Monday, January 25, 2010

Soldier Of Fortune Payback

9:40:00 PM    No comments


game
INFO:
Soldier of Fortune: Payback Tech Info
Publisher:
    Activision Value
Developer:
    Activision
Genre:
    Modern First-Person Shooter
Release Date:
    Nov 14, 2007 (more) 
ESRB:
    MATURE
ESRB Descriptors:
    Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Sexual Themes
Game Information
Number of Players:
    1 Player
Number of Online Players:
    12 Online
DirectX Version:
    v9.0c
Operating System:
    Windows XP/Vista
Minimum System Requirements
System:
    Pentium 4 2.5GHz or equivalent
RAM:
    512 MB
Hard Drive Space:
    3300 MB
Other:
    pixel/vertex shaders version 2.0 - ATI Radeon x800 or Nvidia GeForce 6800
Recommended System Requirements
System:
    Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz or equivalent
RAM:
    1024 MB
Other:
    pixel/vertex shaders version - ATI Radeon x1900 or Nvidia GeForce 7900
Technical Support
Visit Activision Value web site at: http://www.activisionvalue.com/ 
Official Site
Visit the official web site at: http://www.mercenarieswanted.com/


Soldier of Fortune: Payback Review
This shooter is a painful exercise in pattern memorization plus frustrating trial-and-error gameplay.
The Good
    * It looks pretty.
The Bad
    * Terrible, frustrating, painful gameplay  
    * Falls well below standard set by previous two games  
    * Lousy artificial intelligence and gunplay.
If you've ever wondered what happened to the Soldier of Fortune franchise, you're not alone. The first two Soldier of Fortune games were popular shooters in their day, blending fun single-player and multiplayer gameplay with the concept of playing as a mercenary. But after 2002's Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, the franchise seemed to fall off the face of the planet. Unfortunately, it should have stayed missing in action because the series has been resurrected with Soldier of Fortune: Payback, a shooter that embraces all the wrong lessons that have been learned over the past decade.
Don't let its looks fool you; Soldier of Fortune Payback is one of the most frustrating shooters of the year.
At first glance, Payback looks like a very pretty game. The visuals aren't cutting-edge, but there's an attractive quality to them, from the lavish depth-of-field blur effects that kick in whenever you reload your weapon to the lush lighting. You no longer play as John Mullins, the hero of the first two games, but rather as a new mercenary caught up in a very cliché and badly told tale of a worldwide terrorist organization that's so clever it brands all of its operatives with the very same tattoo on their necks. It's a wonder they're so difficult to find.
However, it all goes downhill quickly because Payback reveals itself to be a relentlessly linear and highly scripted shooter with a lot of flaws. Perhaps the most frustrating of these deals with the fact that the game relies on a checkpoint save system with no ability to quicksave, which means that if you're killed, you have to restart from the last checkpoint. That wouldn't be so much of an issue if those checkpoints were frequent and numerous, but they're not. Thus, much of the game's six to eight hours of gameplay is spent trying and retrying to get through the many sections of the game. Though there's a regenerating health system, you still die all too easily. It's not uncommon to have to replay a section a dozen times or more before you finally beat it.
The artificial intelligence is bad and consists mainly of two scripted actions. Once triggered, a bad guy will either run straight at you or stand in the open and shoot at you. There's no sense of dynamic behavior in the way the AI reacts to what you do. The weapon modeling is nonexistent; there's practically zero recoil on any of the weapons, even the light machine guns. On the flip side, even though the weapons all feel incredibly lightweight, they do a ridiculous amount of damage. The first Soldier of Fortune games were "edgy" in that you could practically dismember opponents with gunfire. The same goes for Payback, though it looks like the developers just copied and pasted the same code from the earlier games because the visual effect is almost exactly the same. Arms, legs, and heads all get shot off with absurd regularity while blood gushes everywhere. (The game does boast a low violence option that tones down this carnage.)
The single-player is six to eight hours of banging your head against a wall.
The music is actually pretty catchy, but the rest of the audio is lacking. The sound effects all seem canned, and the voice acting is terrible. The script certainly doesn't help either because the dialogue would be fitting for a straight-to-VHS action movie. The game also ends in a silly cliffhanger that assumes that gamers are going to want more of this action.
Additionally, Payback's multiplayer is very generic, with such modes as deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag. There's a whopping five multiplayer maps total, so there's not a lot of variety there either, which is also disappointing, considering Soldier of Fortune II's popular and fun multiplayer mode.
The PC game is slightly less expensive than major titles, but the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games are full priced. Nevertheless, they're all a terrible value proposition considering the sheer quantity and high quality of shooters this year. Unless you like pain and frustration, there's simply no reason to play Soldier of Fortune: Payback when there are so many other better games on the market.


