Last year, at E3 2005, Enemy Territories: Quake Wars was, in my personal opinion, the best game of the show. The trailer shown at their booth was mind blowing with its outstanding graphics and enormous outdoor environments. Taking these attributes and mixing it with the frantic and dynamic action of Enemy Territory: Wolfenstein and characters from the Quake series, Quake Wars is a no-brainer to become one of the next great First Person Shooters. A year and many screenshots later, Quake Wars was available for playing at this years E3 event and I made sure to take full advantage of it. The Activision booth was aglow with screens of carnage and was filled with the sounds of gunfire, explosions and the screams of the soon to be dead as the Strogg and GDF Marines battled it out for map supremacy.

Pulling up a seat in front of the inviting character selection screen, I looked over the classes and decided on which form of death I wanted to deal. Being a GDF Marine, I was given the options of Soldier, Medic, Engineer, Field Ops and Covert Ops. Being that I was in the mood for some bloodshed, Soldier is the class I picked. Loaded up with an assault rifle, grenades and a knife, I set out of the Marine base to cover the engineers that were on their way to the first objective of constructing a bridge to allow the Mobile Command Post to roll out. Staying on foot as other team members hopped in many of the vehicles available, such as 4 wheelers, tanks and machine gun mounted armored carriers. I ran along side them down the dusty road and veered off to the forested area that lined it. Seeing my first Strogg opponent stalking through the bush, making its way to the GDF base, goosebumps ran down my arms as I locked on to him and started to fire short bursts of hot lead into his decayed flesh and robotic shell. Once he had dropped in a lifeless slump and I had checked to make sure he had no friends backing him up, I was pumped and ready to go find others and give my team some back up as they proceeded from objective to objective.

The map that was played was a forested mountain valley with the Strogg base to the far northwest while the GDF base was to the far south east. Players need to complete 4 objectives along their way to the enemy base and the opponent’s need to defend their posts. Being that Quake Wars is a team based game, you aren’t going to get too far trying to be the hero and doing things on your own. Each of the classes on both the Strogg and GDF side has their own unique skills to be exploited. Aside from the usual Medic and Soldier classes, Engineers can deploy defenses, plant mines and fix vehicles. Field Ops are able to call in air strikes, give ammo to other players and deploy artillery and the more interesting class of Covert Ops allows the player to hack enemy computers, disguise themselves as Strogg and have use of a sniper rifle. On the Strogg side the classes are similar with different names. Aggressor and Technician are the Strogg version of Soldier and Medic classes, where as Constructors are the Strogg engineers. Oppressors can call in orbital strikes which fires a giant laser blast from space to your target and Infiltrator which is the Strogg sniper, hacker and has the ability to Stroggify GDF soldiers. Aside from the various abilities of each class, they also have weapons that are specified to each class.

When using weapons just won’t do, you also have the ability to use vehicles. Airships and choppers are available for airborne movement from the GDF base, as well there are heavy tanks, four wheeler ATV’s, hummer type jeeps and personnel carriers to move large groups of soldiers at one time. On the Strogg side, they have some very interesting vehicles to help you kill the humans. Large mech type bots can be used to stomp across the map, firing heavy payloads of destruction at anything in your path. Hover packs allow individual Stroggs to fly high above the action below and drop bombs on anything that happens to be underneath it; where as larger aircraft can deal out more damage but are also bigger targets to GDF artillery cannons and rockets. Spider-like tanks and fast moving ground vehicles can take Stroggs to the action faster and round out the selection of vehicles that can be used.

With the exceptional physics and unmatched magnificence of the DOOM 3 engine, Quake Wars is truly one beautiful game. Visually the game is one of the best out there for all that it is accomplishing and given the enormous outdoor areas that you find yourself fighting in, waging war against either the Strogg or the GDF marines is a blast and a half. The audio is top notch, with announcements loud and clear, gunfire and explosions give you chills and a huge smile on your face. Earning experience and getting promoted based on your performance is a trait of the Enemy Territory and is included in Quake Wars as well. Although there is no release date yet as is the usual modus operandi from games that deal with id Software, Splash Damage is making sure that when Quake Wars is finally released, it will be in a lot of gamers CD drives for a very long time. - Jeff McAllister.