Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
Preview
Will it live up to it's PC counterpart?
by Liquid306
previewed on X360
Multi player
The core gameplay of most games like this is that you spawn, run to a vehicle and kill off as many guys that are red in your crosshair as possible. Quake Wars has taken a bit more of a team focused direction with their online community. Every person on every team has, besides the main team objective, their own objectives when they start. These objectives are created on the fly and suit what class you have chosen to spawn in. So if you are an Engineer, you may get an objective to fix a vehicle or set up your base defences. If you are a Medic and one of your team mates dies, you will get an objective to go heal that team mate. All of these objectives offer experience points upon completion. These points are there for you to unlock things within each class and offer stat buffs and bonuses.
You can go in and play a single map, in-out and you’re done. There is also an option for you to play a campaign online consisting of three maps back to back. When doing so you keep your experience across the three games, but after the third the score is set to zero so new players won’t get overwhelmed by super ranked up opponents. This helps keep the game fresh and can rotate players throughout each map making the gameplay not so mundane.
Console Specific
This all sounds great but what’s new for this Xbox 360 port? Well, the developers are trying to keep it as similar as possible to its PC sibling. However they are completely redoing the online matchmaking system. All the messy work of picking a host for the game and finding friends or bots to join is all done behind the scenes now. It is as easy as meeting up in a lobby with friends and pressing a button; the game does the rest.
Let the Games Begin
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars seems to be making the move to the 360 in the right way. We have seen messy ports before but that’s not id Software’s style. They have said the game is going to be released "when it’s done" and that’s very much a good thing. With all the maps, vehicles, classes, MegaTexture technology and all the other do-dads and whistles, this baby needs time to cook before it is ready. If it’s half as good as its PC counter part, I’m in, but from the looks of things it’s going to be much better. Get ready to battle Strogg and GDF when it hits stores sometime in 08.