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TrackMania United Forever

9:39:00 PM    No comments


game

TrackMania United Forever Tech Info
Publisher:
    Simmer's Sky
Developer:
    Nadeo
Genre:
    Racing
Release Date:
    Jun 27, 2008 (JP)
Technical Support
Visit Simmer's Sky web site at: http://www.ascaron.com/

TrackMania United Forever Review
Speedy craziness and a great online community make TrackMania United a blast.
The Good
    * Addictive racing and platform modes of play  
    * Amazing online support with loads of opponents and hundreds of tracks to download  
    * Sharp visuals and fast frame rates.
The Bad
    * Puzzle mode is dull and out of place.
Slot car fantasies come to life in TrackMania United, the latest addition to the zaniest, most addictive arcade racing franchise to ever hit the PC. French developer Nadeo may stick a little too close to the original TrackMania and its sequel TrackMania Sunrise, but the concepts introduced in those games have been refined to near-perfection here. Dozens of insanely catchy tracks, fantastic online support, and a few new gameplay hooks will have you craving the next race the second you finish the last one.
If you decide to download this game from Steam (the only place it's available in the US), be aware that this a racing-game throwback--not the usual hardcore sim with a capital "S" that you tend to get on the PC. Ripping around and having a blast is the point here, not running telemetry until you can blow the doors off everyone at Daytona. Vehicle types here come with loose physics and a slidey feel more fitting of toy cars than of real hunks of metal and plastic. Cars even bounce when they fall from great heights, whether they hit pavement or water when they come down. Tracks are even more fantastic, typically featuring insane jumps, hoops hovering in midair, snowboard-style half-pipes, precipices high above desert canyons, and tropical-island highways that come to abrupt dead ends. And if you can think of a design even nuttier, you can make it yourself with the powerful, easy-to-use track editor.
Up, up, and away.
All of this speedy craziness is experienced in three modes of play. Race is the most down-to-earth option. Like in Sunrise, you run time trials alone or against gold, silver, and bronze pace cars. However, opponents are just ghost cars to push you to better times, as you can't collide with them. Races take place in seven different track categories that unlock as you collect a requisite number of gold and silver finishes. Categories offer different scenery and racing styles. Stadium, for example, sees you guiding formula one-style cars around racetracks in concrete domes, while Desert features trucks on dirt roads. Rally boasts rally cars on grass in windmill-laden pastoral Europe, and Snow takes you to the mountains on ATVs.
Repetition is a bit of an issue when racing, despite the dozens and dozens of tracks included in the game. Each map type repeats the same scenic elements, only varying the time of day and adding glitz like red sunsets and neon nights. Still, you don't spend enough time on any one track to get bored. Tracks range from 10-second drags in the opening stages to slightly more winding treks that take a minute or two to complete. Also, the challenge is strong enough that you can find yourself running a race a couple-dozen times in a row to try to catch the perfect performance of the gold car. Just the slightest mistake puts you in second place, so don't underestimate the toughness of what looks to be a shiny, happy arcade game.
