Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

When the original Enemy Territory: Quake Wars came out for the PC, it was well received by reviewers with a strong 84% on GameRankings.com.  The struggle between the human race and the Strogg made a good backdrop for a shooter with classes on both sides that matched each other.  Then it was announced that ET:QW would be ported to the PS3 and Xbox 360.  While this might sound like good news, different developers were assigned to handle the different ports.

ET:QW is set in the Quake universe set up in Quake II and Quake IV.  The Earth is attacked by an alien force called the Strogg.  They look a bit like the Borg from Star Trek (the creepy ones from First Contact and not the mime impersonators in The Next Generation).  They don’t care if they assimilate you, because they would be just as happy to conquer you.  You play as either a member of the human Global Defense Force or as the Strogg.

Taking a look at ET:QW, you can easily tell that all of the characters use the same model, they just have a different skin on them depending on the class they are using.  The skins are all very similar to each other though, so it’s really hard to determine what class a person is unless you are right on top of them.  This makes it difficult to determine the strategy your opponent is using and create a strategy of your own.

Animations have gotten better in online games.  Seeing your teammates run along-side you when first entering a match isn’t all that uncommon.  The animations in ET:QW don’t feel natural.  Watching your team next to you, it feels as if they skate a little bit.  Some of the explosions feel like they are in slow motion.

When you take a look at ET:QW, it’s sometimes hard to believe that this is a next gen title.  The graphics look blocky from the start.  While this consideration may have been made because of lag issues or the power of the consoles, the look is surprisingly disappointing.  The structures, the vehicles, and the landscapes all look jagged.  It doesn’t help that all of the levels are made of brown and grey, with a few spots of green here and there.

You don’t expect a huge audio experience from a game like ET:QW, but what you do hear is disappointing.  The first thing you notice is the voice acting.  The voices sound like the developers got together and recorded their lines.  The lines that are used are quite repetitive.  It’s worse than the older versions of Madden when Madden was doing the color commentary.  It gets incredibly repetitive, and the lines are used over and over again.  A little more variety would have given the characters more personality.

The other sound effects are below average.  The weapons don’t have enough punch.  Similar weapons on both sides sound the same.  The explosions sound muted when they actually happen. They really botched the sound effects to a point where you wonder if your ears will bleed because of how bad it sounds.

Controls in ET:QW are similar to most other shooters.  The analog sticks control movement and aiming.  The L1 and R1 keys control weapons, with the L1 selecting equipment and grenades and R1 cycling through traditional weapons.  R2 fires your weapon while L2 lets you look down the sight of your weapon and utilize the zoom if the weapon has one.  Circle crouches, Triangle enters and exits vehicles, Square reloads your weapon, and X jumps.

Controlling vehicles can be a lesson in futility, especially if you don’t have someone to help you with the driving or the gun.  The left stick controls your movement and the right stick controls your aim, but when you try to look one way and drive another direction the camera spins and you have no idea how to direct your vehicle.  This seems to be an issue with a lot of these games.  While driving a Warthog in Halo wasn’t perfect, it did a much better job than most of the games coming out lately are.

ET:QW is a team-based shooter.  Each side is given objectives to complete on the map.  Each side has five classes.  The GDF has the classes of Soldier, Medic, Engineer, Field Ops, and Covert Ops.  The Strogg have Aggressor, Technician, Constructor, Oppressor, and Infiltrator.  The two sides are virtually the same.  The Strogg are a bit tougher while the GDF are a tad more mobile.  Even the weapons are similar.  Although they look a bit different, they play out almost exactly the same.  A few balanced differences between the two teams would make the game feel like something more than two sides with different skins.

Just because the two sides are similar, it doesn’t mean that the game can’t be fun, right?  Well, that’s the theory.  Unfortunately, in practice there are a slew of issues that mar ET:QW.  First of all, the game is meant to be played as a team.  Unfortunately, it is hard to work as a team because communication is difficult.  You push down the right analog stick and then choose an option from the screen listed around the aiming reticule.  However, it’s rare that the team listens.  When they do, they don’t seem to know what to do with themselves when they get to their objective.

In fact, the AI is dumb in the entire game.  This isn’t one of those things where the AI acts abnormally occasionally.  Nope, the AI is pretty much dumb on both sides.  Your team runs recklessly towards the objective, and often times they will get mowed down if the enemy has a strong presence there.  They can’t drive vehicles very well either.  I saw a Strogg using a hover pack ram constantly into the corner of a building.  It couldn’t figure out that it needed to move a little to the right and then it would be able to move forward.  You feel like you are the one who needs to complete all of the objectives, although they occasionally can do some of them successfully.

That’s not saying that the opponents are much better.  They may move side to side, but they don’t really know how to take cover behind objects.  Generally they come at you in groups, and a lot of bloodshed and respawning happens.  The firepower seems to be so overpowered that you can die in just a couple of hits.  You can call for a Medic to come over after you are on the ground, but usually you will just choose to respawn because there is no way for a Medic to get to you.

What’s worse is that there isn’t any kind of training video or exercise to get you accustomed to the different classes.  There is a video that explains what the classes are and what their role is, but you don’t get any kind of feel for what weapons they have or their optimum place on the battlefield.  Something that went through the classes better with some kind of practice would have helped the single player game.

If you play the single player game, you can set up the kind of game you want to play.  You have Stopwatch, Objective, and Campaign.  Then you choose your map, time limit, whether friendly fire records as a hit, the max number of players, whether you allow bots to finish tasks, the bot weapon skill, and the bot tactical skill level.  There are twelve maps for the Stopwatch and Objective modes.  The Campaign lets you select four different geographical areas.  The amount of customization is disappointing, as you’d think you would have more options.

If those things weren’t bad enough, the loading times are terrible.  It takes over thirty seconds to get to the map.  If you want to quit after you have played a game you actually have to wait for a summary screen to go away, a map to load, and select a class.  Then you are finally able to exit out.  Not only that, but the summary screen is unskipable and only stays up for a specific number of seconds.  If you are ready to move on to the next battle the screen stays up until the timer counts down to zero.  You also can’t keep it up for longer if you would like to.  The information on the summary screen isn’t all that helpful anyway.  You won’t know much about your performance either unless you see your name up on the summary screen.

You would think that the multiplayer would be the saving grace for ET:QW, but that’s unfortunately not the case.  Part of the reason for that is because of the case that it’s hard to communicate with people who don’t have a Bluetooth headset.  While Xbox Live is well known for the plebe population and heavy breathers, there is something to be said about being able to communicate with the other people playing along.

The other problem is the fact that just playing online is a problem.  The first issue is that there aren’t very many people playing.  The most I saw was a little more than a page of servers at the most.  Secondly, it was almost impossible to connect to a server.  Then when I did, I wasn’t able to play through a full game because I got disconnected. To say that the experience was frustrating would be an understatement.

So are there any redeeming qualities in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars?  It’s really hard to say there are.  The bad graphics, poor AI, and bad overall gameplay, I really can’t recommend this game in good conscious.  I really wonder what got lost in translation, or the port of the game, from the PC to the console.  If you miss the Quake universe and want to enter it again, do yourself a favor and replay through Quake 4.  Don’t poison your memory with ET:QW on the PS3.

Gaming Trend Score

61

1. Graphics: 62
2. Audio: 70
3. Controls: 76
4. Gameplay: 50
5. Value/Replay: 60
6. OVERALL:61