Team-Based Run & Gun Action Hits Consoles

By William Barker

In 1942, Thornton Wilder said "My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate -- that's my philosophy."

Needless to say, I applied Wilder's philosophy to the Xbox 360 version of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and it tasted nothing like ice cream.

Disappointed, I torched my car in a symbolic act of defiance aimed at the world's oil companies.

But the why and whither of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is readily apparent. 

It's a first-person shooter with an emphasis on strategy and team work. There's a wide variety of ordnance with which to inflict pain on your enemy (and your teammates if you're so inclined, as 'wacky' Wilder would have been).

Ported from the PC version of the game, there's nothing radically different about the game, which is a bit of shame. New content would have been nice, so if you've played the PC version you may want to try before you buy with the PS3 and Xbox 360 console versions.

Anyway, there are two teams - the evil Strogg who are invading Earth and the human military forces trying to protect it - and each has five different character classes with various abilities, plus team-specific weapons and vehicles.

Based in the Quake universe, it's home to some familiar faces, such as the Strogg alien race, but there's also plenty of new stuff that's been introduced.

While all characters have weapons and can be effectively used to accumulate kills, the character you choose will have a big impact on what you do on the battlefield.

The engineer for instance can repair vehicles and build base defenses like anti-personel turrets, but he is pretty weak and his guns are average.

The Soldier doesn't really have any special abilities, but is fast, strong and can choose from three main weapons; shotgun, assault rifle, rocket launcher.

Of course no team game would be complete without a medic, who will sometimes even heal from death before you get a chance to respawn.

While the intro itself is rather nice, depicting the Strogg space fleet pouring in through a stylised warp gate orbiting Earth, there's not much else in terms of plot.

Though each map has a number of objectives depending on your team - such as destroy the reactor or defend the reactor and open the slip gate or close the slip gate - there's no story tying together the single-player campaign.

But that's not terribly important to Quake Wars, because first and foremost this is a multiplayer game. 

While there is a single player campaign that offers up four continents to wage war across, each covering three levels, the best battles are always had with other humans.

The computer controlled AI isn't bad, but it isn't good either.

Your computer buddies will respond diligently to requests that include 'follow me' and 'need medic' but at times their pathing can be a little suspect, getting them into sometimes fatal situations.

While there are some holes in the AI, I must say that they do perform very well in vehicles. Whenever I grabbed a tank or a vehicle with a secondary weapon and called for a gunner, they were always pretty sharp shooters taking out infantry with zeal.

You can still have a lot of fun in single player mode accomplishing all the map objectives and setting up defenses - there's instant action missions as well as the campaign mode -  but as I said the best games are online or via LAN with 8 vs 8 players.

Online play is one of the easiest ways to get some good hard-fought, ebbing and flowing games going, and after about my third or fourth match I was feeling pretty secure about my online skills. 

The Xbox 360 headset makes team play a lot of fun as you can easily co-ordinate movements and troop surges with your team mates, and because human opponents are usually more cunning and organised you'll need to pay a lot more attention to team play online.

There are some issues with lag when there's a lot of skirmishing in one area of a map which sometimes spoils the fun, but for the most part it's a fairly smooth online experience.

In the single player game you can literally run around solo and rack up kills, but against other humans you won't last long using such tactics.

One of the cooler aspects of this console port (the PC version of Quake Wars came out in late 2007) are the classes. Here's a rundown (thanks Jackal!):

Medic: The medic is not really used for any particular missions, but can heal teammates. If you want to get a large number of points and help out your fellow troopers then this guy is for you. Average weapons make this guy a support unit.

Engineer: This guy is used for repairing things, usually a broken down vehicle or deployable turret. If your mission is to help a vehicle reach a certain position, spawning as an engineer is a wise move. Like the Medic his guns are weak.

Field Ops: These dudes are basically the Sergeant Major's of your team. Although they can only wield an assault rifle, they can re-fuel your team with ammo, call down devastating air strikes and can wipe out heavily fortified outdoor areas with ease.

