Thursday 31 Jul 2008

From start-up, you’re presented with a loading bar, leading to a (pleasant looking) pre-rendered cinematic, explaining Earth’s current plight as they’re invaded by the Strogg, an alien race constructed from other alien races. This is the only real bit of exposition you’ll get and the only reason given to care about defending - or invading - Earth. The rest of the story is left to ‘emergent storytelling,’ the latest buzz words, especially in the arenas of online gaming, as players tell their own stories of how they accomplished a mission, or the funny way another player met their demise.

In this squad-based multiplayer first person shooter, players choose a side - either the alien Strogg or the human GDF - and set off with their team mates to complete a set of objectives within a time-limit, with each team’s objective trying to counter that of the other; the GDF may be trying to build a bridge while the Strogg are trying to stop the bridge being built. The GDF may be trying to get their mobile command centre to a strategic location and the Strogg are trying to stop it. This results in the creation of a consistent battle-line being drawn, so conflict is persistent even on large maps, instead of dividing the battle into tiny, tiny skirmishes, sprawled across the level.

The objectives themselves require a specific discipline in order to complete, which is where the class system comes in. Class choices are medic, soldier, field-ops, covert-ops or engineer, each with their own role to play during a given battle. Need explosives planted? The soldier’s your guy. Need something repaired? The engineer can help out. Or maybe you want to be the nice guy and choose the medic, running around reviving and healing everybody, undoing the opposition’s ‘work.’ Success or failure depends on your ability to complete a given set of objectives, so each of the class’s functions become important, tasking players to take a multi-disciplinary approach to each level. Players also need to make sure they have a steady playing hand in order to shoot down enemies, as well as avoid being killed.

Controls, at first, are a little tricky to get used to as there are a large variety of actions and abilities to take advantage of. The map and squad commands are mapped to the directional buttons, the triggers control weapon use while the bumpers cycle through your equipment. This last mechanic is a bit of a chore to get to grips with as you have to cycle through each of your pieces of equipment, from guns, grenades and melee weapons on the right and extra, class-specific tools on the left. Each class’s specific ability, however, is easily carried out with the press (and hold) of a button.

One of the first things you’ll notice as you begin playing is the speed of the game as players run at quite a clip, thankfully never having to stop to ‘catch their breath.’ Despite this, and the provision of vehicles, maps can seem a little too big at times, with no attention being paid to smaller, individual firefights, but rather focusing on larger, open areas. There are indoor areas, but their design is lacking somewhat, limited to winding corridors taking you to objectives and leading to stale ‘shoot or be shot,’ back and forth game play.
Aiming can be choppy as everybody is moving so fast. There is quite a bit of auto-aiming to help you out, but this ends up feeling a little cheap to use. Also, because the maps are so large, trying to get a bead on someone far off in the distance is especially difficult, even with a scope. Again, you can get used to the aiming, but it does show why some multiplayer (and console) shooters are deliberately slow paced, allowing you to aim more easily while concentrating on strategies instead.

Graphically, Quake Wars is competent and can surprise you in some instances with a detailed vehicle here or a technical weapon there. Environments primarily serve to get you from A to B with little real decoration, except for a water puddle or tree to break up the scenery. The fabled MegaTexture technology, allowing the developers to create totally unique ground textures, doesn’t really make an impact here as you’re never able to ‘take in’ your running surface. Pop-up also makes an appearance, ranging from suddenly visible shadows to successively more detailed shrubbery. While it doesn’t affect game play, it can be a little jarring to have more detailed ground textures suddenly materialise from nothing. Also, while you’ll be visiting locations around the world, ranging from North Europe and North America to Africa and the Pacific, all of the environments have a similar look to them and you never feel that you’re in some different, exotic locale.

Your enjoyment of Quake Wars, however, won’t be determined by how fast you can get used to the different classes or controls, or even how good the game looks. Your enjoyment of the game will be determined by how many human players you can rustle up for a few rounds. While the bots provided for the ‘single-player’ campaign do a good job of completing objectives and providing moving targets, playing online with friends (or strangers) will provide the best experience, allowing you to co-ordinate your movement and attacks with ease. Playing with bots just feels dull, which can be remedied with a few human players to mix things up and provide some unpredictability. For this reason, the lack of real support from other players is a little disconcerting. You won’t be buying Quake Wars for the campaign, but for the online multiplayer - if there is none of that to be had, the game’s appeal is dulled significantly. That support, it seems, is indeed lacking in the online community.

The simple fact is that Enemy Territory: Quake Wars has arrived too late, not only on the PC market, but on consoles as well. It’s been released into a world of Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and the latest pretender to the squad-based multiplayer genre, Battlefield: Bad Company. Releasing 2 year ago (the PC version’s original release window) simultaneously on consoles and PC would have dramatically improved its allure, but the market is too crowded for a game that hasn’t really added anything to the mix. Even releasing simultaneously with the PC version, almost a year ago, the console version would have seen a much greater number of players.

For this reason it’s very difficult to recommend Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. In the end, a deep class and objective system can’t really help the game from feeling a little out-dated. It seems the antiquated method of story delivery through a CG cut-scene, offset by an emergent, in-game storytelling technique, is indicative of a game stuck in the past, comprising elements of the present - unfortunately wasted on an uninterested, saturated market.

Pros: Good class and objective system; solid sound effects; good feeling of combat; slick menu system.

Cons: Long loading times; frustrating, run-around firefights; reliant on online game play for full value.

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Contributor:	Oliver

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