Racing can also be taken online. TrackMania United boasts an awesome online community in both Europe and North America, which lets you hook up with a race day or night. Lag is a slight problem at times, although typically only when loading and starting races. Once you get going, everything smoothes out. Nadeo keeps online leaderboards for different tracks, and also allows you to check your times against others by running official races in the solo mode. So if the basic gameplay doesn't keep you playing, trying to hit the top of the charts likely will. There seem to be thousands of different tracks available over the Net as well, testimony to the game's European fan base and the usability of the editor. These tracks can be downloaded and installed on the fly, although you need to purchase them in solo gaming with coppers earned from activities like posting good official race times.
But while races and the challenge of besting online times will hook you, platform mode will keep you coming back for more. This fiendishly addictive game (a revamped take on Sunrise's ramps tracks) challenges you to simply make it from start to finish without hitting a checkpoint restart too many times, but that's easier said than done when you have to deal with jumps that don't line up, holes that drop you into watery graves, tunnels that whip you around like a pinball, and outrageous one-after-the-other leaps to floating platforms suspended in midair. These tracks beautifully balance learning with driving skill. Even after you've run through a track a few times and memorized its pitfalls, funky driving is still required in order to stay on the road. This means a lot of trial and error...along with a lot of laughing as you continuously miss turns and cinematically sail off ramps to plummet hundreds of feet into the drink in front of gorgeous sunsets. Swearing alternates with the laughter, though, as getting a gold medal requires perfection, and perfection is gamepad-throwingly hard to come by.
Compared to the above, the puzzle mode of play is a big letdown. As in Sunrise, this option sees you building tracks from a top-down perspective. It's an interesting concept, though it seems as out of place with the other two modes as pizza does with rice, and solutions rarely seem logical. As the other options are such pure fun, puzzle really isn't worth much of your time.
Water hazards are about as common on a TrackMania United track as they are on a golf course.
But while puzzle makes you question what the developers were thinking, the visuals make you ask how the heck they managed to make a game look this good and run this fast. Frame rates fly on even a low-end machine, and tracks load in seconds (restarts are instantaneous), even though the appearance of the game hasn't been compromised at all. Tracks are designed around postcard vistas like tropical beaches, historic countrysides, and snowy cliffs. Big jumps often trigger the camera switching to a panoramic view of the action, further emphasizing the attractiveness of the backdrops and adding a Fall Guy feel. In-game advertising is the only sore point. When you're logged in online, the scenery is marred by billboards. It's not like tracks are clogged with signage, though, and the ads are region-specific (in Canada, for instance, you get billboards for Rogers and those irritating Bell Canada beavers), so you might see something of interest. Still, having to endure commercials in a retail game is every bit as galling as having to sit through ads in movie theaters.
Audio quality almost makes you forget about the annoying sales pitches, at least. Atmospheric effects are dialed way down for what should be an over-the-top arcade game with lots of squeals and smashes, although the selection of great tunes on the soundtrack mitigates this minor issue. Each song matches its setting, so you get a nifty country honky-tonk in desert races, a scratchy hip-hop beat in the city, and so on.
Overall, TrackMania United has a dreamy, fantasy vibe that could fulfill a kid's slot-car dream. Veterans of the previous two games in the series might find it too much of a been-there, done-that sequel, but it's perfect for anyone who appreciates speed, imaginative track design, and a definitively offbeat take on running cars around in circles.


