Developed by Splash Damage, the London-based team behind the Quake 3 Fortress mod and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars takes the Quake universe into fertile new ground. Finally, one might add, given the lacklustre multiplayer improvements offered in Quake 4 - capture the flag was innovative in 1996, but it’s been over 10 years. At its heart, Quake Wars seemingly has a bit of everything in it. If we dialled the clock back to the 70’s and had a key party where Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Battlefield, Quake, and StarCraft all somehow had a bastard lovechild together, you might end up with Quake Wars. You’d also end up with a lot of embarrassed furtive looks, promises to call, and sudden exits the next morning, but who said creativity was easy?
Quake Wars draws the Team Fortress elements from Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and combines the fast-paced twitch elements of Quake with the vehicular and class complexity of Battlefield. There’s a narrative buried somewhere in there involving alien forces (Strogg) invading the Earth (the Global Defence Force, or GDF), but it’s so heavily based on clichéd archetypes, one doesn’t even need to pay attention to get the gist of it. Apparently neither Splash Damage nor id really considered it that important either – the whole backstory is given in approximately 15 seconds of dialog during the introductory video. And, that’s pretty much it as far as narrative goes.
Shall we dance?
Still, the lack of narrative’s to be expected – this is a multiplayer game, first and foremost. As capture the flag and catchment control has largely been done to death by now through the multiple iterations and permutations of Team Fortress, Battlefield, and every other clone out there, Splash Damage mixed things up a little by introducing defined map objectives and ground structure placement, similar to the mission structures and buildings used in most RTSs including StarCraft. By way of example, in a single map these can involve destroying a jamming tower, constructing a laser to blast into a bunker, then detonating a bioscanner to prevent the human forces from learning Strogg secrets. In achieving these, you’ll fight your way across fields, through cities, and eventually through a lab – these maps are pretty sizable. To provide support and ground control, teams may need to place (and repair) various anti-infantry and anti-vehicle turrets. One team is charged with achieving the objectives in a set timeframe, typically 20 minutes, the other charged with preventing the first team from achieving them, and three of these maps combined in sequence creates a “campaign” for players to fight their way through. Players can also play a single map or opt for a stopwatch match, during which each team takes a turn assaulting, with the team that reaches the objectives the fastest winning. Death is a momentary irritation, as the game uses a rolling respawn cycle to get players back in the mix with minimal penalty.
The game features five classes – Soldiers, Engineers, Medics, Field Ops, and Covert Ops. Unless, of course, you’re the Strogg, in which case you can be the suitably Stroggish Aggressor, Constructor, Technician, Oppressor, and Infiltrator. Each of the classes provides the player with a focus point for support, whether it’s ground assault and vehicle / structure destruction, structure support and repair, selfless healing, long-range death dealing, or field of damage support. While the basic classes are largely the same between both races, enough subtle differences exist in weapon / tool design between the two races to encourage the use of differing strategies. Where the GDF medic can call down supply depots, providing ammo and health refills, the Strogg Technician can create mobile spawn points.
Welcome to boomtown.
With five classes to pick from, a typical game team has at least one of each. And, the team play is really where Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is at. The best player in the world doesn’t have a hope in hell of saving a poor team - you may be the star of the sniper rifle, righteous with a rocket launcher, or ace of the assault rifle, but it all means squat when you don’t have that darn engineer backing you up to detonate the blast doors. Effective battlefield control absolutely requires a good distribution of roles, and to the game’s credit, it doesn’t matter which role you play – all of them are useful. A good medic can transform a relatively ineffective point attack into a rolling tsunami of pain simply by helping teams avoid spawning delays. Field Ops artillery and aerial cover can be the difference between a successful assault and a crushing defeat. And, there’s nothing more satisfying (or frustrating) than the full-map hand of death a good sniper can bring to the fray.
As such, don’t make any mistake – this is a multiplayer game, first and foremost. While there are single player options with the ability to include a large number of bots, the AI is adequate at best. While you won’t see your computer-controlled opponents admiring the daffodils at their feet as you repeatedly shoot at them, nor will you see any deviation from the standard apparently predefined attack paths. In practice, your role as the only human player in single-player mode seems to be to act as a benevolent shepherd, understanding your team’s attack path, identifying bottlenecks, and then opening up the route for them to run-and-gun to the objective. Unfortunately, if the objective’s anything other than “get from point a to point b”, you’re probably going to need to do it yourself. Such is the curse of human creativity, one supposes.
