Enemy Territory: Quake Wars - Initial Impressions - Part III

Click here for Part I of my Enemy Territory: Quake Wars initial impressions.
Click here for Part II of my Enemy Territory: Quake Wars initial impressions.

In Part II of my ET:QW initial impressions, I talked about the wonderful question: "What the fuck just killed me?" ET:QW employs a very standard scrolling chat window that details kills.

Example: heartless_ [weapon] UnluckyNewb

So, it isn't impossible to figure it out, but more often than not players will never see it coming. I guess it proves the age old; "You never hear the one that gets ya."

However, at times, this can be totally awesome. My absolute favorite weapon in ET:QW is on the Scrogg sniper class. Scrogg snipers receive flying drones. A player can launch a drone and fly it around for thirty seconds. At any time during flight, the player can cause the drone to explode. Think of it is as a flying grenade, perfect for rooting out camping snipers. The flying controls are spot on, easy, and allow for near perfect placement. The drones are easy enough to shoot down in the open, but a good pilot will use cover and height to ambush unsuspecting targets.

The flying drone is just one of many cool toys that are in the game. Honestly, I just don't have the time currently to test them all out. I said before, that there was a lot to this demo and it could be a bit confusing, but that doesn't mean there isn't a few cool surprises hiding in the game. And demos are the perfect time to play with these toys, before every single player learns how to counter them.

ET:QW offers enough new awesomeness that it should have a fairly strong following. Unfortunately, due to its more advanced play mechanics, it won't attract throngs of new players. For wily old veterans, ET:QW may just be the game they have been waiting for. ET:QW goes a long ways in providing fast and fun action. In the end, fast and fun should keep it going.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars - Initial Impressions Part II

Click here for Part I of my Enemy Territory: Quake Wars initial impressions.

I left off my last post talking about the objectives system built into ET:QW and how, for a new player, it can be confusing. I don't want potential players to be discouraged. I am not stating that ET:QW's objectives based system is a failure. It works, but at a cost of being a major barrier to entry.

ET:QW is a tough game to pick up and have fun with right away. For the purposes of a demo, that baffles me. I expected better from this game. It feels like the team at Splash Damage wanted to highlight too many aspects of their game in the demo, instead of providing a streamlined demo to introduce players to the game. A simpler map, with simpler objectives would go a long ways to improving early opinions about this title.

Moving on, the action in ET:QW far surpasses that of any Battlefield title, in both speed and veracity. Battlefield games are notorious for having a bit more relaxed style of play with an emphasis on wide open game play. ET:QW does a much better job of focusing players onto a single objective. Spawn points are usually up close to the action, and often times will drop a player right into the middle of the fight. This minimizes the need for a team to spread themselves across an entire map. Teams and players can focus on the current area and progress from there. I have found no reason to go backwards on the demo map so far, except to grab a vehicle.

Speaking of vehicles, they are fairly well done in ET:QW. There is no "vehicle specific class", so any player should be able to hop into any vehicle and go to town. I've never really enjoyed vehicles in these type of games, so I have not tested them very much. So far, I have not been camped at a spawn point by any flying vehicles, always a plus in my book!

My final area of concern for ET:QW is the lauded: "What the fuck just killed me?" There are so many new tricks in ET:QW, that I've found myself more than once trying to figure out what just killed me. Players die fast. Once the damage starts, it rarely ends in survival. As the game play is faster, it stands to reason that players are likely to die without seeing the cause. It can become annoying, but hopefully with time players will have enough experience to know what owned them.

Part III has been posted here.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars - Initial Impressions

The developers and fans of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars do not want the game to be compared to any of the Battlefield (1942, Vietnam, 2) games. Unfortunately, they built a team based multi-player shooter that has vehicles and unit classes, so comparisons are imminent. After all, Battlefield 1942 sort of defined team based multi-player shooters with vehicles and unit classes. It may not have been the first, but it was the most defining in my opinion.

Whether players believe ET:QW is anything like Battlefield or not, for me, there are enough comparisons to be made. Honestly, both games play the same. In Battlefield you are advancing from flag to flag. In ET:QW you simply advance from objective to objective. ET:QW has the benefit that objectives are a lot more interesting and can change on the fly. For example: the demo map has the GDF forces charging forward to build a bridge in order to advance on to securing the bridge, followed by advancing a mobile base.

Err well, I think those are the objectives. Battlefield's flag capture system may be static, but at least it is understandable to pretty much everyone. The objectives in ET:QW tend to be confusing at first and confusing in the end. Players can hit the "m" key to select a new mission (objective), but often times missions disapear as the objectives are met. As a new player, I spent most of my time confused on what I should be doing. There is little guidance to indicate what objectives need to be done or in what order they should be done to maximize effect. I guess it is up to the players to figure out?

Part II has been posted here.
Part III has been posted here.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Demo

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars has launched a demo.

I have found two great download links:

N-Zone
Yahoo!

I should have comments up later this week.

Linux Gaming with Radeon

It is no secret that I am becoming a fan of Linux. Over the past year I have completed the first half of my Red Hat Academy courses and have begun studying for my Linux+ certification. My interest in Linux extends beyond education and work. I am a gamer, and Linux gaming is a sore spot to an otherwise great operating system.

Digging around on the Internet, I found an article showing off Enemy Territory: Quake Wars running on a Linux box sporting the new 8.41 display drivers for Radeon HD 2900XT video cards. If you need to understand one thing about Linux gaming, it is that the lack of driver support is a main cause for the faltering Linux game market. However, this is changing as the article shows.

This gives me a bit of faith that Linux may become a viable platform in the future for gamers. My ultimate dream would be to have a complete Linux distribution built completely around games. How many gamers would love to have an entire operating system dedicated to their hobby? I know I would.