The Wargamer

Introduction

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars distinguishes itself quite substantially from recent titles in the Quake series because of its purposefully a-linear, objective-driven battlegrounds. Rather than a linear slugfest where wave after wave of Strogg attempt to finally dispatch the player and his downright uncanny knack for staying alive, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars follows a format that allows for an unlimited number of solutions to several objectives that must be completed throughout each timed match. This presents some pretty exciting gameplay possibilities that the series has previously lacked. For one thing, teamwork and tactical advantage can often make or break the success of each battle, so when playing with fellow human players who are agreeable enough to work together, the decision to run a flanking maneuver or effectively utilizing a vehicle at a key point in the terrain makes a huge difference (and is, not to mention, very gratifying). Given the massive amount of space in each battlefield, a smart group of players can make the difference that the team needs to push forward to the next objective.

The map included with the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars demo illustrates the importance of teamwork and tactical soundness quite well. In my experience playing Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, the players who were most open to working together or simply traveling in a group tended to enjoy much more success than teams that were dominated by "go-it-alone heroes." Having made this observation, I took things a step further and coaxed some of my local buddies to download the demo and try their hand at this highly-anticipated shooter. They are all shooter fans, after all, and the demo was free. The advantage to playing with people you know well is that it's much easier to work together, especially since some of the team is now people I knew well and not complete, anonymous strangers. The result of my idea to recruit my close buddies for service? Once everyone learned the ropes and got used to the gameplay we had some pretty dang successful teamwork strategies.

Pontificating the Hard Way

The demo map in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is a classic case of assault. The attacking team (the humans) needs to complete a variety of objectives to eventually stop the evil Strogg from poisoning the local water supply. The Strogg team just has to make sure that the humans don't get anywhere near the poisoned water by stopping the human advance. The map itself essentially boils down to a subset of four objectives that must be completed in order to achieve success. The first of these objectives is to move a large armored support vehicle into the enemy Strogg base. This armored support car would effectively allow for the human team to usurp the Strogg base and further utilize it as a base of attack on the water supply plant, which is their ultimate objective.

The armored vehicle can take quite a bit of punishment and it's bristling with all sorts of nasty weapons, but moving it into a Strogg stronghold will be no mean feat. For one thing, the terrain in this map is extremely rugged so there are mountains, valleys, and all sorts of prohibitive natural features that make traversing the area quite complicated. To make matters worse, those dastardly Strogg have already detonated the bridge across a rather steep gorge that must be repaired in order to get this special armored vehicle into the Strogg base. As one might expect, repairing that bridge to the point where it will support the armored vehicle is our first objective (which is also conveniently located a very short drive from our main base).

My friends and I jump into the action as quickly as possible when the round starts, grabbing the quickest vehicles we can find and getting to the repair station where the bridge can be rebuilt. Knowing that we will need at least one engineer to make the repairs and a couple of medics to keep us alive, we make our player class selection diverse to assure we are prepared for any eventuality. The more skilled shooter out of my bunch of five friends elects to take the sniper class to keep any aggressive Strogg players from rushing up the hill next to the bridge and slaughtering the huddled medics and engineers trying frantically to stay alive while repairing the bridge.

Initially, our plan failed miserably. We were doing our best to work together but the Strogg had plenty of heavy armor and massive amounts of firepower which they could pour over to our side of the bridge at will. Finally, our sniper got sick of being fragged by vehicles that had nothing to fear from his sniper rifle and he was lucky enough to hop into a heavy tank-like vehicle right when it spawned. Using this massive vehicle for cover, my teammates and I repaired the vehicle and continually revived one another as the huge volumes of lead and lasers flew past our heads (or inevitably into our heads). The medic/engineer combination was finally working - as the engineers' repaired and were killed by their vulnerable position, medics could quickly swoop in and revive them to keep the effort going. Further helping our repair effort was the fact that my friend in the tank was quite talented at avoiding enemy fire while accurately directing his own. It only took a handful of Strogg causalities before other players started to notice how much of a problem this tank had become. As a result, a lot of the heat my teammates and I were getting from repairing the bridge was redirected toward destroying him instead of us.

A few moments after the Strogg finally sent my buddy in the tank to a fiery end, the bridge was repaired and the objective completed. On to the next task…