First up, for those that aren't familiar with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, let me give you some general information. The game is the spiritual successor to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and you could see it a bit as a combination of that game with Quake4. Single player won't be present, Quake Wars will be multiplayer only and as such take on EA's Battlefield series.

The time period Quake Wars is set in is during the first Strogg invasion of Earth, about sixty years in the future of our current time. This means that the human weapons still look quite recognisable to what we have currently, but of course the Strogg have alien stuff that looks nothing like what we know from the real world. Fans of the Quake universe will of course recognise weaponry like the Railgun, Nailgun, Hyperblaster and Shotgun.

The game is team- and objective-based so while you can go out to shoot anything that moves, you can also just try to gain experience points by completing objectives. Instead of frags, experience points are the main thing to get as those will reflect your score at the end of the map and also give you bonuses in-game like faster reloading or more ammo. In theory it's even possible to complete a map without shooting anyone and still end up high in the scoreboard because you completed a bunch of objectives. This really expands the gameplay and makes the game a lot more strategic than most shooters.

To add even more to the strategy, vehicles are also present and although I was quite sceptical at first as I'm not really fond of vehicles in FPS games, I was very surprised at how much fun the implementation in Quake Wars is. All vehicles have their own features but even the smallest ones can take out the big ones. For example, the Strogg have a fast buggy-like car called the Hog. When driving, you can't shoot (if you've got a passenger, he can use an MG to blast people) but when smashing into something at high speed, you can be sure the opponent is dead, even if he's driving a tank. It's like Burnout in the Quake universe!

Both the Strogg and humans have character classes. They're specific to each race and not exactly the same which makes choosing a side more interesting. Humans have soldiers, medics, field ops, engineers and rangers while the Strogg have Tank, MediTek, Oppressor, Constructor and Infiltrator. Each class has its own weapons and properties and in order to complete all objectives on a map you'll probably always need several classes in your team (so not everyone should be a soldier in the human team for instance).

Quite fun is the fact that next to different weaponry and goals, the classes also have special abilities. A human engineer can for instance deploy radars and defense turrets while a Strogg Infiltrator can disguise himself as a human. I can assure you, attacking humans as a disguised Strogg is the most fun you can have and as long as nobody sees you attacking another human or you don't use any other weapon than your knife, you can just carry on your killing spree in disguise :)

Now that I've given you a general idea on what the game is all about, let's see how this game actually plays.

While playing the three maps that were at our disposal (Desert, Sewer and Valley), the weapons felt a bit underpowered overall compared to what we're used from the other Quake games. Some things may have been due to the fact that we were playing a beta build, but other things are done intentionally.

The shotgun for instance. In the previous games this weapon was extremely deadly at close range but in Quake Wars you still need a head shot if you want to kill your opponent instantly. I asked why this was done so and the answer was pretty simple: in small areas, the shotgun would be just too deadly. This may be so, but the maps we played had large outdoor areas next to cramped indoors scenery and outdoors the shotgun has always been at a disadvantage so I would think that would make up and balance things.

With the rocket launcher, something strange was going on. Whenever you fired, it took a couple of seconds before the rocket would actually launch. According to the colleagues that were also present, this wasn't the case in the beta builds they had played up to now, but I can assure you that it was annoying and quickly made me change class. Imagine aiming at someone, firing, and then having to follow the target for a couple of seconds because your rocket still hasn't flown off. Hopefully this will be fixed by the time the game goes retail.

The railgun has always been the preferred one-shot-one-kill weapon for snipers and those that have the best aim and in Quake Wars that won¡¦t be any different. Still, it's had a couple of small changes from previous versions. It won't always shoot at maximum capacity. The first shot you do will take your opponent out if you hit him, but if you miss and don't wait long enough for it to recharge, the next shots will make less damage. Quite good thinking of the devs as now those armed with railguns will have to think twice about just charging in like chickens without a head.
Another thing about the railgun I would like to mention is its zoom function. While the human sniper rifle just zooms in, the railgun will zoom in a lot but the amount of detail will go lost and you'll be seeing a much less detailed scenery. Not that much that it becomes impossible to aim of course, but it isn't as easy as you might hope for. Good thinking from the devs!

The rest of the weapons act pretty much straight forward and won't be a surprise to most people. What might surprise people, though, is the fact that next to the standard weapons, all classes have special things in their possession. An infiltrator can for instance disable vehicles for a while with some sort of EMP surge while there's also some sort of remote recon device that allows you to scout ahead. The fun thing of this is that you can also use it as a weapon to attack opponents that have barricaded themselves. And who will be looking to the sky while all the enemies are on the ground? Indeed, this will come in handy very much :)

Also, you can plant bombs on vehicles and detonate them remotely. You can see when the most amount of hostiles are near the bomb and then push a button to have the largest amount of kills. Details like these make the game extremely tactical (if you want it to be, you can also just go out and get some kills) and fun.

The graphics are very cool. Quake Wars is using the Doom3 engine but has MegaPixel technology (invented by ID Software's John Carmack and perfected by Splash Damage themselves) which makes it possible to have large outdoor areas without killing the system specs too much. Also this tech makes it allows for very realistic-looking surroundings without having to create too many polygons, again to keep the game from killing your pc. Also, you'll be pleased to know that the "plastic" look of the characters wasn't present in the build we played. At least, I didn't notice it.

On release, Quake Wars will have 12 maps present, each one being divided into several parts with objectives linked to them that will open up another part once fulfilled. We've played three of them and I must say that if the rest of the maps are equal in quality, Quake Wars will have some of the best maps ever created. Even Quake2 and Quake3 (which had incredible maps back in the days) never managed to create such a diverse gaming experience with their level design.

The network code has been greatly optimised and allows for different styles of gameplay. For Joe Schmuck who wants to 'play a game online', everything will look smooth and your client will predict the moves of your opponents even if they have a laggy connection. If you want to be sure to hit your enemies, though, you can change the settings and the prediction will be turned off so that you can see exactly where everyone is really going as when they're lagging they'll be moving around in shocks.

To make sure everyone will have the best experience possible with Quake Wars, Splash Damage and ID Software are doing tremendous tests in all areas. Next to the usual testers that hunt for bugs, there's also professional gamers involved to see how the gameplay can be affected by using different tactics. For clan gaming, lots of clans are being invited into the beta test to see how they react to the game and where changes need to be done. And to make sure everyone can have fun on a public server, Splash Damage will soon be expanding the closed beta even more to see how that will work out and where they need to alter some things.

Of course, cheaters and trolls cannot be avoided in a multiplayer game but Splash Damage is doing all they can to make sure it doesn't get out of control. Punk Buster will be present from day one and Paul Wedgwood also stated that they'll set up a system where you can report cheaters and possible hacks so that they can immediately counter these.