Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Review - Xbox 360

6

Gameplay: 6
Graphics: 8
Audio: 7
Multiplayer: 2
Innovation: 6

The Quake series is well known for producing some epic and gruesome Death-match style first person shooters. Even in 2008, Quake 1 still has a small community online, although most have moved on to newer shooters. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars takes the franchise in a new direction, and while some fans may disagree with the different style of gameplay, other fans can’t get enough of the vehicles and open worlds to roam around.Quake Wars is out now on Xbox 360, and with 16 player Xbox LIVE online battles, it may be the game you’ve been waiting for.

Gameplay

The main campaign in Quake Wars consists of four lots of three maps. As you battle your way around each continent, you’ll gradually unlock each new level as you go. How long the level takes depends on whether you’re on offense or defense, but no level takes longer than 20 minutes as that’s the set time limit. This basically means the main campaign can be easily finished in less than four hours provided you don’t fail at all.As mentioned, the gameplay is different to a regular Quake game. Quake Wars is all about strategy, and working together with your team whether it be the GDF (the good guys) or the Strogg (the bad guys). This can prove problematic in single player as the AI isn’t programmed terribly well. They often get in to a vehicle (that you wanted) and then drive straight in to a tree or a wall. True, it is difficult to map paths for AI in open-world terrains, but it shouldn’t be this difficult.If you leave the AI to do their own bidding they are virtually useless, especially on the harder difficulties. Quake Wars is fairly easy on easy mode, but increasing the difficulty to medium or hard is not recommended until you know exactly what you’re doing, or if you’re playing online without bots on your team.

The game introduces vehicles to the Quake series, and you’ll find yourself using the vehicles quite a fair bit. There are a huge range of vehicles such as tanks, hummers, bikes, jet packs, choppers, mechs, and they are all destructible. The lock-on missiles can prove to be quite annoying in vehicles especially on the harder difficulties, and you’ll find that mastering the controls of each vehicle is a feat of its own. The guns vary depending on what class you choose. GDF classes include Soldier, Medic, Engineer, Covert Ops and Field Ops, while Strogg classes include Aggressor (soldier), Oppressor (field ops), Constructor (engineer), Infiltrator (covert ops) and Technician (medic). Each class has a variety of weapons to use, which can all be changed by using the back button on the Xbox 360 controller, but doing so will kill you if you’re not already dead.Good thing there’s re-spawns until (continued next page)