Written by Jeff Buckland, 10/3/2007
Played on:
Windows
Pentium M 2GHz CPU
2GB DDR2 RAM
GeForce 7800GTX Go
WinXP
Minimum:
2.8GHz CPU
512MB RAM
GF5700 or ATI 9700
WinXP/Vista
It's been a few years now since Quake 4 was released, and about a year since the decidedly average Battlefield 2142 underwhelmed gamers worldwide. id Software and Splash Damage have teamed up to try and deliver not only an online shooter that out-Battlefields BF2142, but also to add another worthy game in the legendary Quake series. The end result is Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, a mostly-online, team-based shooter that offers some unique gameplay and an interesting style.
The most distinct impression one gets when starting to play Quake Wars is that this is a pretty complex game. Unlike the Battlefield series where both teams are essentially working towards identical goals, here, every map has a different story and each team has their own objectives. One defends while another attacks, so on some maps the Strogg will try and defend their advanced technology or advance to exert control over the humans, while on others the GDF are working to capture that technology and defend their own important locations. You'll go around the world in the game's twelve maps, and with enough of a change when you switch sides, even if you just play every map as both sides once, that's quite a bit of playtime right there.
Screwing with bots and scoring headshots
There's no true single player component to Quake Wars, but you can easily set up a match on any of the maps against the game's fairly capable bots. Unlike in the Battlefield games where the bots were pretty much completely braindead, the AI buddies and opponents here can complete all of the game's goals, set up (or tear down) defenses with a decent amount of strategy and skill, and overall do fairly well. They're a good starting point for new players since you can turn the skill level down to Low to learn each new map as it comes. Sometimes you'll see the poor bots stuck or just repeatedly screwing something up, but it is somewhat rare and it's usually only one of them screwing up at any one time.
So while the bots are pretty functional, you will really only get your money's worth out of this game by taking it online as that's where this game really is intended to be played. The botmatches pit 8 on 8 at maximum, but when you start to play online you'll realize that the 12-on-12 matches are actually pretty different. The game officially supports only 24 players on a server at most, but there are already dozens of servers that can hold 32 players. And if you really want to beef up your botmatches, you can install the game on a second computer and set up a dedicated server to run up to 24 bots at once - without eating your main PC's gaming horsepower with bot AI calculations.
Fighting together, for once
It may seem at first glance that any online game of this scale with a maximum of 24 (or even the unofficial 32) players is a real disappointment. But with the way that Quake Wars' objectives work, it's not nearly as bad as it sounds. Unlike in many of the more open team-based shooters, Quake Wars always has a single goal that both teams are working for or against. This creates a "front line" so that ten players are often fighting at almost all times on a 24-player server, and when things line up correctly, just about everyone on the server is in a huge firefight. This is in stark contrast to the way games like the Battlefield series play, where it pays to split up and capture as many points around the whole map at once. Not true here - the fighting often centralizes on one point, with infantry, ground vehicles, and aircraft all converging and duking it out together.
The guys at Splash Damage knew that all this stuff is great, but they also realized that the unique goals for both sides, added complexity of spawn points that change over a map, the distinct abilities for each class, and the totally different set of vehicles and weapons for the GDF and the Strogg are all going to put off new players who might find themselves overwhelmed. The game does include plenty of quick tips both during the gameplay (conveniently, they're not voiced to you and they only pop up at the very top of the screen) and during the loading screens, and players are actually automatically given smaller objectives to complete that may or may not directly advance their team's progress. For example, an Engineer might be given objectives to repair his buddies' turrets and deployables, while a Soldier might be tasked with blowing open an alternate entry point for the enemy base. Even other players, by requesting various things, can dynamically create missions for their teammates. The mission system only goes so far, though, and doesn't fully teach someone all aspects of Quake Wars and at some point people will just have to keep playing in order to learn the game.
Performance-oriented
From a graphics and performance perspective, if you can exceed Quake Wars' minimum specs by at least a little bit, you'll be good. The developers have designed the game to always show the whole map at once if you're outdoors, so there is no "fogging" or other obstruction of the whole battlefield. The frame rate is usually pretty stable, and although some curmudgeonly gamers have chosen to take a stand against the game's cap of 30 frames per second (which can be disabled, but it's complicated and winds up bringing up a couple of small technical problems), I find it's just fine for casual playing. Whether the serious clans take to Quake Wars, I don't know, but the guys at Splash Damage - creators of the very clan-friendly shooter Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory - have included plenty of good tournament features here (including a tourney mode that keeps things a little more even by having two rounds on the same map and switching the teams in between the rounds, and whoever finishes the attacking side's goals with the most time left on the clock are the winners).
