Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1535 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: ACTIVISION
• Released on: 2007-09-28
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Platform: Windows XP

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The release of Battlefield 1942 for the PC in 2002 was a milestone for online gaming, creating a highly popular middle ground between traditional first person shooters and massively multiplayer online games. Like Battlefield this new game is essentially online-only, featuring huge battles between opposing forces of humans and aliens, with each side possessing a completely different set of vehicles and weapons.

Although it’s set in the Quake universe the connections to the other games are not important. As you might imagine the overarching plotline is not the going to be winning any literary awards either, but actually the game is much better at telling a story than many of its contemporaries. Instead of just capturing flags or anonymous control points all of the game’s levels have a very complex series of interconnected objectives. For example, you might be assaulting a based requiring you to first bridge a gorge, then knock out anti-aircraft batteries, before taking down the base’s shield generators. Character classes are just as involved, with engineers, field ops and the rest all having a very different range of weapons and equipment. As complex as all that sound though you can still choose to ignore it all entirely and just play as a soldier and run around shooting bad guys.

Although developed by British team Splash Damage this includes the latest in graphical technobabble from original Quake creators iD Software, in the form of MegaTextures. The idea is that texture patterns are never repeated and there’s no fogging or pop-up at all. Whatever the technology used though the game is hugely impressive to look at and after the mild disappointment of Battlefield 2142 looks certain to become the next big thing in online PC gaming.
HARRISON DENT

Manufacturer's Description
Serving as the prequel to id Software's legendary QUAKE II, Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars is the ultimate online team and objective-based multiplayer experience. Set within the epic QUAKE universe in the year 2065, the game pits the Allied troops of the Global Defense Force (GDF) against a new Axis of Evil the barbaric and technologically advanced Strogg - during their initial invasion of Earth.

Gamers choose to play as Human or Strogg in one of five unique character classes. Employing an arsenal of weapons, vehicles and deployable armaments, players engage in an action-packed test of skill and coordinated teamwork through a series of combat objectives. Persistent character growth and achievements reward players for teamwork, while clearly defined mission and class objectives guide new players to meaningful contributions on the battlefield.

In development at Splash Damage, co-creators of the award winning Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, and in conjunction with id Software, Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars employs id Software's new MegaTexture graphics technology, delivering large outdoor battlefields of unrivalled detail. These life-like recreations of real-world environments are designed specifically for objective-based team combat and include realistic terrain, lighting, special effects and atmospheric conditions.

KEY FEATURES:
Team-Based, Strategic Missions
Gameplay in Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars is all about conquering and securing enemy territory, and pushing forward or holding your team's front line. Players must work together using their vehicles, deployables, and character class abilities to complete objectives, defend valuable installations, or execute massive assaults. The gameplay is designed to allow players of every skill level to jump into a match and make a sizeable contribution to the overall mission. Every player's choice of character class, along with their actions play a critical role throughout as they gain rank, upgrade skills and provide specialist abilities necessary for victory.

Unique Teams and Character Classes
With asymmetric gameplay, the characters of both the GDF and the Strogg look, move, and behave uniquely. Bases, characters, vehicles and weapons demonstrate the different technologies and behaviour of each side and require distinctive approaches to combat from each player. For example, a GDF Medic can heal and quickly revive injured or fallen soldiers on the field, while the Strogg Technician may use a GDF corpse as a host body for a waiting Strogg reinforcement. Similarly, the GDF Field Ops will deploy and call-in a laser-guided strategic strike missile, while the Strogg Opressor peppers a GDF convoy with his Plasma Mortar. Players can choose one of five character classes unique to each force, including the GDF's Soldier, Field Ops, Engineer, Covert Ops and Medic, or the Strogg's Aggressor, Opressor, Constructor, Infiltrator, and Technician.

Weapons, Vehicles, Deployables
The weapons, vehicles and deployables in Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars are much more than standard issue equipment. Each selection truly affects gameplay and is integral to a team's success or failure. Set in the relative near future, the Human arsenal is based on ultramodern updates to today's conventional Earth arsenal, while the Strogg utilize a more advanced technology suitable for conquering vastly different alien worlds. The GDF use weapons, and vehicles such as machine guns, rocket launchers, armoured personnel carriers, and hover-copters, among others. Conversely, the Strogg's technology is built on the manipulation of energy and gravity and includes assets like the Hyper Blaster, Lightening Gun, a giant mech-walker, a hover tank, vertical take-off and landing Hornet, and more. Players will also utilize unique strategic assets like radar, auto targeting anti-personnel or vehicle turrets, artillery or strategic strike missiles all of which are realistically deployed onto the battlefield when and where you choose.

