Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (PS3)

Release Date: 30/05/2008
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Summary

Developer:: id Software
Publisher:: Activision

Serving as the prequel to id Software's legendary Quake II, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is the ultimate online team and objective-based experience, delivering a new depth of multiplayer action to next generation consoles. Set within the epic Quake universe in the year 2065, the game pits the Allied troops of the Global Defense Force (GDF) against a sinister new Axis – the marauding, technologically advanced Strogg - during their initial invasion of Earth.

Brand new to the console environment, gamers choose to play offline or online modes as Human or Strogg in one of five unique character classes. 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.

Based on the critically-acclaimed PC game developed by Splash Damage, Nerve Software and Underground have collaborated with id Software to optimize Enemy Territory: Quake Wars for the console environment (Xbox 360 and PS3), creating an intuitive experience that allows console players of every skill level to jump into a match and make a valuable contribution to the overall mission. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars brings id Software's new MegaTexture graphics technology to consoles for the first time, delivering large outdoor battlefields of unrivaled detail.

Features:

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is all about conquering and securing enemy territory, either advancing or holding your team's front line. Players must work together using their vehicles, deployables, and character class abilities to complete objectives, defend valuable installations or execute massive assaults. Whether playing online or in the game's single-player mode, every player's choice of character class and tactical action plays a critical role throughout as they gain rank, upgrade skills and provide specialist skills necessary for victory. Campaign proficiencies, persistent achievements and nearly a thousand stats are tracked to enable players to improve their class abilities, earn ranks and medals and track their progress.
Weapons, Vehicles, Deployables – The weapons, vehicles and deployables in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars are much more than standard issue equipment. Each selection truly affects gameplay and is integral to a team's success or failure. Set in the relative near future, the Human arsenal is based on ultramodern updates to today's conventional Earth armory (i.e. machine guns, rocket launchers, armored personnel carriers, hover-copters, etc.), while the Strogg utilize a more advanced energy and gravity-manipulation technology suitable for conquering vastly different alien worlds (i.e. the HyperBlaster and Lightning Pistol, the giant Cyclops mech-walker, Desecrator hover-tank, the insectoid Tormentor aerial attack craft, etc.). The game's intuitive controls will also allow players to easily utilize unique strategic assets like radar, auto targeting anti-personnel or anti-vehicle turrets, artillery or strategic strike missiles – all of which are realistically deployed onto the battlefield when and where you choose.
Unique Teams and Character Classes – With “asymmetric gameplay,” the characters of both the GDF and the Strogg look, move, and behave uniquely, while advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology provides formidable friends and foes in online and offline play, allowing new players to ease into the game, while intuitively challenging more advanced ones. Bases, characters, vehicles and weapons demonstrate the different technologies and behavior of each side and require distinctive approaches to combat from each player.
Ground-Breaking Technology – Using id Software's new MegaTexture rendering technology, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars renders large, highly-detailed and un-tiled outdoor environments all the way to the horizon, providing a seamless experience that accurately simulates shadows, atmosphere, vegetation and weather for a graphically immersive gaming experience. Advanced real-time physics and all-new network code support large-scale military combat for up to 16 players through real-world locations, including deserts, glaciers, mountains and countryside.

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Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Preview; Author: Iain Thomas ; Published: 29/06/2007

Iain offends plumbers and the Strogg, but probably not Jimmy Carr.

Online first-person shooting is quite popular apparently, and although this won't be the most objective of statements coming from someone like me, who spent the best part of their latter teenage years up to the eyeballs in newly dead (or alternatively, as was usually the case, waiting to respawn) it's easy to see why. Unfortunately, despite new shooters coming along by the metric shedload, very few of them ever stick, with the old classics Counter-Strike, the Battlefield series and the now four year old freebie, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory regularly clocking in more man hours than a stadium full of plumbers at a "How to Add VAT to Everything" conference.

And now the developers of one of the most popular online shooters ever have been let loose on the franchise that for many people, started it all. That's a hell of a pedigree.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is set before the events of Quake II, with the Strogg forces attempting to invade Earth, which is being bravely defended by the Global Defence Initiative (GDF). Stripped down to it's very basics, robbed of any nuance or points of difference, you play a troop on one side attempting to kill the troops on the other and complete an assortment of different objectives across a variety of maps set all over the planet.

It's not quite that simple though (it never is, is it,) now to apply the points of difference. First of all, the teams are not the same. I don't just mean visually either (which, as one team is a human-flesh-wearing, mechanised alien race and the other bears a disturbing resemblance to Jimmy Carr wearing body armour at a paintball event, should be a no-brainer.) No, the teams play very differently to each other as well, yet from what we've seen they maintain the all-important element of balance, as each team has a series of strategies, foils, counter-foils etc open to them at any one time. It's classic rock, paper, scissors gameplay where if the scissors aren't careful they could find themselves on the receiving end of a nasty paper cut.

Classic rock, paper, scissors gameplay where if the scissors aren't careful they could find themselves on the receiving end of a nasty paper cut.

Now for the maps and the objectives. Other online shooters aren’t always that friendly towards new players (newbies, newbs, noobs, n00bs, nubs etc), and team-based games with specific objectives are even less accessible for the nubs, often just dumping you on a team and telling you to capture some distant arrow on your HUD and pointing you in the general direction of the enemy with the gentle advice that getting shot in the face isn't going to win the war. This will inevitably lead to a certain amount of getting shot in the face repeatedly while running in the wrong direction, blowing yourself up, and getting called nasty names by a 13 year old. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars manages to alleviate this very deftly through the mission system.

At all times you will have at least one main objective to complete as a team, be that blowing up a power generator to disable the enemy shields or activating a mining laser to blow the doors off a hangar (blowing something up usually features quite heavily), each map has it's own series of unique objectives. However, with a simple press of the M key, you will be assigned a smaller, more minor mission that is tailored specifically to your character class. For example the GDF Covert Ops class can construct radar towers which will locate and display nearby enemies for you team to see on their compass. Hit M, bring out your placement tool, find a suitable spot, construct radar, job done, mission accomplished.

This simple device makes it really easy for new players to find out exactly what they’re supposed to be doing and be useful to their team with a minimum of headless-chickening. And hopefully avoid the angry 13 year old. That may be too much to hope for though. This is not to say it's been dumbed down at all though. These accessibility features are completely optional, and of course, there is plenty here for the hardcore player as well.

With all this in mind, it's clear that Enemy Territory: Quake Wars has the pedigree, the looks, the accessibility, the depth and the heavy ordnance to be the "next big thing" in online first person shooters. Time, as they say, will tell.

Review by: Iain Thomas
Review Published: 29.06.07

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