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Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars

User Rating:

ESRB: Blood,Language - Mild,Violence
Publisher: Activision
Genre(s): Action, Shooting
Home Page: http://www.enemyterritory.com/

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By: Antti Summala Oct 10, 2007

Conclusion

In 2005 or 2006, Quake Wars would have been a monster hit without a doubt. Now the engine is a little long in the tooth, and Battlefield 2142 holds the throne as the elderly king of class-based online sci-fi skirmishing. Quake Wars throws down a glove with some authority: despite the venerable id Tech 4, it's technologically way ahead of BF2142. It also has some unique strengths and gameplay innovations.

The objective-based gameplay funnels players into the same area, creating intense fights and an episodic feel to each battle. Even if your team got its ass kicked for most of the game, you can still win by clamping down a desperate defense on the final objective. If you join a game in progress, you'll know instantly what stage the game is in, and what your side's chances of winning are; games are easy to discuss and dissect, because the stages and locations are clearly labeled. This also helps you team's tactics, just in case it has any.

You don't really appreciate ragdoll physics until you play a game that doesn't have any

Adding injury to insult: Strogg technicians can turn fallen foes into one-off spawning locations - a fun idea, but it feels like an elaborate form of teabagging

Unfortunatly, most of the time you'll find yourself on a team of loners, newbies and miscreants, and the objective-based approach quickly becomes frustrating. Banging your head on impenetrable enemy defenses for twenty minutes, with no support from your team, can make a grown man shed a tear.

On the surface, Quake is the perfect franchise for a multiplayer-only game. There's hardly anything there to spoil, and humans vs. aliens is a proven formula. Despite all that, the game could have tried to keep a serious face - next time, please let the players add the LOLZ.

Summary of YouGamers Hardware Testing

The publisher of this game state the following specifications for their minimum and recommended requirements:

Component	Publisher's Minimum	Publisher's Recommended
Processor	Intel Pentium 4 2800 MHz / AMD Athlon XP 2800+	Not specified
Memory	512 MB (768 MB for Windows Vista)
Graphics Card	NVIDIA GeForce 5700 / ATI Radeon 9700
Graphics Card Example	Not specified
Free Disk Space	5 GB
Net Link	Broadband for multiplayer

To learn more about how YouGamers performs its hardware testing, click here. Through our extensive gameplay and hardware testing across the full spectrum of PC configurations, YouGamers suggests that one should use the following guidelines for an appropriate minimum and recommended setup:

Component	YouGamers Minimum	YouGamers Recommended
Processor	AMD Athlon 64 3000+ / Intel Pentium 4 530	AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ / Intel Core 2 Duo E6300
Memory	512 MB	1024 MB
Graphics Card	ATI Radeon X1600 PRO 128MB / NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 128MB	ATI Radeon X1950 PRO 256 MB / NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT 256 MB
Free Disk Space	5 GB	5 GB
Net Link	Broadband for multiplayer	Broadband for multiplayer

Scores

To learn more about our scoring methodology, please click here.

Gameplay	85	Fighting against an opposing team while trying to complete objectives isn't exactly groundbreaking, but no multiplayer FPS has put quite as much effort into building its missions as Quake Wars.
Graphics	81	The graphics are a mixed bag: everything in the game looks great from a distance, but up close the low resolution textures and various clipping bugs detract from the experience.
Audio	85	The sounds are well designed and professionally done, and help the player to better experience and react to events on the battlefield. Interlude music between maps does its job but doesn't stand out.
Technology	89	Although id Tech 4 is past its prime, Quake Wars shows that the old warhorse can still fight. Even though there are better engines out there, Quake Wars displays great flexibility and scalability to the low end.

OVERALL

Quake Wars comes to fight, but doesn't quite hit the right niche to reach gaming greatness. If you haven't burned yourself out with Battlefield games, Quake Wars provides great multiplayer FPS action.

If you wish to comment on this review or discuss the game further, then head over to our forum - click right here (registration not required).