ET: Quake Wars has very little to do with the Quake series. ET stands for Enemy Territory (not "ET phone home"), and from what I can tell they came up with their own ideas for gameplay and borrowed the universes from other games to push their concepts? Anyway, ET: Quake Wars is a 1st person shooter, moreso designed around class-based, grand-scale combat. You can play as either the GDF (Humans) or the Strogg (Aliens) and you must either assault or defend key points on the map in order to win.
Gameplay: 8.5
Unique gameplay concepts - What drives the game, and what is it similar to?
At first glance, it's obvious that the game is a concept, and not a full-featured game like you'd expect these days. The game is simply 2 huge teams fighting each other, and the attacking team must complete all of the objectives and the defenders must hold them off. That's it.
The gameplay itself is actually pretty intriguing. You can select 1 of 5 classes to play as - Soldier, Medic, Engineer, Field Ops and Covert Ops. Every class has their own specialty items that make the classes unique, outside of their weaponry. It's what you'd typically expect - Medics have health packs and can revive a fallen teammate, Engineers can repair equipment, etc.
Objectives in the game usually require one of the classes to use their specialty in order to complete it. There are always 3 objectives, and they are usually something like "drive our big vehicle into the area, hack a computer, then destroy some alien tanks". Again, nothing inspiring considering it's much more of a concept than something you'd take as being realistic.
The really interesting thing about this game is the ability to summon buildings, like in an RTS, that have specific functions. Engineers can summon either an anti-infantry, anti-vehicle or anti-missile building that operates automatically. Field Ops are the kings of special buildings and can summon huge mortar cannons that are capable of locking onto any point of the map and firing huge missiles or mortar barrages. It's pretty cool to fire a giant missile and see it fly through the sky, across the map, then blow everything up in the area.
There are also things like vehicles that you can operate in order to gain a tactical advantage, ranging from ATVs to walking, rocket-launching killbots. Other cool things around the map like being able to build turrets and bridges can add an interesting element to the game.
It's actually a pretty fun game with some unique concepts. There are also bots (AI) to fill empty spots for both teams, and it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between a bot and a human. I find it's more fun to play offline with hard bots only as it simulates a real match well and you don't have to deal with latency.
It would have been nice to see them implement either more classes or define their classes better. Each class definitely has a unique ability, but the weaponry and roles can often bleed into one another. Their vehicles also are really erratic, handle poorly, and are overall not that useful outside of quick transportation.
Presentation: 4.0
Graphical and audio presentation (animation, texturing, overall look & artistic style)
This game actually looks pretty bad. It won't impress anybody at first glance, and it was obviously optimized for the PC first. Even still, on the PC I'm sure it's not turning any heads. Character modeling is below-average, animations are below-average and you can tell it wasn't developed by a huge gaming studio.
Theatrics: 1.0
Story, Dialogue, Cut-Scenes and Artistic Use of Camera
There is literally no story. Dialogue among random characters is sparse and is sparingly there for entertainment. They have a cutscene at the beginning to explain what the game is about, but the gist of it is "the GDF and Strogg are fighting each other".
Controls: 6.5
Ease of Use and Smoothness of Controls
For the most part, the controls make sense. Typical firing, jumping, aiming, etc.
But the controls for the vehicles are often terrible, especially the flying vehicles. I'm a veteran of gaming and I still don't understand how to control the flying vehicles so I'll crash and kill myself almost as quickly as I got in.
A lot of the classes have the ability to throw down ammo/health packs, but I think it's a really clumsy way of doing it. It would have been a ton easier to control if it is was some sort of heal gun that would lock on to a target, instead of throwing packs around and constantly missing your targets, wasting them. Reviving fallen teammates is also really awkward and hard to control - your precision has to be perfect amidst a really fast game.
Replay Value: 8.5
Total Gameplay Time versus Expected
This game has a lot of unique maps and a lot of in-game achievements that are fun to try for. I must have put around 45 hours total into this game. It's not a bad investment considering it's a game basically without a story or any other mode than versus. The competent bots really help this game out more than one would imagine.
Fun: 9.0
What were the most and least fun parts of the game? Overall, how much fun is the game?
I don't know what it was about this game. It's production values were low, they didn't spend much time on it outside of getting the gameplay down, but I played the demo a bunch and finally bought the game and wasn't disappointed.
It's certainly not the greatest game and is missing a lot of the features you'd expect from a game on the Xbox 360. But you can pop it in, have fun with a lot of different features in the game and it'll last for a while. At least it did for me. It's a good concept. If these same gameplay concepts were inserted into a game like Halo or Call of Duty, people would never stop talking about it.