Ground-Breaking Technology
Using id Software's new MegaTexture rendering technology, Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars renders large, highly detailed and un-tiled outdoor environments all the way to the horizon. Outdoor dynamic lighting allows for every battle to be fought during day or night, with accurate simulation of shadows, atmosphere, vegetation, and weather. Advanced real-time physics, and all new network code support large-scale military combat for up to 24 players through real-world locations, including deserts, glaciers, mountains, and countryside.

Customer Reviews

Half the reviewers here have never played the game!
I've heard people say "turned into Quake 3 death match with vehicles", rubbish.

I played the demo for an hour didn't like it, it was only when I read the manual and had another go whilst off work with flu that I realised what I was supposed to be doing. Here lies ET QW's main flaw (from a marketing point of view at least): it's quite complicated for a shooter; and it's quite different to most shooters so it's not immediately obvious how the game works. Hence some of the unjustifiably bad reviews on here.

Unlike BF2142 (to which it is often wrongly compared, the games are nothing like each other, though there are some similarities in the graphics) this is no 'team death match with flags'. Each game has a time limit, during which one team must strive to complete a series of objectives whilst the other attempts to thwart their efforts.

Players can choose to be one of 5 classes, each comes with a selection of weapons (e.g. the soldier can be either a heavy machine gun or rocket launcher guy depending on the selection you make before spawning). Classes for each of the game's sides are subtlely different, e.g. GDF medics can revive players instantly with shock paddles whereas the Strogg take several seconds (but the Strogg get to create 'spawn hosts' from the corpses of their fallen enemies, allowing players to respawn mid-battle field).

Similarly, the vehicles used by the two are far from identical e.g. the strogg have the 'icarus', a sort of jetpac type thing, where GDF have high speed quad bikes.

As a game progresses players earn experience by completing missions (these can be anything from the game's main mission objectives, such as driving/escorting a mobile command base to it's destination, to repairing vehicles, constructing defensive turrets or blowing up troublesome barriers). Experience is earned in several categories (e.g. vehicles, light weapons) depending on a player's actions. As they earn experience their abilities in each of these fields increase, e.g. weapon magazine size increases or the player can call for vehicle drops in the field. This is all enhanced by 'campaign mode' where groups of three maps are played and each player carries over rewards from one map to another.

Much criticized is the lack of VOIP support*, in its place is a plethora of 'prerecorded' messages that can be selected using an easy to access menu system. The advantage of this system is that anyone can use it with or without a microphone, it doesn't clog up your bandwidth with voice data and it allows you to communicate with anyone, independent of language skills. The disadvantages, of course, are that selecting an item from a menu isn't as quick as using voice and that even though there are quite a number of well thought out phrases to select from they aren't going to cope with every situation (e.g. there's no "he's over there behind the second anti-vehicle turret, watch out he has a rocket launcher"). Still, all in all it works well.

Anyhoo that's pretty much it, the two sides spawn repeatedly and charge towards the current crunch point(s), shoot at each other and duke it out until either one of them completes all the required objectives or the timer runs out. Oh, and it's all quite good fun! Hope that helps

Not for everyone perhaps, some people just don't 'get it' and games are long (1/2hr+). I'd recommend you try the demo before you buy. Bizarrely, the excellent tutorial videos that shipped with the alpha of the game were pulled from the final product. They're worth watching, search youtube for 'quake wars tutorial' and you'll find them.

Take the time to work it all out and, like me, you might just end up hooked!

*VOIP coming in the V1.2 patch!