As such, the single player mode provides little other than a practice ground to understand the maps prior to being slaughtered online, which is where the real skill’s at. And, unless you’re well grounded in the technique of twitch, slaughtered is what you’ll be. With a complete dearth of any matchmaking capabilities, finding a public server that’s enjoyable can be an exercise in frustration. If you’re a die-hard Quake fan, this isn’t going to be an issue in the slightest – you’re probably either going to be laughing at the glacial reactions of the newbies or already playing with your clan and not reading this. If, however, you’re used to the comparatively reflective pace of Battlefield or are just new to online battlefieldesque shooters, you’re going to be in for a steep learning curve. One with extensive schooling, so to speak.
Like Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, effective play is rewarded in the form of experience points. These experience points give various in-game bonuses such as the faster running ability, faster target lock-on with a rocket launcher, and the ability to revive someone at full health. Experience accumulates through a variety of mechanics including successful use of class-based skills and various cross-class commonalities (such as dealing and taking damage), and rewards achieved in one map carry through to the next map in the campaign. This can have the effect of encouraging players to stick with one class through an entire campaign, as the higher rewards can only be achieved through sustained use of class-specific skills. However, once the campaign’s over, the fat lady sings and you lose your skills. While there are some persistent rewards available to be collected through play on ranked servers, they only serve as bragging rights for those who achieve them. Justifiable bragging rights, definitely, but still only an ornamental benefit.
Luigi's Mansion really fell apart after the GameCube ...
Overall, the game’s a solid performer. There’s a significant amount of complexity offered between the class and race differences, and every map must be understood in detail in order to play effectively. Locations of machine gun turrets, support points, and paths are key to achieving victory, and without identifying and managing bottlenecks, a more coordinated (but less skilled) team can easily hold off an attacking force with greater individual skills. The regularly scheduled spawn waves combined with the relatively fast gameplay also provides a real sensation of contact pressure – even as you’re taking down the last of an invading force, you’re already expecting the next wave to come through the door. The use of varying objectives also ensures the use of multiple tactical approaches, as a typical campaign will have the teams fight their way through an open field, a narrow bottleneck, a constrained city, and finally a claustrophobic interior.
However, it’s not all good. The graphics, while strong, are uninspired. id’s definitely demonstrated that their engine will scale to deal with outdoor environments, but being honest, it’s fairly boring. Not that that matters so much in the heat of battle, but it still feels so “Quakey”, which, to be fair, may or may not be a good thing. Single colours are the flavour of the day, whether they be green, brown, or white (ice). However, at least there’s more than brown for once. The maps feel like they’ve been designed by a military tactician – there’s none of the organic feel real cities and environments have, and while the benefit of this mechanic-heavy approach is that environments are well tailored to battle situations, the unfortunate side effect is that all the maps feel pretty much the same. There are significant specific differences in layout between them, but after the first few, one starts immediately looking for the designed sniper spot in a given area, simply because one knows there must be one there. The 12 maps, while limited, are probably enough to see your typical player through to an expansion pack. The audio is repetitive, and the lack of an integrated voice chat really hurts the game. Players can still opt for TeamSpeak or other third party solutions, but given the importance of coordinated teamplay, this is a fairly major oversight. The developers have committed to building voice chat into the next patch, but as at release, no such capability exists.
Is this the multiplayer game to buy? That really depends on how you like your games. Team Fortress 2 is fun, arguably more so in the classical sense of the word, and has oodles more artistic charm. However, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars has hypersensitive controls, has real rewards for strong gaming abilities, and has vehicles. If you’re looking for a challenge and want an online multiplayer game that really rewards mastery, you can do far worse than Quake Wars - arguably, it’s one of the best offerings out there in this specific space. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for something that’s a little more casual and less intense while still giving you room to grow, you’re probably better off looking at Team Fortress 2 – the lack of a decent matchmaking capability in Quake Wars combined with a very competitive focus encourages a need for high-performing gameplay. And, if that’s not your bag, this probably isn’t the game for you. At least the Team Fortress 2 guys can laugh at themselves.
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