When the aliens attack the planet, the best way to defeat them could be getting your hands on drivable vehicles and huge outdoor levels rendered with cutting-edge graphics. Hopefully this will be the case with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, the successor to the popular (and free) multiplayer shooter Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. First-person shooters like these have been around for years, but many players have already honed their aiming and dodging skills to blast their enemies on the run. So, many of these games have gotten more specialized and challenging to hold players' interest--specifically, by encouraging players to team up and use smart group tactics (while keeping their fingers on the trigger). And with the new game's huge environments, many drivable vehicles, and distinctive characters, Quake Wars could end up being the most challenging and most rewarding team-based shooter yet.

The planet Earth has been invaded by aliens. Are you a bad enough soldier to rescue the planet Earth?

If you've been following the game since it was announced in 2005, you'll know that it takes place on good old planet Earth, shortly before the events in id Software's 1997 game, Quake II--a first-person shooter about an alien invasion. The extraterrestrials in question, the Strogg, seem hell-bent on conquering new worlds, and they seem to have only two methods: slaughtering their enemies outright, or capturing and reprogramming them into new Strogg soldiers by brainwashing them and grafting robotic limbs onto their bodies (in fact, the grisly process was shown in detail in Raven's and id Software's recent Quake 4). Quake Wars takes place just as the invasion begins on Earth, some 50-60 years in the future, and pits the Strogg against a combined human army known as the EDF, or Earth Defense Force, which is equipped with near-future versions of conventional weapons and vehicles.

The game has been in development for about two years, and in this time, developer Splash Damage (in collaboration with id Software) has not only been able to tweak the technology that powered Doom 3, but it has also been able to really begin bolting together the gameplay. Splash Damage's Paul Wedgwood explains that the new game will expand on the objective-based gameplay of Wolfenstein by putting even more focus on capturing and holding territory. For instance, we were shown a zoomed-out, strategic view of one of the test maps that the developers are currently working on--the map itself was divided into four asymmetrical areas, and according to Wedgwood, the EDF and Strogg would start on opposite sides of the map.

Whereas in Wolfenstein, one team would work together to complete stepwise objectives (like using a bomb to blow up a defensive wall, then infiltrating a barricaded office to retrieve stolen documents, and then heading to a drop zone) while the other team attempted to prevent them, in Quake Wars, players will also work together to complete objectives, but once they're successful, they'll also control the surrounding territory. Having control of the territory will give players a forward base of operations and let them resupply (and respawn if killed off) closer and closer to the enemy's base of operations. Teams will also have mobile command posts (or MCPs) that can be moved up as they capture more territory, and these command posts can be used to call in heavier support--which we'll explain in a bit.

These territories will be linked so that they must be captured in a specific order--this should help drive players to work together to complete a specific objective (rather than goofing off and wandering into completely different areas), and, as Wedgwood suggests, the more-directed gameplay will offer "more fun in co-op than just doing nothing" for new players. Each map will have a completely different layout and will have different objectives based on an actual story that the development team is crafting as a prequel to Quake II. The maps will also all be based on completely different geographic regions of planet Earth, complete with the kind of terrain and ecology you'd expect. The map we had a chance to see in action was a temperate, mountainous area with a deep river running through it, and it was full of thick forests that could have come right out of an area near the Rocky Mountains of the United States, such as Colorado.

You can get an idea of what your teammates are doing at a glance, instead of pulling up a menu. Probably a good thing in this situation.

Once we had a chance to take a look around the map, we were then shown some of the actual character classes in action, such as the EDF medic class, which will be outfitted in medium body armor and which will carry large, conspicuous stimpacks on their backs that will be visibly depleted when the medics tend to a wounded ally. id Software's Kevin Cloud explained to us that the team decided to take advantage of Quake Wars' powerful graphics engine to create characters that are not only highly detailed, but who also offer very clear visual cues. For instance, even though the medic character's body and clothing are detailed right down to the last cloth crease, characters will also lower their weapons and be unable to fire while sprinting, and they'll have very obvious reload animations. The idea behind sweating these details is not only to make the game look good, but also to make sure that players are distracted as little as possible from the action.