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Platform: Xbox 360
Rating: 6.8 | 0 User Reviews | Send to Friend
By Scott Hesel
In today’s ultra-competitive Xbox 360 FPS environment, releasing a game with a multiplayer focus is a risky venture, as the online element has to be superior to compensate for a lackluster single player campaign. id Software's Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars offers a reasonable amount of thrills in online competition, but is ultimately held up by game play flaws that fail to push the title ahead of contemporaries like Frontlines: Fuel of War. Like most online-focused titles, the single player campaign is just the multiplayer game with an all-AI cast and a hacked-on ‘story’ that amounts to little more than a number of pre-mission briefing cutscenes, but you don’t buy this type of game for the single player (I hope), so what’s happening online? Well, if you land in an optimum 12-16 human player game (not always a given), you’ll experience the pleasures of true team-based online play. With five player classes to choose from, both the human and alien Strogg combatants, as well as a plethora of different objectives, QUAKE Wars provides its greatest moments when your team is well organized. Whether you’re a medic healing soldiers as they fend off wave after wave of Strogg invaders, a forward observer ordering artillery strikes to clear the path for an APC full of your teammates, or a master with the sniper rifle as an infiltrator, there’s more depth here than in your average online FPS battle. Even if you have 8-12 human players and the rest of the team is filled with bots, the AI is competent enough to keep the action rolling (though not good enough for an engaging single player game). Unfortunately, the controls don’t keep pace with the action. Switching between tools and weapons requires the use of two separate buttons, which makes for clumsy toggling. The aiming assistance makes the shooting a little too easy, turning gun battles into a matter of surprise rather than skill. Finally, the weapon reload time is so long, you could go for a beer run between clips, provided your opponent hasn’t emptied their entire rifle into you. If you pair these control problems with the average graphics and sound, then QUAKE Wars requires too many cylinders clicking at once to be a top shelf FPS title. Nevertheless, it is as good as Frontlines, and worth a look if you value team-based online play.
GAME PLAY: 7.2
Aiming assistance and reload times are a problem, but the mix of classes and objectives makes for compelling online play.
GRAPHICS: 6.0
Nothing distinguishable here. The textures are bland and the character and vehicle models are average.
SOUND: 6.5
The sounds of battle are decent but not spectacular. The canned-messages that your AI teammates blurt out are surprisingly helpful.
VALUE: 6.9
You won’t get much mileage out of the single player, but the multiplayer mode has enough value to keep you coming back for a reasonable amount of time.
OVERALL: 6.8
Recommended if you’re an online FPS fan, but probably not if you already have Frontlines: Fuel of War.
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