With the release of Quake 4 a couple of years ago, it gave gamers a little taste of what full out war between the humans and the half organic/half cybernetic alien race of the Strogg could be like. Take those small pockets of battle, inject them with a huge dose of steroids and pump them up to immense proportions with different character classes, mission objectives, an awesome array of vehicles and larger than life battle fields and your left with an amazing experience called Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.
The story takes place years before the events of Quake 2 and follows the Strogg invasion of Earth, as they look for food and resources, and humans from every corner of the globe band together in a resilient military force called the GDF, to stop the Strogg from decimating their planet and using its assets for their own gain.
The gameplay may seem pretty straight forward at first. You pick your team, pick your character class, choose your weapon and head out into battle. Quickly you realize that there is much more involved than it seems. Once you find yourself on the enormous battlefield, with tanks and jeeps rolling by, with mission objectives popping up left, right and center and voices barking orders at you to get a move on, it can all seem a little overwhelming and more than a little intimidating. But thankfully, all this is commotion and activity is what makes Quake Wars work—an epic battle each and every time you strap up and hit the front lines. Once the initial “what the hell is going on?!” wears off, you’ll be right in the thick of things playing your part help turn the tide of war, no matter what side you are fighting for. Much like the previous Enemy Territory game, each player has a role to play to ensure victory for their team. If a player tries to go solo and decide he can run and gun his way to victory, he will quickly learn humility and realize it’s not going to happen at all.
Each class has an explicit part to play and teamwork is the stitch that holds the fabric of Quake Wars together. Soldiers need to head to objectives that require charges to be set and engineers need to build defense towers as well as repair vehicles that have taken damage during the fight. Field Ops can call in air strikes and set up artillery while Covert Ops make use of the sniper rifle as well as having the ability to hack enemy computers and assume the identity of the other team. Medics, the life line of every team, can revive the fallen men on the field and hand out health to allies. The Strogg have all the same classes, albeit with different titles, and their talents differ slightly for each one, such as Infiltrators – the Strogg medics – are able to create spawn points from the corpses of fallen GDF soldiers as opposed to the GDF ability to destroy them.
There are three types of gameplay that can be played on or offline: Stopwatch, Objective and the most popular one being Campaign. In this mode, there are three rounds played, each a different city or location. As each round starts, the goals are clearly outlined and will range from stopping the Strogg from destroying or capturing facilities trying to destroy what the Strogg have already created. Although there are many mission objectives though out each fight, just about every battle will eventually end up being a stand and defend or rush and attack in one way or another. Although each battle will start out in a vast and open battleground, many will become enclosed battles as you need to head inside buildings and compounds to achieve certain mission goals.
Since the maps are so large, having to run from one side to the other would take all day. Thankfully there are numerous vehicles on both sides of the war to greatly aid your aching feet for getting you and your team mates from base to battle, not to mention the firepower most of them pack. The Strogg Cyclops is a menacing ‘mech behemoth to fight as is the GDF Titan tank, but vehicles like the four wheeled Husky, although it will get you to the fight faster, is pretty much useless in the actual fight – unless vehicular homicide is your specialty. There is a large variety of vehicles to choose from and they never seem to be in short supply with at least one variety always waiting to be taken into combat. However if you find yourself playing single player with the less than brilliant bots, you may want to make a bee line for a vehicle quick since your team mates don’t care to wait around for you and are off into the closest vehicle in the blink of an eye.
If there is one thing that stands out when you fire up the game initially, it is – providing your computer meets the recommended requirements - the fantastic graphics. The modified DOOM 3 engine delivers gorgeous sceneries and great visual effects, even when you are viewing the battlefield from a distance. For those with computers that aren’t up to snuff, the graphics and extra visual perks can be scaled down to speed up performance, but you will be doing yourself and the game a great disservice if you do this. Even when the fight turns to an indoor skirmish, unlike most large battle type games, the details aren’t skimped on and the inside of buildings look just as good as the outside. With all the diverse battlegrounds you find yourself in, ranging from the desert plains of Africa to the lush mountains and valleys of California, you really do feel engrossed in the game - that is until you run across the in-game advertisements. Seeing a poster for a movie being released this month, or a billboard for a new product a car company is unveiling while you are fighting a futuristic battle can pull you out of the immersion pretty darn quick.
