When your previous online game netted you a worldwide audience of no less than eight million, going one better than that isn't easy. Yet Splash Damage is making it seem that way.

By swapping WWII rifles for the energised piledrivers of intergalactic conflict, and setting out to make every gameplay element of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars better than it is anywhere else, the Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory developer has fashioned some awe-inspiring firepower.

Key to Quake Wars is its desire to make you happy as you go about turning other people into corpses. It wants your chosen vehicle to always have both advantages and disadvantages, it never wants to strand you a mile from the fight, and it wants those fights to be big.

That's why Splash Damage went to id graphics guru John Carmack to make big changes to his Doom 3 engine - and they are changes that show.

A fight between humans and Strogg (the villains of the Quake universe), the game sets up a momentous battle of wits and reflexes on every frontline of its enormous maps.

Teamwork is essential, and victory brings a team-sized sense of achievement.

But while it may prove to be the loudest and most intense conflict ever staged online, the real draw with Quake Wars is that it's also looking to be the cleverest.

There are so many little details that make its vehicles, weapons and troop classes different to any other game, that you can't help but tremble at the thought of its arrival. Trust us: you'll never seen a war like it.