Enemy Territory

2007/10/05

Those of you who have already played games from the Quake series (and true fans of the first-person shooter genre would not have been able to pass them up) are familiar with the set-up: spawn, die, spawn, die and frag a couple of opponents now and then. Battlefield is the exact opposite; it consists of strategically complex, team-based battles with various classes. Splash Damage tried to combine both of these worlds in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

In Enemy Territory: Quake Wars odious Earth invaders, the Strogg, fight against the Global Defense Force (GDF) on a total of 12 maps, which are subdivided into 4 campaigns with 3 missions apiece. On each of these 12 maps there are an attacking team and a defending team. The attacking team starts in a relatively small area and must fight its way across enemy lines. Thus, for example, you must build a bridge so that your portable missile launcher can drive over it, or a hacker has to sabotage the opponent’s equipment. The territory and the spawning point are moved slightly forward, as soon as the attacking group reaches their mission goal, or more precisely, moves into former “enemy territory”.

Obviously the classes have not changed since we previewed the game last week. Therefore, we are presenting them in the same format, for all those who missed them the first time:

Both teams have the same class categories, although some of the category names for Stroggs are different. The Soldier class comes equipped with a machine gun, rocket launcher, shotgun, or a mini-gun. In addition to his ability as the best “Fragger”, a soldier can also blow up mission objects.

Naturally Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, also has a “Medic” class. This medic is out-fitted with an assault rifle or shotgun, dispenses health packs, or revives fallen comrades. If a teammate gets hit by a grenade or run over by a tank however, not even a medic can help them.

The Engineer, on the other hand, comes with an assault rifle, or a grenade launcher, and can set up anti-vehicle or anti-personnel turrets in secured areas. Apart from his defensive skills, engineers are also able to repair damaged vehicles.

Field ops are the fourth class. They set up radar towers, or signal targets for air strikes via smoke grenades. It is always a good idea to wipe out an area occupied by the enemy with an air strike before sending foot soldiers in. To do this, they can call in artillery strikes using pieces of artillery they have positioned themselves; this does however, take a little time.

The fifth and final class is the Sniper (or covert ops), who can choose between a multiple shot rifle and a single shot sniper rifle. They can zero in on opponents from a distance and thus protect their team from unwanted surprises. Their secondary ability is hacking, like the shield generator in the demo version for example, which had to be hacked. The Sniper is the ideal covert op, because he is able to take on the identity of the enemy, thus allowing him to sneak easily behind enemy lines. His cover, however, is blown as soon as he hacks or attacks anything.

We have noticed something about the classes since the demo, however. The technician, who acts as a sort of “Medic” for the Stroggs, can give fallen GDF fighters a kind of outer skeleton that causes the GDF to then serve as a host or spawning point for their Strogg comrades. On the other hand, technicians need more time to revive their fallen extraterrestrial pals.

Before each spawning, a specific class is highlighted with a star in the class and spawning point selection menu. This means that this class is needed in order to advance to your mission goal that is currently most important. If, for example, you need to build a bridge, this calls for an engineer; soldiers are necessary for laying down explosives, and a sniper if something needs to be hacked. ETQW is particularly fun to play when you have a small group of about three players that use their specific abilities to advance and the classes are chosen specifically for that reason. If the task calls for you to hack a “shield generator”, it is advisable to approach the target with a heavily armed soldier, a sniper and a medic. While the soldier is busy removing obnoxious opponents from the path, the medic hands out a series of medi-packs and occasionally uses his defibrillator to revive his fallen brothers in arms. While this is going on, the sniper uses his high-tech equipment to hack into the “shield generator”.

The maps in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars are beautifully designed thanks to the Doom 3 engine that has been enhanced with “MegaTexture”. Even the outer landscapes (one of the biggest weaknesses of this three year old engine) look magnificent. Oddly enough, the interior levels (actually one of this engine’s strengths) look dull and sloppy. In spite of all this, Quake Wars offers a lot of variety in terms of level design. The program can take you to snowy winter landscapes or to sandy canyons, and then return to the mild climate of North America. All maps are well conceived and designed. This gives the attackers more possibilities to get behind enemy lines. If the players work well as a team, then the defending team must really be on the ball to prevent an invasion.

Quake Wars offers you a large selection of land, air and water vehicles. The last category is limited to only the GDF’s MG-boats. Other than that, both sides possess flying vehicles (GDF’s: helicopter, Stroggs: spaceship) and land vehicles. What the GDF’s call a tank, the Strogg call an enormous Mech. Thus every vehicle has a counterpart on the other team.

This question can only be answered with a no. ETQW still manage to raise the bar in terms of team-shooter games, however. The successful mixture of team play and fast paced action is great for players who are not interested in purely tactical shooter games, but are not just looking for mindless fragging either. Team play is definitely an important feature of this game.

As was already mentioned in the preview, ETQW’s graphics are not exactly revolutionary. This is not really necessary, though. ETQW is just as it should be. Some mention must be made of dubbing, however. The German dubbing would probably not receive any medals. The commands, which sound terrifically serious in the English version, sound ridiculous in the German version. In parts it sounds as if a flat computer-generated voice is simply stringing a series of words together.