Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
Preview
An online team shooter ratcheted up to the next level with incredible visuals and immersive objectives
by CrazyCanuck
previewed on PC
Let the battle begin!
Each army in the conflict offers a unique experience with their own weapons, vehicles and abilities. Choosing to fight as a human in the Global Defense Force allows for the selection of a variety of roles. "Soldiers" carry the heavy weapons, "Field Ops" call in air strikes and deploy ammo and artillery, "Medics" tend to the wounded and "Covert Ops" scout, snipe, hack and even infiltrate the opposing force while in disguise.
The alien Strogg, on the other-hand, offer "Aggressors" who assault with heavy weapons, "Oppressors" who deploy weapons and call in orbital strikes and "Technicians" whose role is to care for fallen Strogg. The "Infiltrators" deploy radar, sabotage and snipe and the "Constructors" class is responsible for planting mines and releasing defensive weaponry.
One of the things that separates ET: Quake Wars from similar team-based first-person shooters are the wide array of options it presents. Offering an array of land, sea and air vehicles, each with multiple mounting positions, allows for a large amount of flexibility among your team in your quest to complete your goals. And speaking of goals, gamers are presented with very deep, objective-based multiplayer missions. Individual assignments as well as group objectives will result in your character gaining in rank as they progress over overarching campaigns composed of linked missions. The combat is focused on your typical construct, destroy and capture pursuits but the sheer open-endedness of the game allows for almost limitless strategic options and tactics.
The maps themselves will be quite large and offer diverse terrain to travel by foot, land/watercraft as well as by air. id's MegaTexture technology makes each area of the map unique with each play which will definitely add variety to each area. One of the maps that we've seen (entitled "Ark") includes a research facility lodged deep within the icy Arctic. With both land and water access, the fortress is a formidable goal and appears to be representative of what the game will bestow upon us.
Final Thoughts
Originally I had concerns over whether the DOOM 3 engine could handle environments other than tight, enclosed corridors and settings but from what I've seen so far of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars completely dispels those fears. The environments look amazing and the character and vehicle movement appear to be realistic and fluid. An announcement this summer pushed the game's release back to 2007 to allow for additional testing and balancing which is disappointing, but if the end-result is an even more polished and complete game then the wait will be worth it. It remains to be seen whether Enemy Territory: Quake Wars can dethrone Battlefield for online team shooter supremacy, but with its id Software lineage and incredibly deep objectives I wouldn't bet against it.