My Overall Rating: 8.0
Complexity Level: It'll take time. This game has a lot of different classes and a lot of objects around the map that will take time to get used to using. The concept is still a little bit unusual, so newer gamers might get lost and give up on it.
Gameplay: 8.5
Unique gameplay concepts - What drives the game, and what is it similar to?
At first glance, it's obvious that the game is a concept, and not a full-featured game like you'd expect these days. The game is simply 2 huge teams fighting each other, and the attacking team must complete all of the objectives and the defenders must hold them off. That's it.
The gameplay itself is actually pretty intriguing. You can select 1 of 5 classes to play as - Soldier, Medic, Engineer, Field Ops and Covert Ops. Every class has their own specialty items that make the classes unique, outside of their weaponry. It's what you'd typically expect - Medics have health packs and can revive a fallen teammate, Engineers can repair equipment, etc.
Objectives in the game usually require one of the classes to use their specialty in order to complete it. There are always 3 objectives, and they are usually something like "drive our big vehicle into the area, hack a computer, then destroy some alien tanks". Again, nothing inspiring considering it's much more of a concept than something you'd take as being realistic.
The really interesting thing about this game is the ability to summon buildings, like in an RTS, that have specific functions. Engineers can summon either an anti-infantry, anti-vehicle or anti-missile building that operates automatically. Field Ops are the kings of special buildings and can summon huge mortar cannons that are capable of locking onto any point of the map and firing huge missiles or mortar barrages. It's pretty cool to fire a giant missile and see it fly through the sky, across the map, then blow everything up in the area.
There are also things like vehicles that you can operate in order to gain a tactical advantage, ranging from ATVs to walking, rocket-launching killbots. Other cool things around the map like being able to build turrets and bridges can add an interesting element to the game.
It's actually a pretty fun game with some unique concepts. There are also bots (AI) to fill empty spots for both teams, and it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between a bot and a human. I find it's more fun to play offline with hard bots only as it simulates a real match well and you don't have to deal with latency.
It would have been nice to see them implement either more classes or define their classes better. Each class definitely has a unique ability, but the weaponry and roles can often bleed into one another. Their vehicles also are really erratic, handle poorly, and are overall not that useful outside of quick transportation.
Presentation: 4.0
Graphical and audio presentation (animation, texturing, overall look & artistic style)
This game actually looks pretty bad. It won't impress anybody at first glance, and it was obviously optimized for the PC first. Even still, on the PC I'm sure it's not turning any heads. Character modeling is below-average, animations are below-average and you can tell it wasn't developed by a huge gaming studio.
Theatrics: 1.0
Story, Dialogue, Cut-Scenes and Artistic Use of Camera
There is literally no story. Dialogue among random characters is sparse and is sparingly there for entertainment. They have a cutscene at the beginning to explain what the game is about, but the gist of it is "the GDF and Strogg are fighting each other".
Controls: 6.5
Ease of Use and Smoothness of Controls
For the most part, the controls make sense. Typical firing, jumping, aiming, etc.
But the controls for the vehicles are often terrible, especially the flying vehicles. I'm a veteran of gaming and I still don't understand how to control the flying vehicles so I'll crash and kill myself almost as quickly as I got in.
A lot of the classes have the ability to throw down ammo/health packs, but I think it's a really clumsy way of doing it. It would have been a ton easier to control if it is was some sort of heal gun that would lock on to a target, instead of throwing packs around and constantly missing your targets, wasting them. Reviving fallen teammates is also really awkward and hard to control - your precision has to be perfect amidst a really fast game.
Replay Value: 8.5
Total Gameplay Time versus Expected
This game has a lot of unique maps and a lot of in-game achievements that are fun to try for. I must have put around 45 hours total into this game. It's not a bad investment considering it's a game basically without a story or any other mode than versus. The competent bots really help this game out more than one would imagine.
Fun: 9.0
What were the most and least fun parts of the game? Overall, how much fun is the game?
I don't know what it was about this game. It's production values were low, they didn't spend much time on it outside of getting the gameplay down, but I played the demo a bunch and finally bought the game and wasn't disappointed.
It's certainly not the greatest game and is missing a lot of the features you'd expect from a game on the Xbox 360. But you can pop it in, have fun with a lot of different features in the game and it'll last for a while. At least it did for me. It's a good concept. If these same gameplay concepts were inserted into a game like Halo or Call of Duty, people would never stop talking about it.
My Overall Rating: 8.0
Complexity Level: It'll take time. This game has a lot of different classes and a lot of objects around the map that will take time to get used to using. The concept is still a little bit unusual, so newer gamers might get lost and give up on it.
No comments:
Post a Comment