Covert Ops: This is the Splinter Cell dude of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Covert Ops are used for hacking objectives which render enemy equipment useless. Covert Ops carry either a scoped assault rifle or a sniper rifle which are perfect if you want to camp up in the mountains or canyons of a map, whittling down the enemy ranks from afar. They also have the ability to disguise themselves as the enemy, which is great for infiltrating the enemy base.

Soldier: This character is basically used for blowing stuff up. If there's a bridge or a gate which needs to be blown open then the soldier has “High Explosive Charges” and arming tools ready for the job. The weapons available for the soldier include rocket launcher, heavy duty machine gun and shotgun.

While these are the human GDF classes, the Strogg have differently named classes but they are relatively similar. Their weapons are different in operation but similar in effect and to be honest I think I preferred the Strogg characters.

I particularly liked how you could increase your character's level as well. The more you play a certain character the more powerful they get, with various upgrades increasing your battlefield potency.

It also pays to always have at least one medic and an engineer to heal your team and its equipment during most games.

Speaking of equipment, you can also get violent in a range of cool vehicles, plus there are also a range of turrets that can be deployed on the battlefield.

Level design is pretty good for the most part, with a good range of terrain and multiple tiers to explore. For instance you can head underground through buildings, climb up onto rooftops, or simply burn around in one of the various vehicles.

As well as heavily armed hover tanks, machine gun-toting jeeps, and even airborne units that can rain down fiery hurt from the heavens, the Strogg have the fearsome Cyclops robot. 

This two-legged titan towers over the battlefield bristling with weaponry and glowering with contempt for all living organisms like some sort of armour-plated Dick Cheney.

Some of the maps are pretty big, so having vehicles to streamline transport is a nice touch, and most vehicles are armed as well, which adds another dimension to gunfights.

Graphically the game is solid. From afar the maps look sensational and though the attention to detail isn't mind blowing it's still got a fairly accomplished look and feel. 

There are some low-rent effects, such as some of the explosions, and the character models don't seem to look as good as the PC version. Methinks that Nerve Software may have dropped the ball in the conversion, as there's no new content either.

I did like the HUD though, which displays everything of importance around the edges of the screen, and the map is just a D-pad press away, giving you an overview of how the war progresses.

The controls work well and there's an auto aim function that helps target fast-moving enemies. The button layout is fairly intuitive but compared to using keyboard and mouse it's not as responsive.

While the single-player modes can be a lot of fun, it's the online and LAN games that will keep you coming back for more. 

With a plethora of different characters, weapons, vehicles and turrets peppering the battlefield, the gaming gets pretty frenetic and on it's own, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars on the consoles is a fairly original game.

But there's something missing here, and it's not just split screen play. It feels great at times, and then other times you feel as though the developers took short cuts and didn't fully give the code the love and attention it deserved.

The PC version is a better game, it's as simple as that. And knowing what the game 'could' have been makes it all the more painful...

The controls feel a little iffy compared to some of the other first-person shooters on the consoles, particularly in relation to vehicle operation, and the game speed is too high which tends to make some of the tactical weapons and strategies obsolete.

On the whole however, I'm glad this game has been ported to the consoles as it offers a engaging and somewhat arcadey team-based multiplayer experience. Though it's touted as a strategic team game, it turns out to be an intense, run and gun frag fest. And really, isn't that what the Quake games were all about?

For mine the best bits are the big firefights and conflagrations between vehicles in the air and on the ground, and also the level design and the overall look of the terrain.

There's some nice touches here that give Quake Wars an original flavour, but had Nerve Software put in more effort and rounded off a few sharp edges here and there it would have been a more complete game.

But as Thornton Wilder would say, just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.

Game: Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
System: Xbox 360
Players: 1-16
Online: Yes
Developer: Nevre Software
Distributor: Activision

Rating: 70%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)