Overview: Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
By Shaun Hatton - October 9th, 2008
While FPS games are best played with the mouse and keyboard control configuration, there’s certainly no shortage of them for the Xbox 360. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is yet another FPS title for gamers to choose from (note: it’s also on the PS3). One thing to note, however, is that a heavy emphasis is placed on online play. Skirmishes can be played offline with bots, but for the most fun I recommend grabbing a friend or more and hitting up the game’s online servers.
There are two teams in each battle: The Global Defense Force and the invading Strogg alien race. During gameplay, each team will have its own objectives though typically one side is the obvious aggressor. Each team has five player classes to choose from, and for maximum efficiency it’s good to have players from a variety of classes present though for obvious reasons it’s good to heavy up on a certain class. Taking a complex by storm using only a team of medics is likely going to end in a bloodbath for your team.
To successfully complete a mission a team must finish their list of objectives while preventing the opposing team from completing theirs. Different objectives require different classes, obviously, and that’s where those come into play. While the names of the classes are different from GDF to Stogg forces, their capabilities and weaknesses are more or less the same. I’m particularly fond of the Soldier class, as I’m not one for stalking, planning, or engineering. Essentially what I’m remotely good at is running into battle, guns blazing, only to get shot down repeatedly by people who must be laughing hysterically on the other end of the connection.
Enemy Territory puts up to 16 players in each online battle, which is pretty good considering the map sizes and the fact that I can only stay alive for a minute, tops. The offline play offered by the game includes the use of cunning bots with typical but frag-worthy usernames. The bots are surprisingly good (well, compared to me) and at first I actually thought I was playing online versus other players. I soon realized I couldn’t have been because no one was bragging about their kills nor yelling at me for stinking it up.
Hardcore FPS gamers will probably get a big kick out of having another game to be a champion of. I, however, am somewhat of a xenophobe when it comes to playing games online (which is why I won’t play Team Fortress 2, but that’s a story for another day).
I can’t believe you STILL haven’t played it. Perhaps the most fun FPS of all time, complete with awesome dialogue and taunting…
I don’t know what to do with you.
You know, I’ve never felt that FPS games were best played with mouse and keyboard. I really like playing them with a control pad!
Jorge - Yep. Maybe I’ll log on some time and have you beat me senseless in it, because you’ll know all my weaknesses.
Mathew - seriously? Man, I can hardly stand the control pad for FPS games, and I’m not even a PC gamer. One exception to that has been Portal, however.