Pros: Deep gameplay between cooperative team players
Cons: Getting to the Depth requires you to figure it all our yourself.
The bottom line: Splash Damage/ Id Software should be ashamed of themselves for releasing a 7 month old, "B-" game with no improvements for the premium price of $60.
If you have bothered to read this review, then, there is only one question on your mind:

“Is Quake Wars: Enemy Territory a game worth buying”?

The answer is a simple NO…



…And that “No” is coming from a long time fan of the Quake game series. Though I’ve always known the game’s developers to release games with minor glitches and downfalls, this is the first game of the series that failed entirely to capture my attention and further my appreciation of the series.

Just in case, you don’t know what exactly “Quake” is, the story all goes back to 1996 when Id Software (the company behind DOOM) released Quake, which was a first person shooter that utilized true 3D graphics in order to demonstrate the technology available in the new 90 Mhz Pentium processors and the infancy of LAN / internet gaming. However, Id software, while good at creating game technology, has never been good with story writing. Quake Wars does not actually have anything to do with the original Quake, rather, it serves as a prequel for the second game, Quake 2.

Quake II was about an alien race called the Strogg - a race of cyborgs who harvest living organisms to use as the base for creating new members. In Quake 2, humanity sent space marines to the alien homeworld, Stroggos, in order to eradicate the Strogg and stop them from using their advanced portal technology to allow them to raid other planets.
In the instruction manual, it is mentioned that Humanity has staged this invasion in order to retaliate against the Strogg who’ve attacked and battered Earth recently.
Quake Wars: Enemy Territory is a prequel to the story of Quake 2 which takes the time to draw out the battles that Humanity fought against the Strogg on the planet Earth. The in-game movie that opens after the disc is inserted shows that the Strogg have just entered Earth’s orbit and have begun their invasion of Earth.

The last paragraph I wrote features more story than this game does. Other than the opening movie clip, you’ll have no idea why you are playing.



NO SINGLE PLAYER CAMPAIGN

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars strangely, features no Single Player campaign at all, unlike other games of this type such as Star Wars: Battlefront and Battlefield:Modern Combat. Games such as this need to have singleplayer campaigns simply because #1 You need to be instructed how to play the game and #2 some people don’t have access to internet play/ or don’t want to play with anyone else just to be able to play the game.

If you do start the game, your choices become Campaign or Xbox Live/PS3 Home. Unlike 100% of other Campaign’s I’ve played, there is no explanation given at the start and you are simply thrust into battle unaware of how to choose a class of soldier, how to use a class of soldier or how to even fire your weapon.

There are numerous icons on the screen at any given time to explain what is happening on the battlefield but you simply won’t understand ANY of it unless you pause the game and go read the manual.


You must choose a side: GDF or Strogg.
You must then choose a class of soldier: Medic, Soldier, Engineer, Field Ops or Covert Ops.
The classes are lifted right from the Battlefield series and behave identically.
Medics heal downed soldiers, engineers build defensive turrets, covert ops sneak to vantage points so they can serve as snipers, and field ops deploy artillery and laze targets for missile strikes.
Both sides have the same abilities but in practice, they use them slightly differently. The GDF use health packs distributed by Medics and ammo packs distributed by Field Ops soldiers. The Strogg feature one source of both ammo and health called stroyent. Stroyent can be seen coursing through the weaponry of the Strogg and can only be picked up from one source, the Technician (Engineer’s counterpart).
The GDF soldiers have typical guns and they must reload them upon emptying their clips. The Strogg do not need to reload, but their weapons will overheat if used excessively.
Each side also features vehicles from their culture. Wherein the Earth’s GDF soldiers have tanks, APC’s, and land cruisers, the Strogg have similar vehicles with a design that projects their cybernetic background complete with biological parts and bloody tubes.

THE GAMEPLAY of Quake Wars actually got it rave reviews when it was released on the PC several months ago. Similar to the other games of this type, gameplay typically comes down to “capture the command point” style play.
The objective of the game is to either capture enemy territory by completing objectives or to defend the objectives for a certain amount of time. Sides will alternate between attacking and defending the main objective. There are also sub-missions that can be accomplished to make accomplishing the main goal easier. These may include destroying security systems, smashing road blocks, etc.
Just like every other game of this type, you gain experience points for killing and blowing stuff up. With XP you can get upgrades for your specific class, light weapons, vehicles, etc. These upgrades last for just one campaign – each campaign consists of three maps. When a campaign is completed, upgrades will reset when the campaign is completed.