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DiRT

9:37:00 PM    No comments


game
INFO:
Dirt Tech Info
Publisher:
    Codemasters
Developer:
    Codemasters
Genre:
    Rally / Offroad Racing
Release Date:
    Jun 19, 2007 (more) 
ESRB:
    EVERYONE
Game Information
Offline Modes:
    Competitive, Cooperative
Online Modes:
    Competitive, Cooperative
Number of Players:
    1-2
Number of Online Players:
    2 Online
Technical Support
Visit Codemasters web site at: http://www.codemasters.com/
Dirt Review
As a graphical showpiece, DiRT is an unbridled success. It also happens to be an entirely enjoyable rally racer.
The Video Review
Watch this video
With outstanding graphics and satisfying driving mechanics, DiRT is a great racer. Get more details in our video review.
Watch It Watch HD 520p
The Good
    * Six distinct racing disciplines  
    * enjoyable mix of arcade and simulation driving  
    * gorgeous looking tracks and cars that deform and break apart very nicely  
    * slick menu presentation  
    * tons of offline races to play through.
The Bad
    * Cars have something of a floaty feel to them  
    * frame rate tanks hard during certain scenarios  
    * multiplayer options are like a cruel joke.
Fans of Codemasters' Colin McRae rally racing series are in for a surprise with the publisher's newest title, DiRT. DiRT has more in common with Digital Illusions' Rallisport Challenge series than the Colin McRae games of old, putting a greater emphasis on a variety of off-road racing disciplines, as opposed to sticking hard and fast to traditional rally racing. That's not to say that rally fans will be disappointed with the game. DiRT veers a good bit further into arcade territory than earlier games in the series, but it is still a blast to drive, and absolutely stunning to look at.
It doesn't look quite as astonishing in motion, but DiRT is still one superb looking racer
Let's just address that elephant in the room right off. There have been plenty of driving games of late that have been visually impressive, but very few live up to the visual fidelity displayed by DiRT. This game is a technical achievement in car design, track design, and damage modeling. To begin with, the cars are beautifully rendered, highly detailed models that are as fantastic to look at as they are to destroy. Damage modeling is one of the most impressive aspects of the game; you can lose bumpers or doors, break glass, tear up the paintjob, and roll your ride into a crushed, deformed mess. Tracks are equally beautiful and destructible. From the rain-slick tarmac tracks of Japan and the dusty backroads of Italy to the muddy, gravelly countryside of the UK, DiRT nails every environment wonderfully. The game also uses lighting to fantastic effect, not just to emphasize how shiny and reflective the cars are, but to give each track an individual atmosphere. Driving around desert mountains in the washed-out haze of late day is an amazing sight to behold, for sure. And if you feel like tearing up these tracks, you can bust through fences, barriers, bushes, and anything else not held to the ground with concrete. All the while, dirt, mud, or gravel will kick up against and often stick to your car, making the game's namesake seem entirely appropriate.
As amazing as the game looks, all that detail comes at a bit of a price. Performance is not always up to snuff, especially in races with multiple cars on the track. The frame rate is a little choppy during single-car rallies, but once you get a group of other cars racing with you, the game practically turns into stop-motion animation, especially if all the other cars happen to be bunched up with you. This is more of a consistent issue on the 360 version, though the PC version is highly taxing even on high-end hardware, so you're likely to run into some performance problems unless you're running a top of the line machine. Longer-than-average load times also tend to rear their ugly head (primarily in the 360 version). Even still, the game never becomes unplayable because of the crummy frame rate or lengthy loads, and at worst, these are merely annoyances.
The quality of the presentation doesn't begin and end with the in-game graphics either. Even the menu system is immaculately built. It's hard to describe it, except to call it a bunch of floating boxes with selectable options that zoom in and out as you select them. Even the loading screens are cool because they display real-time statistics on your game, such as your favorite tracks or vehicles, your average speed, and even your favorite driving surface. Menus are usually a forgotten element of a game unless they're specifically bad, so the fact that DiRT's are notable for how good they are says something.
Audio is not quite as immediately impressive as the visuals, but it is great all the same. Engine noise is probably the best aspect because each car has a definitive and unique sound to it that feels just right. Crashes and other racing effects are also excellently produced. The soundtrack isn't licensed, but the instrumentals that play over the various menus and replays are quite solid. The only damper on the category is your codriver, an obnoxious, bro-sounding dolt whose dialogue sounds like it was written by a nonnative English speaker and whose only reference for the language was reruns of Saved By the Bell. Lines like "Smooth and steady; I'm Mr. Smooth, and you're Mr. Steady," and "Yeah! We won the championship! I'm so stoked!" are funny once, but then they're annoying from there on out. At least he gives you some good info on the tracks before you race.
