Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
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The problems with the game really start to rear their ugly heads in the campaign mode. This single player affair (no co-op or even split screen play here) feels tacked on in a manner almost as severe as that of last year's Shadowrun (which offered a tutorial mode as the sole single player experience).

Steve's obsession with that neighbor lady who changes with the blinds open would soon cost his squad their lives.

There is no story to follow or characters to meet. Instead the "campaign" is a collection of the same maps and objectives offered for online play, but with some pathetic enemy and ally AI thrown in. Even the AI teammates and enemies are made to appear as if they were online players. Kill one and you'll get a message saying "you killed OMG Hax." Each AI player has an individual name like Noob Killer or Sir Diesalot. Aside from the Xbox 360 Achievements for completing the various maps on each difficulty setting, there's not a lot of reason to play through the campaign more than once.

Graphically this is not the prettiest game out there, but it does perform well enough that I've not noticed any kind of slowdown or popup and the environments are fairly detailed.

Overall ETQW is a competent enough title that online players with a group of friends into FPS games will likely get a good deal of enjoyment from, but which runs the risk of becoming old fast unless Activision offers up some downloadable content fairly quickly. Fans of teamwork reliant FPS titles will probably like this for a while, but those looking for a robust story mode and fans of the original Quake games (this really has nothing in common with any Quake title ever released, even the sub-par Quake IV) will probably get along just fine without it.



Highs
An impressive array of weapons for both sides; the different classes really do play differently; a lot of thought went into balancing the teams; the gameplay encourages real online teamwork over rogue commando tactics.

Lows
Repetitive objectives and levels get old quickly; no real campaign mode and definitely no story of any kind; no co-op play and no offline multiplayer; the game is fun and interesting but most of what's here has been done as well or better elsewhere; Quake fans will be disappointed as there is little here to remind us of one of the best early FPS titles.

Final Verdict
If you're looking for a short diversion from other FPS titles, this will interest you for a little while, but you're not likely to be wowed by it in any way. Don't expect granduer and you may be all right.

75%

Jun 12, 2008

Review by Michael Triggs.

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EverWars.com - You have GOT to play this game!