I first saw this multi-objective based gameplay on Unreal Tournament back in 1999. Unfortunately, that game, which is many years old, actually still manages to provide a better teamplay experience than this one. Even playing the game alone with the help of the CPU controlled bots feels dated and inadequate.

There are numerous problems with Quake Wars but the one that stands out most in my mind is the price. Unless you closely follow game reviews, you’d have no idea what you were buying into and be stuck paying $59.99 for a D- game. For this price, Quake Wars is an absolute rip-off. This game was released in October of 2007 for Windows and since then, there have been no upgrades and no improvements whatsoever besides integration with Xbox Live/PS3 Home.

The GRAPHICS are pathetic and don’t manage to impress as much as older games such as Battlefield. This whole game looks so outdated, it actually resembles a typical PC game from the 90’s such as Tribes or Team Fortress. When Quake Wars was released on the PC, the big addition was Id Software’s Megatexture which was a new texturing technique that allowed huge maps to be created without texture repetition, yet, still managing to include environmental effects such as bullet damage and vehicle traction. So much for that. Even though the maps are huge and can span an entire square Kilometer, its nowhere near as exciting as modern first person shooters when the maps are under populated and the designs of structures aren’t very interesting.
SOUND isn't much better. All the voices sound as if they were lifted from the days of SUPER NES catridges, when digitaly recording voices was new to video gaming.
The voices are raspy and garbled - totaly devoid of any clarity you'd expect from a Next Generation system.
Gunfire and explosions aren't much better - far inferior to what we expect of a 2008 video game.
Its sad to say but even 10 year old Counter Strike shows this game up in the audio/visual department.

XBOX LIVE / PS3 ONLINE doesn’t offer much either. The number of players online is dropped from the PC version’s 32, to a paltry 16 on the console.
Strangely enough, the ability to actually see your rank and your experience point information isn’t accessible offline on either console. You must go online to find out what you’ve ranked up to as well as the other information. This is the first time I’ve seen a game put together with this poor an offline/online multiplayer tracking system.

The game also lacks player customization - which is truly pathetic since that ability has been featured in more and more games since the Next Generation of consoles kicked off.
What's the point of getting XP points if you can't change the way you look? Most players want to be unique rather than clones.

Where the game does succeed however is in the ability to cooperate with other players in order to achieve objectives. Wherein games like Battlefield allow any player to dominate a mission with whatever class they’ve chosen, Quake Wars is much more difficult and requires more teamwork and cooperation. The Objectives set before you typically require you to formulate a plan with friends and then execute it together in order to win. For example, an Engineer, who is needed to blow open barriers, may require the support of stronger assault troops or vehicles to get to the objective. All of these troops may require Medics to follow them to heal them until the objective is completed less they all be killed and need to restart.

On the flipside, if you happen to be playing the game with jerks online who just wanna do what they wanna do, the gameplay is terrible because their lack of cooperation puts the entire team in jeopardy. This is why some people choose not to play with others by the way...of course, since this game has no Singleplayer campaign, you're stuck playing maps with unresponsive, sometimes poorly skilled computer controlled bots.


OVERALL

New Quake games in general are bones thrown to nostalgic gamers who spent countless hours fighting through the PC versions of the Quake games and know the entire story enough to actually care when a new Quake game is announced. Now that new gamers are overwhelmingly coming online using consoles such as Wii/PS3 and 360 rather than the PC, it becomes absolutely obvious that the Quake franchise is enjoyed by a select few and doesn’t offer enough to compete with newer games on the markets. This game was released with no commercials and no fanfare simply because most console gamers don’t recognize Quake at all.

As badly as I talk about this game, it isn’t completely bad. The problem is, its actually a good game that is buried under layers of instruction-less, story-less gameplay with dated, underwhelming graphics. Even a lackluster, retread title like Rainbow6 Vegas2 completely outshines this game.

Quake Wars is in no way worth your $60. If you want it, wait a couple months and buy it when its $20. Problem is, by then, this game will be completely forgotten.