Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Seven months after Enemy Territory: Quake Wars’ well-received PC debut, the good news is that Nerve Software didn’t break anything while moving the big-battle, multiplayer-driven fragfest over to Xbox 360. It’s a mechanically solid first-person shooter with excellent bot work, a smooth framerate, and steady online play. Before going in, though, you should know that you have to be willing and ready to endure plenty of antiquated Quake-series mannerisms to enjoy it.

With almost no story to speak of, Quake Wars offers five playable classes — the demolition-ing soldier, hacking covert op, repairing engineer, healing medic, and ammo-toting field op — across two playable factions (the human GDF and alien Strogg). You get 12 total missions divided into four three-level campaigns on different continents. The maps are refreshingly huge, and each has three or four varying objectives that can be accomplished only by specific classes, from blowing something up to hacking a shield generator to building a bridge to escorting your mobile base to a certain location.

The catch is that each mission has a time limit (usually 20 minutes), and some task you with simply defending objectives from the invading opposing force for the duration of that time. Those tense levels are some of Quake Wars’ finest.

Delightfully, the action is a lot of fun, and we tip our cap to the impressive bot A.I., which is smart — by which we don’t mean that they cheat and shoot you between the eyes from across the map, but rather they do smart (if annoying) things that human players would do, like plant proximity mines in hidden areas near objectives that you’re trying to hack. Better still, the bots will fill out any human multiplayer game so that you always have a full 8-on-8 match.

Unfortunately, decade-old Quake-isms notch down the fun a bit. The gameplay is very arcade-y, meaning you run at 40mph and jump just one foot in the air. Also, the vehicles don’t control very well, while the graphics do everything to not knock your socks off. Remember — it’s Quake, so everything is coated in various shades of brown.

Since the Xbox 360 hasn’t had a big-battle, objective-based multiplayer game like this in a while, we’re glad to see Quake Wars finally hit the console. Whether its quirks annoy you more than its strengths entertain you, though, all boils down to how much of a Quake fan you are.