This ain't your daddy's rally racing game.
Once you've snapped out of the trance that DiRT's fantastic presentation tends to lull you into, you might remember that this is a racing game and that you do actually have to play it. It's a good thing it's a fun one. The game includes six different racing disciplines, which consist of rally, rallycross, hillclimb, CORR, crossover, and rally raid varieties. If you don't know what half of those are, don't fret. The game does a good job of easing you into the game's style of racing, with both some rather simple early races, as well as an explanatory narration by extreme sports maven and current Rally America champion Travis Pastrana.
Granted, even if you've never jumped into a CORR race in your life, DiRT isn't exactly a difficult game to grasp. You're racing down a course by yourself, trying to get the best time possible, or racing against other cars, buggies, or trucks on dirt and tarmac tracks. Most of the differences in gameplay come from how the various vehicles handle. There is obviously a big difference between driving a speedy Mitsubishi FTO and a massive racing big rig (yes, they actually have those). But even with all the differences among disciplines, the racing is always easy to pick up and play. DiRT has a decidedly arcade-driving sensibility that makes all the vehicles relatively easy to race with from the outset. Once you've gotten a feel for how all the different cars and tracks feel, you can simply crank up the difficulty, which in turn makes your opponent racers much more adept, and also leaves your car far more open to terminal damage. On the highest setting, all it takes is one good front-end collision to send you packing.
As realistic as the damage incurrence can be, the rest of the game definitely maintains an arcade mentality. Nearly all the vehicles have a decidedly floaty feel to them, one that seems to overcompensate for nearly every minute turn of the analog stick (if you're playing the PC version, you will need a dual analog controller of some fashion to play the game properly). It's not unmanageable or anything, but it's far from realistic. By the same token, the game's physics are often a bit silly, especially in wrecks. That's not an insult by any means because the exaggerated physics lead to some absolutely spectacular wrecks in many cases. But there are some eye-roll-worthy moments where you'll see a car tilt from lying on its side all the way back upright for no good reason or drive sideways up a cliff to land back on four wheels.
Floaty feel and wonky physics aside, DiRT is still a great deal of fun to play. Once you get a feel for the controls and up the difficulty a bit, the racing can be intensely challenging, addictive, and immersive. It's especially immersive if you happen to take in one of the game's two exceptionally good cockpit camera views. There's a zoomed-in view and a view that's a bit further back. Both views give you a great sense of being in the driver's seat, even going so far as to let you look around inside the car via the right analog stick. Not enough racers do the cockpit camera that well, and DiRT is worth lauding for doing it especially well.
As fun as the racing can be, it wouldn't be worth much if DiRT didn't offer up plenty of ways to experience it. Fortunately, it does the job. Apart from being able to take part in single races and events, as well as a series of championships, consisting of multiple races each, DiRT also has a lengthy, involving career mode that has you working your way up a literal pyramid of events. Winning races earns you points, which unlock new tiers of the career mode and cash, which you can use to buy new vehicles or liveries for said vehicles. With more than 60 career events, nearly 50 vehicles to unlock, and more than 180 liveries to buy for those vehicles, that ought to keep you busy.
Few games have ever displayed such dynamic damage modeling.
The one feature that DiRT skimps badly on is multiplayer support. There is multiplayer, but just barely. Only two disciplines--rally and hillclimb--are available to play in multiplayer. But wait, aren't those the two disciplines that don't have you competing directly against other cars? You bet. Essentially, you're dumped into a lobby with potentially dozens of other players, and from there, you vote on which track you want to play. The available list to vote on is always random, and there's no option to pick a different car or even search for a lobby with specific cars/tracks available. Once you're in a race, it's merely a time trial against all the other players. You can see how you're doing in the real-time standings, but that's all. While the Colin McRae series has never been known for great multiplayer support, the total lack of online racing in a game that debuts several wheel-to-wheel racing types is a gigantic tease and really disappointing.
That said, the multiplayer support is really the only thing about DiRT you can call truly disappointing. On every other front, DiRT delivers a racing experience that's a lot of fun to play and visuals that are such a joy to watch that you can even bring yourself to forgive the shoddy frame rate. All around, DiRT is a class act, and it belongs in any racing fan's library.


