E3 booth.

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A common misconception about the PC is that it's a good platform for only a few different kinds of games--online shooters being one of them because of their long history of appearing on the PC and taking advantage of the PC's inherently stronger graphics technology, inherently stronger infrastructure for online games, and many more years of experience on the PC, both for game developers and for players who often look for sophisticated team-based games over the simplistic deathmatch of yesteryear. While we saw plenty of other remarkable PC games in highly varied game genres (Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Spore, Age of Conan, among others), we have to admit that in this case, the best PC game of the show fit that PC mold--it looked fantastic, it played extremely well in multiplayer, and from what we can tell, it built itself on all the success and lessons learned by many different shooters over the years.

PC games get a bad rap for being hard to get into because of their high system requirements and for sometimes not being easy enough to pick up and play. We can't comment on the game's system requirements (which haven't been officially announced), but we can say that Enemy Territory: Quake Wars seemed to somehow split the difference between enjoyable, accessible gameplay and real strategy that rewards skill. This is a very rare combination indeed, and we hope to see more of it in the final game--but what we saw and played at E3 this year helped seal the deal to get Quake Wars the Best PC Game award.

Finalists

Crysis
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
Spore
Supreme Commander