Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Review from Oracle, Oracle and Oracle - Wednesday, 16 July 2008 @ 3:41pm

Many of you may remember the name Splash Damage. They were the hit developer for one of the most popular online PC shooters back in 2003/04, Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. The game was free to download and to play online. The game kicked some serious ass! RTCW:ET was focused in the RTCW universe with Axis vs Allies teams which included balanced classes and map objectives. It was such huge hit to the Australian online PC community and I enjoyed the game enough to create a clan (Black Cross) and enter as many tournaments as we could. Some of my best gaming memories are left with this game and to the people I met within it.

I highly respected Splash Damage's gift to create such a brilliant online shooter and to have the balls to make it free, spoiling us gamers. To be honest, I looked up to these guys the same way I look up to Nintendo (EAD Tokyo) or Valve. When ET:QW was first announced back in 2005 just after Battlefield 2's release I was in tears of joy. Splash Damage was going to create another masterpiece... or so I thought.



Before I get stuck into the review I can completely understand why Brett wrote a story about a walrus and some penguins back when he was meant to write about ET:QW on the PC. The game is simply a dud that no one will enjoy playing or reading about and I have proof. There is not a single Australian Xbox Live Player out there playing this game. I have been searching for an entire month to play with an Australian host with a bunch of Australian players and the closest I ever got was two online matches with BrutalGod on a French hosted server, le lag ahoy! To quote Brutal's thoughts ‘This is f-ckin shit'.

This makes the job a little harder for Oracle when the game is focused on online multiplayer. You do have the option to play the game offline with AI and there is also a single player mode which comes with a story but lets be honest.. whose interested in that? Certainly not me, but I got myself drunk enough to go ahead with it. I've done some pretty stupid shit by myself while drunk and this makes it to the top 5. Number 1 was pretending I was an Iron Chef and the main ingredient was Vegemite... let's just say Vegemite and salmon don't mix.

One of the first things you'll notice while booting into the main menu of the game is the loading. Holy shit, I've really gotta get used to long loading screens in this day and age. Once the menu has loaded, 99% of you poor bastards playing this game will click Online Multiplayer. After spending 10 minutes searching for an online room you'll be thrown into either a French or American server (I can't make up my decision who is more of a pain in the ass to play with).



Let's go over the basics. Strogg are the bad ass aliens and GDF are the goodie humans. There are 12 playable maps in four different continents around the world. Each map includes numerous missions which must be completed by either team to win (much like in ET). Missions such as GDF to blow a hole in the wall and Strogg to defend it.. woah! There are vehicles which you are free to jump into and drive around to blow shit up. I couldn't save my own life to fly the helicopter vehicle on the GDF side - that thing is impossible on the 360 controller. The visuals in the game are shocking - Bland textures, yucky character models, crappy fog distance. Even the sound quality is a step down compared to the PC counterpart.

Ahh, that's really it. I'm doing my absolute best to find more things to talk about the game but it kills me every time I realise what Splash Damage have done. It's probably best for me to leave it here. I'm going home... and I'm taking my ball and bat with me.

Summary

If you are a fan of any game with the word ‘Quake’ in it and you’re strongly interested in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars I recommend for you to at least give the PC version a go before considering the 360 or PS3. I’ve been told there is a slightly decent online community for ET:QW which certainly beats no online community for the 360 or PS3. ET:QW had a lot of potential which was lost along the months of delays last year.

Pros

A game you might enjoy if you are living in France or the United States of America.

Cons

Ergh! Another horrible port to add to the 360’s and PS3’s library. Visuals aren’t so pretty, the games frame rate is a joke, sound quality not up to par, boring single player, offline action is painful with stupid AI, no one playing the bloody game in Australia.