Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Having been fully submerged in the wonderfully bright and fun filled world of Team Fortress 2 for a few weeks, it came as something of a shock to boot up Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and find myself back in the cliched world of earnestly macho marines and nasty alien invaders. It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with that familiar setup, and it's not like a game set in the Quake universe had much choice in the matter. But in a post Orange Box world Valve's refreshingly light hearted take on the genre ensures that reverting back to something so generic seems a tad underwhelming, at least to start with.

To make ETQW's job even harder late 2007 is a tough time to be a multiplayer shooter. As well as the aforementioned Team Fortress 2 we've got the eagerly awaited Unreal Tournament 3 just around the corner, not to mention the looming gaming giants called Call of Duty 4 and Crysis. So, it's to ETQW's immense credit that any initial 'ho-hum' feelings are soon shoved roughly into the background as the game's own unique delights start to show themselves.

The Enemy Territory series started life as a free team based multiplayer mod for WWII shooter Return to Castle Wolfenstein called Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. That it's sequel is now a full priced title and the ET branding appears ahead of the fact its now part of the Quake universe goes some way to showing that the original game was something of a success. Now, with not a Nazi to be seen, the action in ETQW shifts to the future to become a prequel-of-sorts to events in Quake II, with the twelve maps focusing on some of the key battles in the Strogg's invasion of earth.

Thankfully, for fans of the original ET, the essence of the game remains unchanged despite the dramatic shift of setting, it's still a team-based FPS, your choice of character class still dramatically changes how you play and both maps and battles are still asymmetric in nature.

There are essentially five classes in ETQW, soldier, engineer, covert ops, medic and field ops. While the Strogg classes may have different names they tend to follow the same broad outlines as the GDF (Us, the friendly Earth defending good guys) ones which help keep things nice and simple. When you pick a class you're given a choice of default weaponry to take into battle as well as some special abilities. These are fully class dependant and range from the basic handing out of medpacks to the far more interesting ability to call in an air strike. Interestingly, the longer you play with any one particular combination of class and weapon you'll start to unlock improved abilities such as faster reload times. These improved abilities can be carried through any of the game's short three map campaigns giving you even more chance to improve your skills. However, your upgrades only last as long as the campaign. This can be frustrating when you revert back to basics next time out, but it does a good job of keeping the action on a level playing field that stops experienced players having a permanent advantage.

Each map plays out with one side cast as the attacking force while the other attempts to defend their territory from the enemy (can you see where the name comes from?). This deliberately unbalanced nature to the fighting gives a very real sense of battling it out right on the front line of a larger war and is a huge part of the appeal, however, there's also an element of frustration involved in this model. Those gamers used to being able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in other games, or are used to frag counts deciding games may be left a little disappointed at times, especially when on the defensive end of the bargain. Playing as the defensive team you're never attempting to 'win' in the traditional sense of the word, you're simply trying not to lose in the given time frame and this very real sense of merely holding off the inevitable will rankle with some players. It's a minor niggle for sure, and slightly unfair since such gameplay is what the core experience is based around, but it's still one you need to ensure you're happy to accept if you're going to get the most out of ETQW.

As you play any of the maps on either side you'll always find you have a variety of constantly updated objectives available to you. These range from defending a particular point for a set amount of time or building a gun turret, to blowing up something or building a bridge and vary depending on the class you're playing. This lends a nice degree of semi-enforced team work to proceedings and stops the action becoming a chaotic free for all. The more objectives you help complete the more XP you earn towards your next unlockable which works as a perfect motivator to play 'in character' and do your prescribed job, thereby helping your team.

Genre fans that enjoy the vehicles in games like the Battlefront series will be pleased to see that motorised transport makes its way into ETQW in a big way. Tanks, jeeps, buggies, choppers, boats and APCs are available for those fighting on the side of the GDF while the Strogg have their own equivalents (like much of the game the two sides are given fundamentally the same basic tools with only subtle differences) plus the added bonus of the Icarus Flightpack (a jet pack to you and I) and the Goliath mech walker.

The otherwise impressive size of the maps unfortunately does help cause one of the only real flaws with the game. The age old problem of spawn camping rears its ugly head, the size of the maps offering a painfully large number of opportunities for snipers to hide while they pick-off opposing players as they re-spawn. There's nothing more frustrating than repeatedly getting killed seconds after spawning by an enemy you can't see and it's a shame that there's not been some more thought put into solving this problem. Increasing frustration isn't helped by the game's spawn-wave system which sees players only spawn every thirty seconds, a system which means potentially twenty nine seconds of thumb twiddling if you're unlucky enough to have just missed the last spawn time when you're killed. While it's a nice idea in theory as it means regular groups of reinforcements for beleaguered troops rather than a slow trickle of individuals it does create a huge potential for mouse throwing anger when you're stuck in a cycle of waiting to re-spawn only to be killed by an invisible sniper seconds later.

Thankfully for newbies and those who want some extra practice you can play the game offline against AI controlled bots. While they never match the feeling of playing with living breathing people they're more than good enough to help you learn the maps and provide a decent grounding in what to expect when you take the game online.

Visually ETQW is a bit of a mixed bag, while the slightly dreary overall art style is forced upon it somewhat by the choice of licence, the opening up of the game world into large scale battlefields gives the engine a chance to show off what it can do. It's these grand vistas that look the nicest and there are some impressive views to be had if you've got the time. Unfortunately, up close things aren't always as pretty, indoor locations are often drab and featureless while some character models lack detail. The trade off is that ETQW doesn't need a monster PC to run at a decent speed with a few options turned off, and since the pace of the game rarely falls below breakneck there's not much time to notice the few graphical weaknesses.

By offering a subtly different, more structured, experience when compared to the brash free for all offered by the likes of Team Fortress 2, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars manages to be much more than the generic 'me-too' title it could so easily have been. It's not perfect, the unbalanced nature of the maps, the spawn camping and a fairly harsh learning curve for newcomers may put off a lot of people, but for those who put the effort in to get past that there's a deeply nuanced shooter to be found.