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Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

9:36:00 PM    No comments

game


                                                                                                                                                        
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Tech Info

Publisher:
    Activision
Developer:
    Splash Damage
Genre:
    Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter
Release Date:
    Oct 2, 2007 (more) 
ESRB:
    TEEN
Game Information
Connectivity:
    Online, Broadband Only
Offline Modes:
    Competitive, Team Oriented
Online Modes:
    Competitive, Team Oriented
Number of Players:
    1-32
Number of Online Players:
    32 Online
DirectX Version:
    v9.0c
Operating System:
    Windows XP/Vista
Minimum System Requirements
System:
    Intel Pentium IV 2.8 GHz or equivalent
RAM:
    512 MB
Video Memory:
    128 MB
Hard Drive Space:
    5000 MB
Other:
    Pentium IV 3.0 GHz processor and 768MB RAM required for Windows Vista
Technical Support
Visit Activision web site at: http://www.activision.com/games/pub-index.html 
Official Site
Visit the official web site at: http://www.enemyterritory.com/

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Review
Quake Wars' strong shooting model and focused objectives make it a lot of fun to play.
The Video Review
Watch this video
Kevin VanOrd takes Enemy Territory: Quake Wars to the front lines in this video review.
Watch It Watch HD 520p
The Good
    * Slick, mission-based gameplay makes for intense, focused pockets of action  
    * Constantly updated objectives make sure you are never at a loss of where to go and what to do  
    * Interesting classes are balanced well and are equally enjoyable to play  
    * Strong shooting model makes it fun to mow down the opposition .
The Bad
    * No voice chat functionality, even for fire teams  
    * Vehicle and aircraft key bindings aren't completely separate from infantry keys.
If you took 2003's freely downloadable Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and mashed it together with the Battlefield games, you might come up with something like Quake Wars. Of course, the whole business of the original Enemy Territory's Allies and Axis have been replaced by the humans and Strogg from the Quake universe, but the basic nature of the gameplay is unchanged. Two opposing teams still duke it out while attempting to complete a series of objectives, though this time you can jump into a bunch of different vehicles and aircraft to carry out your assaults. The concept itself isn't really new, but it's put together extremely well, and its mission-focused gameplay will appeal to veterans of these types of shooters, as well as those who have previously been intimidated by them.
Clear objectives make it easy to know what to do next.
The year is 2065. The Strogg race has attacked Earth in order to process its raw materials into a fuel called stroyent. If you've played any other Quake titles, you'll know some of the history here, but it's mostly irrelevant in the context of Enemy Territory's multiplayer action, so let's cut to the chase: You join either the human Global Defense Force or the alien Strogg team, and then shoot your enemies in the face.
Obviously, it's a tad more complex than this. First, you need to choose one of five classes before each match. The GDF classes will be familiar to any RTCW: Enemy Territory player; the Strogg classes have different names than the human ones, but they all boil down to the same roles. GDF soldiers and Strogg aggressors are your typical frontline troops; medics and technicians heal in the field; and so on. Don't assume that correlating classes are all exactly the same, though. GDF field ops can drop ammo packs, for example. The similar Strogg oppressor doesn't need to drop ammo, since the alien weaponry doesn't require any. Instead, oppressors can set up a tactical shield to protect infantry or vehicles.
Other differences are subtle, but no less important. For example, GDF medics can revive downed teammates almost instantly, while it takes a few crucial seconds for Strogg technicians to do the same. On the other hand, technicians can use their healing stroyent tool on enemies, too, which creates a forward spawn point--a handy skill, indeed. Then you have GDF covert ops versus Strogg infiltrators. Both can disguise themselves as the enemy, but covert ops can use an explosive surveillance camera to spy on the opposition, while infiltrators can send out a handy drone to do battle with enemies from a distance. These differences aren't huge, but they give each faction a different feel and are balanced well.
Once you've spawned into the map, the game will give you incredibly clear objectives--and in most cases, more than one. Teams share a primary objective, and as the battle rages and one team is successful in meeting its current goal, the objective will shift. There are secondary missions to complete as well, and they will change depending on your class. You may need to take out enemy radar, heal teammates, blow up gates, and so on. The end result of this focus is that you never wonder what you should be doing, and even newcomers to this kind of action will feel that they contributed. Additionally, as you continue to play, you will earn medals and gain persistent ranks--provided you are playing on ranked servers. You'll also earn bonuses within your current campaign as you gain experience, such as improved weaponry, faster sprinting, and more, depending on the amount of XP earned and the class you are playing.
