Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Hands-on Preview

Quake Wars on consoles has been a long time coming. While PC gamers have been pitting GDF against Strogg to save mankind since the end of last year, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game have only just surfaced. We headed over to Activision’s UK HQ to spend a day playing the Xbox 360 game, and it seems as though the PC game will arrive pretty much intact. This kind of large scale online war perhaps isn’t best suited to consoles though, so a few changes have been made which make it one of the most accessible team-based shooters we’ve ever played.

Although the PC game was developed by UK-based Splash Damage (creators of the popular Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory) and id Software, the console games are being handled by other studios. Activision Underground is working on the PS3 game, while Nerve Software is in charge of porting the game to the Xbox 360. id Software is of course still involved, so you can be sure the games won’t hit retail until they’re ready – indeed, at the event there was talk of fixing bugs spotted during the day’s play session. It seems both versions are in good hands.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars pits Global Defence Force (GDF) against an invading alien Strogg army that is intent on wiping out the resistance. Looked at very simply, Quake Wars is nothing more than a Battlefield clone. You have the two opposing teams, ground and air vehicles, territory to control and objectives to meet. In that sense it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but on consoles we don’t have the same choice in this FPS sub-genre and the goal with Quake Wars is to make the whole thing accessible.

Firstly, Quake Wars is easy to get into. We’d played the PC version a fair bit ahead of the event, but plenty of other journalists hadn’t, yet they were able to jump straight in and feel like part of a team. This is all because of the easy to follow objectives system that gives each player a list of objectives and marks them clearly on the map. You might simply be trying to take out a single anti-aircraft turret, but that scores you points and helps towards the team’s overall goal. You don’t even have to worry about equipping the correct tool to complete each objective, with it being automatically selected when you hold down the X button (on the 360) next to the objective – be it planting a bomb or hacking into a computer system.

Of course, with numerous classes and two races to play as, there’s a bottom level to the simplicity that can’t be broken through. For some players things will still seem rather complicated. Each race has five classes to choose from. The GDF have Field Ops, Covert Ops, Medic, Soldier and Engineer, while the Strogg have similar classes named Oppressor, Technician, Aggressor, Infiltrator and Constructor. Although each race has access to different tech, the classes match up pretty well so swapping from one race to another isn’t a huge problem.

As ever in games of this type, the class you choose to play as is a personal thing and entirely dependent on your own play style. The soldier is the simplest to learn, seeing as his role is to kill the opposition. The Medic is also a simple class to get used to, with the job of the medic being to revive fallen comrades without being a major attacking force on the battlefield. The other three classes can each deploy weapons systems, such as turrets, missile launchers and radars. These weapons become vital in more advanced games so their correct use is essential, making these classes better suited to serious players. It’s still not as complex as it sounds though, with easy to understand on-screen markers pointing out where you can position these advanced tools.

Each map has a series of objectives, with each team needing to either meet these or stop the enemy from doing so. In the console versions the class you need to be playing as in order to complete the next objective is made very clear, and swapping class is as easy as bringing up the menu and selecting the required class. As objectives are met the map opens up, delivering new objectives to the game and in turn moving the combat to a new area. This progression inside each game makes each online match highly entertaining and gives the impression that a real war is taking place, with the battlefront moving as the game progresses. It’s a little confusing at first, but the helpful objectives system and on-screen icons make things relatively easy to pick-up.

Vehicles are always good for a laugh in online team-based shooters and Quake Wars is no exception. It’s fair to say that some of the flying vehicles will require a decent amount of skill to get the most out of them. During the numerous hours we spent playing the Xbox 360 game an out of control helicopter-like vehicle screaming through the sky to almost certain doom was a regular occurrence. As in all games of this type, skilled pilots are essential if you’re team is going to succeed. You don’t need to man one of the bigger vehicles to get around quickly either, with the Strogg’s jetpacks being great for zipping across the large maps.

Quake Wars looked great on the PC and it’s getting there on consoles. The build we played was far from final, so frame rate issues did hurt an otherwise solid looking large-scale shooter. Even with said problems, gameplay was rarely affected, which bodes well for the final release. 16 players will be supported online or over system link, with AI bots filling in should you be short a few players. Although they won’t respond to your screams for help as gang of enemies heads straight for you, they do behave pretty realistically for the most part. Our play-time was restricted to the Xbox 360 version, with the PS3 game, perhaps tellingly, only on show in another room.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is shaping up very nicely on consoles. The key to the game’s success will undoubtedly rest in how accessible it is, and strides are certainly being made here. While the PC original did a great job at getting new players involved, it’s even easier on consoles. The Xbox 360 version even includes a handy little training mission – something the PS3 game is oddly lacking. Games like Call of Duty 4 are great, but Quake Wars will offer something very different when it finally arrives on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.