Review: Enemy Territory Quake Wars

by Josh Pankratz on October 3, 2007 at 10:13 pm

Oh shit mediocrity is coming, run!

After hearing all the hype over this gritty, class based shooter I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. After all it won the game critics award for best online multiplayer title at E3 2006. Wait 2006? That’s right, This game has been a long time coming after meeting with several set backs that took the game a whole extra year to release.

It is undoubtedly the fast paced nature of the game that sets it far enough apart from other class based games such as Battlefield 2. The high framerate twitch combat is this game’s strongest asset. It really feels like your playing Quake 3 on a much larger scale. After two years since the last Battlefield came out fans of the series are hungry for something new.

The vehicles strewn around the bases are well thought out and visually very appealing. The down side to that is the overly complex controls for some of them. Don’t even try using any of the Aerial vehicles such as the GDF’s Bumblebee or the Apache rip off the Anansi. Also the effectiveness of most of the tanks is questionable at best. Most players opt to play the game on foot.

Every server has the choice of running either campaign or stopwatch, with almost every server running campaign mode. During campaign mode players compete to finish objectives for their respective classes. Aggressors plant bombs to blow up key strategic structures, snipers have to hack data terminals etc. The feel of it is very reminiscent of a single player game. The question is, who asked for story in a multiplayer shooter? I can see what the developer Splash Damage was going for when they put this level of immersion into their game, however the online community that inhabit title’s like these don’t lend themselves well to any sort of narrative.

Like most other games in it’s genre quake wars incorporates a complex ranking system. Players progress through the military ranks by completing objectives and gaining xp. The plus side to this is that it rewards veterans with upgraded weapons. However the downside is it makes jumping into the game for the first time intimidating.

The graphics in ETQW are absolutely stunning, the game is running on an upgraded Doom 3 engine. Players without an 8800GTX graphics card will be happy to know the textures scale down quite nicely to get the level of performance you need. The game runs butter smooth on my year old Radeon 7950 with all the options turned on high. Technical marvel is definitely not Quake War’s short coming, from the eye popping alien Strogg art design to the sweeping landscapes this game is drop dead gorgeous. If I had one complaint it would be the animations just don’t seem to connect the way they should online. Even on low ping servers their seems to be a lot of rubber banding, making kills not feel satisfying.

With so many FPS’s dropping in the first quarter the question is does ETQW stand a chance against Team Fortress 2 or Halo 3? Time will tell, after a few patches they might fix some shortcomings of the game, however I cant recommend it with so many other amazing games out there. I sum up every game I play with the emotions I felt during gameplay. It just felt devoid of anything, I almost would have preferred a bad game to this level of mediocrity. It seems that during production Splash Damage was struggling to find the game’s soul during its lengthy development cycle.