All the emphasis on missions results in intense firefights that occasionally involve Quake Wars' small assortment of vehicles and aircraft. The specific mission objectives usually keep the action contained to a few pockets of concentrated activity, though, so if you like the Battlefield formula of controlled chaos, you might miss the insane flurry of action coming at you from all sides and above. If you prefer to get comfy in a tank turret or in the cockpit of a chopper, you'll still be able to fulfill that role. But with objectives shifting from outdoor areas to indoor sewers and bunkers, you can't singularly focus on getting into the air or plowing down every enemy in sight. Don't take this to mean that Quake Wars doesn't offer its share of heavy action, however. You'll still get your fill of visceral, bloody battles--though they are usually confined to the ground.
You can also create a fire team as in the original Enemy Territory, so squad organization functionality is there, though it's not as necessary as you would expect. One reason is that when you undertake a secondary mission, you can see who is sharing it, thereby creating a sort of ad hoc squad. The other is that Quake Wars does not support voice chat, so you simply don't have the opportunity to issue commands to your fire team easily. Of course, you can use a third-party voice client, though that would have you chatting to all of your teammates, rather than a single squad. Now that the Battlefield series has set the squad-based chat standard, it's unclear why the functionality would be left out. The missions are so clear that your path is usually fairly straightforward, but if you're joining a random game and still want to contribute to the fullest extent, it would be nice for the game to give you the chance to talk to the other members of your fire team.
Shooting stuff in Quake Wars feels terrific. Both GDF and Strogg weaponry have the right weight and firing speed. Even the default weapons for nonassault classes, like the Strogg Lacerator, are effective in battle and handle well. Small details, such as the amount of time the barrels on the Hyperblaster rotate before they begin firing, feel properly balanced. Vehicles and aircraft are easy to manage as well. Oddly enough, though, some ground-movement controls are tied to flight and vehicle controls, so if, for example, you want to change the key binding for your Tormentor's thrust maneuver, you'll be changing the sprint key as well. It would be nice to have vehicle controls separately customizable from within the game, and we're at a loss to explain why players would be forced to edit configuration files to make such a simple, standard change.
There are three ways to play: on a single map, a three-map campaign that takes place across a single continent, or in a two-round duel on a single map in which teams compete to see who can complete their assault faster. There are 12 maps in all, and they hold up to 32 players at a time--though every server we have seen supports no more than 24 players. Most of the usual near-future environments are covered, from cratered wastelands to frozen tundra. The maps themselves are balanced well, with plenty of buildings for cover, and lots of hills and valleys to mix things up.
Avoid antipersonnel turrets at all costs.
Yet prior Quake games captured the aura of futuristic warfare better than Quake Wars does. That is partially due to the open-environment design--and the very nature of the setting. However, there is no real eye candy to set your sights on here, so while the maps look very good, nothing really paints a detailed picture of a war-torn world. Indoor areas in particular are mostly bland and functional, but even terrain lacks detail, thanks to flat textures. Even explosions and fire effects lack pizzazz. Lighting is often spectacular, however, especially in the foliage-rich areas, and vehicles and turrets are richly detailed. The draw distance is also incredible, without any noticeable fog or polygon pop-in. Character models are good too, but the animations are a bit awkward. Luckily, the game runs reasonably well. The din of battle sounds good, and the weapons are obnoxiously loud, in a good way. The voice-over commands that you can play are grating, though, and the tone of some of the lines (like the GDF's snotty "You're Welcome!") seems out of place.
If you're an Enemy Territory veteran, this is the logical next step for you. And if you've been turned off by team shooters in the past, this one may change your mind. The accessible, objective-focused gameplay won't be for everyone, especially those into the chaotic, freeform warfare of other team shooters. But all told, Quake Wars is great fun and should provide FPS fans with a lot to sink their teeth into.


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