Xbox 360 has what feels like an inordinate number of First Person Shooters, so each time one gets released it must do quite a bit to deserve gamers' attention. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is the next in a long string of FPS titles for the 360 attempting to set the Live world on fire. While it does well to get the flame going, it had a rough time keeping it alive amongst a swirling wind of issues.
The game's main menu gives the illusion of depth that just is not there. Dive in at your own risk. Though it appears as though there are a handful of modes to blast through, your only real options are campaign and Xbox Live. True, there are also quick play and training modes, but they will not chew up more than one-try worth of your time at most. The quick play mode is essentially setting up your own campaign-like mission for off-line play. The training mode is over in under half-an-hour, and is worthless to anyone that has ever played any current-gen FPS before. That only leaves you two options to enjoy.
The campaign is so thin and lifeless that you have to wonder why they bothered at all. It takes place over four locations, with two to four missions required to complete each, with the added bonus of getting to play through each mission from either of the two sides. Skip the pre-menu load screen when the game is booting up and you will miss all the story the game has to offer. An alien species called the Strogg invades Earth, with bad intentions. The humans are part of the G.D.F., or Global Defense Force, must thwart the dastardly enemy invasion. The Strogg are essentially a less-intimidating version of the vicious Locusts in Gears Of War; well, if they had not grown up with a nasty appetite for steroids. The real problem with the campaign is that there is no cohesive story to it. You can begin any of the four locations at any point, and even the individual missions in the locations lack any common thread from start to finish. In the end, you will find yourself playing this one online or not at all.
The Xbox Live portion of the game seems equally emaciated, with only three modes. While they each have different names, Stop Watch, Objective, and Campaign, they all play so similarly that you would need the manual to point out the differences. They all lead two separate teams through a series of intertwined missions, and the first to complete them all wins. There is no traditional deathmatch mode in the game, which while it would add some variety to the mix, does make sense in light of the war theme. Wars are fought by completing objectives and taking control of areas, rather than just mindlessly wiping out the opposition. The game nails the concept.
The game also smartly allows you to have an eight-member party easily jumping from game to game together. Sadly, with only twelve maps spanning the four basic locations (which all look like a post-apocalyptic brand of Socom's desert maps) and the constant objective-based style of play, there is not enough here for the game to keep its hooks in you very long. Before you tire of just how sparse your options are, the online side of things is a lot of fun, granted you do not run into too many hosts with poor connections trying to run a sixteen-player game with laggy results.
Both online and offline, any empty slots fill with computer controlled 'bots'. They exhibit some of the most realistic A.I. games have yet to see. Please note, that reads 'realistic' and not 'smart'. There is a world of difference between the two. The bots are lifelike to the point that you will be checking your 'recently played' Live listings to see who is the real player and who is the imposter. Each 'bot' gets their own unique Live-esque name; marked with the 'bot' prefix when online. It is a nice touch, but can be a bit disconcerting when you run into one with a name eerily similar to a real friend's. Making things even more confusing, they actually behave quite similarly to real, mouth-breathing douche bags we all love to hate on Live. As rounds begin, you will notice a few of them run like normal soldiers, but then there are a couple that decide to jump gleefully toward the objective, as if skipping through a field of daisies. It is the kind of buffoonery you expect to accompany a scratchy twelve-year-old giggle.
In battle, they are just as smart and reactive as the average player is; making rounds with only a handful of real players as rewarding as those with no bots. It is actually harder to get the jump on a computer-controlled enemy than it is their human counterpart. That said, they do also make mistakes from time to time; whether it is running right by you. They directly relate the bot intelligence and skills with the difficulty of the game, leaving mines on objectives on the tougher settings. Strangely, they also have an affinity for post-death celebrations. Most of the time, the killer will continue past your dead body, but occasionally they will actually stop and pose over your corpse; going so far as to switch weapons to a knife and crouch down so you get a good look at them. Thankfully, that is as far as their little celebrations go. The day you get tea-bagged by an NPC is the day we had better start looking for John Connor.
As impressive as it can be at times, the bots and the gameplay do not seem to match up often enough. The game lays out objectives for each team to complete that seem to lend themselves to squad-based gameplay. Unfortunately, getting your bots to follow you and do anything useful to help complete the objective is damn near impossible; even with the easy-to-use d-pad commands. You can tell the bots to follow you, but it is about as effective as trying to lead a Live teammate without a headset. As a result, the offline games turn into more of a solo run & gun style game, since your computer friends know enough to constantly offer you a ride in the vehicles but remain reluctant to offer up anything productive, like cover fire while you try to complete the objective. The game features various vehicles for either side to use. They drive fine, but add little to enhance your enjoyment, other than another offering another way of blowing up your opponent in a hurry.
The game does offer some nice little touches that make up for some of its failures. When you reach an objective, the game uses a circular meter to show completion. Thankfully, if you get popped mid-objective, the meter slowly begins to drain and will start filling right back up as soon as a teammate begins again. Each objective is typically only available for completion by one class of character. The engineers typically get the first task of building or repairing an item that the squad will need, but then rather than committing suicide to switch classes you can simply hit the 'back' button and re-select a new spawn point, class, and primary weapon. Rather than just appearing, like so many other shooters with respawns, your character parachutes in from the sky. It is a small touch, but one that gives the game a slightly more realistic feel. When you do finally bite that last enemy bullet, you have a choice to either wait for a medic to come over and drop health-kits on you, or respawn. There is a ten-second timer, but it is not a limit for your decision, but rather a revolving timer for when the next respawn will happen.
Sonically and visually, the game is passable. The voice work that is here gets rather annoying, due to how often you will hear the same phrases used. The levels themselves all look rather dull and lifeless. You have to wonder why the aliens that can parachute in anywhere only seem interested in the most desolate, uninhabited parts of our country. You will get tired of sand and the brown-heavy color palette rather quickly. The character models look decent enough, but are well behind the better-looking FPS games on the console.
Between the mismatched gameplay and modes and the slim options, Enemy Territory feels like a half-finished PC port. What is here puts it in the upper half of Xbox 360 FPS titles, but there is just not enough to hold your interest for very long.