A 4 on the Richter scale
ET:QW brings the long-lived "Quake" series up to date, blending the Quake universe with the latest innovations from the FPS genre. Cynics could say that it draws heavily from EA's "Battlefield" series, which has revitalised the FPS shooter by incorporating team-based objectives and realistic weaponry modelling, but ET:QW leans much more towards playability in the old Quake stylee.
The early "Quake" series were individualistic blasters - he who kills most, wins. ET:QW is a different kettle of fish - the snipers camping on the cliffs, picking off unsuspecting victims will be surprised when their team loses the round despite their body count. This time, it's all about working as a team to fulfill missions and sieze objectives - from destroying vehicles, to seizing strategic points and demolishing enemy technology. Vehicles make their first appearance in the Quake series, with tanks, jeeps and aircraft dominating the battlefield. Clearly, Battlefield 2 has been a huge influence here, but QW makes a number of critical changes that make the game more accessible - vehicles can be taken out much more easily, and the actual first-person-shooter element is key to the capture of a number of objectives, rather than a brief interlude between vehicles.
The game pits the original rival civilisations of the human Global Defence Force against the alien zombie-like Strogg, whose superior technology is backing up their invasion of Earth and features in many of the mission objectives. The weaponry and talents of the two sides are subtley different, making for challenging play to exploit each side's strengths and weaknesses. Obviously it's designed for a powerful PC with a broadband connection to support the online multiplayer mode - anything else is just an accessory. One of its key selling-points is the developer's new "megatexture" technology to add miles of beautifully-textured non-repeating terrain to the many different scenarios across the world, from the west coast of the USA to the Lake District, all packed with superbly detailed outdoor and indoor battlegrounds.
At its best, ET:QW is superbly accessible - you can play as a simple foot-soldier blasting away, or as a variety of mission specialists with different weaponry and talents that need to be called into play. A series of missions might require soldiers to blow up machinery (like Counter-Strike's terrorists), then bring in engineers to deploy their own, whilst medics back up the team & infiltrators sneak behind enemy lines to stall their advance. There's actually quite a learning curve to understand how it all works, and it will be a long while before a player has mastered the classes, talents and vehicles - an experience-point ranking system unlocks further weapons and upgrades for the keen online player.
Play can be progressive and frantic, but many of the early maps are actually quite small in area and focus on choke-points in classic attack/defend mode. Some of the maps are actually very difficult to play as the aggressor side, as the objective is right next to an enemy spawn point, meaning a constant supply of defenders and very rare victories. Whilst it's not quite as frustrating as BF2, the game loses some appeal when maps are focused on a single objective behind numerous choke-points, which mean repeated deaths and the same walk from the spawn point to choke-point over and over again. It's not like this on every map, but there's clearly room for development on some of the first-release ones. There are minor niggles like the countdown to respawn, which insists on a space bar press to choose to respawn, rather than a choice to wait for a medic, which would have been more logical & can lead to frustration as you realise you've forgotten to press the key again & must wait another 20 seconds to play again.
Perhaps the only major frustration I came across was the feeling that I'd been here before - perhaps this is the reason it's easy to pick-up and play. The class-based choice of player, vehicles and aircraft, artillery, objective-based mission system and experience-based upgrades could have been lifted straight from Battlefield 2. Despite the wait for this title, much of its innovations are actually things we've pretty-much seen before, with the death-metal Quake imagery bolted on top. However, it remains more balanced and playable than its predecessors, without too much vehicle dominance and the classic "Quake" frenetic blasting left intact.

Outstanding MP-Shooter with Teamplay
This is a great game! After playing about 80 hours I am still fascinated.

1: ETQW t is already quite mature developed. Im not feeling exploited as a beta-tester - how it happens so often these days. In other words: this is no EA game. Still - of course - there are some minor balancing issues. However Patch 1.2 already adressed a lot of them. Mapdesign and graphics are really up to date and not too hardware consuming - considering speed of the game, map sizes and number of players (usually 12 vs 12).

2: It is a fast and somewhat complex MP-Shooter. The factions and their units are completely different from each other. It takes some time to fully understand all features of all classes and to use them efficiently. There are 5 classes on each side. 3 classes can accomplish mission tasks (construct, place bombs (resp. disarm), hack). The other 2 classes fulfill supporting tasks (medic, artillery).

For example the medic of the GDF can revive instantly. The Strogg Medic needs some seconds to revive. But in exchange the Strogg Medic can create spawn hosts which allows team mates to respawn directly in the field - which can be crucial. In addition the Strogg medic provides health + ammunition (stroyent), while the GDF medic indoor only provides health packs and need to be completed by a field op who provides the ammunition. However outdoor the GDF medic can call supply crates which provide both...

Those differences go through all classes and really make that game a long lasting amazing experience. I still learn about features I wasn't aware of.

3. Teamplay is important to fully experience what the game offers. You need medics for support, you need someone who places a radar, so who takes out flying units, so who places anti vehicle and anti personel towers, so who places an artillery intercepter and so who takes out snipers - and of course mates that fulfill the main tasks.

4. There is an inbuild and well thought-out user-to-user interface that allows easy communicaton - also with russian or whatever nationality. Although patch 1.2 added a VOIP system that also works fine.

5. There is an experience system that gives you access to e.g. improved weapons, faster movement with heavy weapons, a health bonus, extra ammunition and so forth. The most frequently played mode is campaign. That is, after 3 maps all rewards will be resettet.

6. There is already a quite active community. I guess many coming from the original ET:RtCW.

Btw: some were irritated by the fact that the game has a frame cap (30 fps). While that is true, it takes only seconds to deactivate that limitation. I play with 60 to 90 fps on mid to high details in 1280x1024, AA deactivated and AF reduced to 4.

My system:

C2D E6300 @ 2,8 Ghz
Geforce 7800 GTX
2 GB DDR2 Ram