Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Although you’ve seen team-based shooters like this before, ETQW does an especially excellent job of making every class both indispensable and a blast to play. For example, in some cases your team won’t be able to progress forward unless you’ve got some Engineers to construct a bridge. But those Engineers won’t survive the constant barrage from hostile fire unless you’ve got some Soldiers to push the enemy back to give the Engineers some breathing room. But those Soldiers will be walking into a deathtrap if the enemy has some anti-personnel turrets set up, so you’d better have someone working on taking them out with a tank. There’s a lot to choose from in terms of how you play ETQW and they’re all fun.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to score any hands-on action during our brief time with an early build of the game. But from what we’ve seen, the port seems to be shaping up well. A new cutscene as well as training missions – that help you learn the ins and outs of each class – don’t look like they’ll make purchasing another copy worthwhile for fans who already own the PC version. But it’s always good to see game developers adding extra content to console ports.

If you missed Enemy Territory: Quake Wars on the PC last year we don’t blame you. It was all too easy for this excellent shooter to slip past the masses with blockbusters like Crysis, BioShock, Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, and The Orange Box all jockeying for your attention.

But by now, you’ve probably had enough time to play Team Fortress 2’s tiny selection of maps to death, finished BioShock twice, listened to a half dozen remixes of Portal’s ending song, and discovered that Crysis runs at about 20 frames-per-second - with all the settings cranked up - on your PC.

The 360 and PS3 versions of ETQW will release simultaneously this year, but no official release date has been announced yet. If you never got a chance to play Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, we suggest you keep your eyes peeled for more news so you don’t miss out on it a second time. For now, check out the latest 360and PS3screenshots and read our PC review.

Mar 20, 2008

GamesRadarTylerNagata