The Wargamer

Who doesn't love blowing up evil Cyborgs?

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, the latest and greatest release from id Software, brings the venerable Quake series to a Battlefield 1942 style of teamwork gameplay and objective driven, role-playing game design. When first reading that the Quake series, which traditionally revolved around delicious death match gameplay where I would proceed to pwn my friends with the infamous rail gun, was taking a new turn I was intrigued.

After few glances at screenshots and a read through of the information provided on the official Quake Wars website, I found myself eagerly awaiting the arrival of the demo. One thing that immediately caught my attention was that Quake Wars stands as the official sequel to the popular and, frankly, fantastically done Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Anyone who has played the original Enemy Territory title will undoubtedly see many common threads between the original which took place in an arcade-like WWII setting and Quake Wars.

Speed Shooter

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is fast, but fast with a purpose. It isn't designed to be a hyper-fast game of reflexes but instead focuses on objectives, teamwork, and firepower coordination. Even with this objective-based play, I was surprised by how quickly the action unfolded (and how quickly I could get wasted). The nice part about the quick action is that the respawn wait after being chopped into pieces by a lovely piece of Strogg technology is remarkably short. Like the Battlefield series or its predecessor, players have the option to wait for a life-giving medic to come along revive them while staring at their bleeding avatar or just take the plunge and croak. Those who decided that continuing on with their previous incarnation only have a few seconds of waiting time on average before they are parachuted back into the action. Another nice respawn feature is that as players progress through the battle and complete objectives, additional respawn points pop up throughout the map to make the trip to the front lines as quick as possible (the plethora of vehicles strewn about also helps get players into the action quickly so the drudgery of getting wasted several times in a row without firing a shot is greatly ameliorated).

Gadgets, Jet Packs, and Shotguns

As for the weaponry, its lethality and rate of fire absolutely match the respawn rate and action speed. One thing I can say that pleased me very much was the substantially different weapons both human (known as GDF in the game) and Strogg players had at their disposal. Both sides share the same classes (Sniper, Engineer, et al.), but the nature of their armaments are varied enough so that neither side possesses an unfair advantage but at the same time both sides had a very different feel to how and where their weapons were best used. For instance, the Strogg's sniper has neat little gadgets like a flying drone which the player can manually pilot into a group of unsuspecting soldiers and self-destruct with a deadly blast radius. The GDF sniper, on the other hand, has a small camera that can be deployed anywhere and used as a surveillance device. The player can manually operate the camera to pan around the battlefield and report enemy locations to fellow teammates. Both gadgets are similar in nature but ultimately they serve completely different purposes. Very cool.

The actual weapons themselves don't vary in use nearly as much as the gadgets these futuristic soldiers use, but their look and feel very much compliments the overall philosophy of each side. The names of weapons are also particularly telling of this. The GDF's engineer can carry a standard shotgun, which is fantastically effective in the close quarters battles they frequently get caught in when repairing/destroying a key objective. Similarly, the Strogg engineers (aptly named constructors) carry a "lacerator" equipped with a grenade launcher. Again, the classes are similar in nature and feel, but their means of accomplishing similar objectives are quite different.

Vehicles are another strong point of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Each side has a large array of air, sea, and land vehicles to choose from but just because the player becomes skilled with the GDF tank does not mean its supposed Strogg counterpart will be easy to operate too. Much like the class system, vehicles on one side almost always have a comparable counterpart on the opponent's side, but once again there are several key differences between each. A great example of this is with the simple Husky, a four-wheeled off road vehicle that can really haul out when speed is essential. These little bundles of joy are very common since they aren't equipped with any weapons and generally just serve the purpose of getting an isolated player back to the action as soon as possible. The Strogg counterpart to the Husky, however, is substantially different. The Icarus is a "wearable vehicle" that functions a lot like a futuristic jet pack. The Icarus allows the Strogg player operating it to fly around the map and clear almost any structure or land feature with ease. Additionally, the Icarus has a grenade launcher which packs a nasty little punch, especially when catching groups of enemy infantry by surprise. The Icarus is decidedly more useful than the Husky but both vehicles effectively serve the same purpose. One might wonder if the Icarus possesses so many more features than the simple Husky, that the two vehicles aren't necessarily "balanced" from a gameplay perspective. This may be true, but given that there are relatively few Icaruses available when compared to the Husky, and the fact that the Icarus pretty much always makes you a prime target for small arms fire (zipping around in the air during a battle has a nasty attention-grabbing quality to it), Icarus pilots will have to be quite wary of where and when they use the vehicle's advantage or they'll end up a burning pile of wreckage in no time.