Strogg Slogg
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is an awesome game... but not on the PS3.
Published: June 23, 2008
I don't normally do this. We've made it something of a policy here at TPS to give every game we can their due and try to play through them. Some games, though, you just can't make it through and others, like Quake Wars are so horribly executed that suffering through them would be an act of masochism. That the game is being finally released on consoles the better part of a year after it hit PC (to plenty of acclaim, I should add), is bad enough, but the PS3 port of the game is absolutely, unequivocally hideous, and it's not worth anyone's time.
It certainly wasn't worth the few hours I spent with the game.
Let's start with the fact that almost nothing about the game is explained in-game. There's a stupid, pointlessly basic tutorial video that highlights that, yes, there are classes and sometimes they... do stuff! The complete lack of a story mode or even a simple tutorial that helped highlight the differences in units and when to drop one of the myriad different cannons that can be spawned by the different kind of Ops in the game is inexcusable.
There's simply no way to figure out what the differences between Strogg and EDF units, weapons and abilities other than dumb trial and error and experimentation. Even the manual doesn't really help in this regard. One shouldn't have to buy a strategy guide just to understand the basics between a class-based game.
It's frustrating because you can clearly see that there's a good game buried underneath all this stuff, it just feels like you're picking through crap the whole time to really get at the enjoyable parts, and most of this comes down to just how shoddy a port the PS3 version really is. The controls are either too twitchy or feature an auto-lock that makes you feel like the game does all the work. The framerate, even offline, struggles and once you do go online, it's such unmitigated crap that aiming can be all but impossible. It really is unplayable at times, which is nothing short of a death knell for a game that's supposed to be enjoyed as a multiplayer experience.
There was an attempt to help out with the game's bots. Both id Software and classic rival Epic Games used botmatches to fantastic effect back in the early days of the first-person shooter boom, but with a game that's so intensely objective-based like Quake Wars, there's quite a bit more to do than just program a guy to jump out of the way of an incoming rocket. Now, AI must work cooperatively with human players (even online, as the game will auto-fill matches with bots to hit the max number of players).
This means medics have to heal, engineer classes have to build or defuse items and, in the case of the Strogg's more advanced moves like using dead bodies as spawn points or being able to disguise oneself as an enemy player, juggle multiple styles of play in addition to the usual FPS shootout. Cranked up to their max difficulty, most of the bots are deadly accurate, but the more advanced tasks can seem frustratingly difficult for them to figure out. Medics swing wildly from having almost god-like awareness of the battlefield to literally standing feet away and completely ignoring you. I eventually stopped caring about medics altogether and just started respawning all the time.
This leads to another one of the game's more frustrating issues: the rewards system. See, playing well and hitting streaks can cause your player to actually level up, gaining new abilities for a short while that can make a huge difference in how you play the game. When you can suddenly run faster or lock onto walking tanks more quickly, you tend to favor certain loadouts. There are a mind-bogglingly large number of options for tackling any one task, which is easily the best part of Quake Wars' underlying gameplay, but again, there's so much crap in the way of discovering this that unless you're playing with a bunch of real people and are communicating constantly, it all seems lost. That there wasn't more of a persistent element means that there's little incentive to really dig into the game, which may actually be a plus given how bad this port is.
I'm not saying one shouldn't experience Quake Wars in some form. The 360 version is marginally better (both in terms of graphics and overall feel), but both console versions absolutely pale in comparison to the original PC release. Poor network code, an absolutely miserable Xbox-level look to things (with half the framerate), and an overwhelmingly brown color palette just make the game feel like the quick and dirty port that it so obviously is.
Quake Wars could have been one of the defining multiplayer experiences on the PS3. Aside from the fact that the guys on defense rarely have anything to do but out last enemy waves for a while, the gameplay itself is unquestionably riveting, and it's really unlike anything else on the system. Instead, piss-poor visuals, wonky controls, a miserable online experience and a complete lack of detailed introduction to why the game saw the kind of positive reception it had on the PC completely kill the game before it even has a chance to make an impression.
Actually, scratch that. It made an impression all right, but it left such a sour taste in my mouth that I never want to slip the disc into my PS3 again.
It certainly wasn't worth the few hours I spent with the game.
Let's start with the fact that almost nothing about the game is explained in-game. There's a stupid, pointlessly basic tutorial video that highlights that, yes, there are classes and sometimes they... do stuff! The complete lack of a story mode or even a simple tutorial that helped highlight the differences in units and when to drop one of the myriad different cannons that can be spawned by the different kind of Ops in the game is inexcusable.
There's simply no way to figure out what the differences between Strogg and EDF units, weapons and abilities other than dumb trial and error and experimentation. Even the manual doesn't really help in this regard. One shouldn't have to buy a strategy guide just to understand the basics between a class-based game.
It's frustrating because you can clearly see that there's a good game buried underneath all this stuff, it just feels like you're picking through crap the whole time to really get at the enjoyable parts, and most of this comes down to just how shoddy a port the PS3 version really is. The controls are either too twitchy or feature an auto-lock that makes you feel like the game does all the work. The framerate, even offline, struggles and once you do go online, it's such unmitigated crap that aiming can be all but impossible. It really is unplayable at times, which is nothing short of a death knell for a game that's supposed to be enjoyed as a multiplayer experience.
There was an attempt to help out with the game's bots. Both id Software and classic rival Epic Games used botmatches to fantastic effect back in the early days of the first-person shooter boom, but with a game that's so intensely objective-based like Quake Wars, there's quite a bit more to do than just program a guy to jump out of the way of an incoming rocket. Now, AI must work cooperatively with human players (even online, as the game will auto-fill matches with bots to hit the max number of players).
This means medics have to heal, engineer classes have to build or defuse items and, in the case of the Strogg's more advanced moves like using dead bodies as spawn points or being able to disguise oneself as an enemy player, juggle multiple styles of play in addition to the usual FPS shootout. Cranked up to their max difficulty, most of the bots are deadly accurate, but the more advanced tasks can seem frustratingly difficult for them to figure out. Medics swing wildly from having almost god-like awareness of the battlefield to literally standing feet away and completely ignoring you. I eventually stopped caring about medics altogether and just started respawning all the time.
This leads to another one of the game's more frustrating issues: the rewards system. See, playing well and hitting streaks can cause your player to actually level up, gaining new abilities for a short while that can make a huge difference in how you play the game. When you can suddenly run faster or lock onto walking tanks more quickly, you tend to favor certain loadouts. There are a mind-bogglingly large number of options for tackling any one task, which is easily the best part of Quake Wars' underlying gameplay, but again, there's so much crap in the way of discovering this that unless you're playing with a bunch of real people and are communicating constantly, it all seems lost. That there wasn't more of a persistent element means that there's little incentive to really dig into the game, which may actually be a plus given how bad this port is.
I'm not saying one shouldn't experience Quake Wars in some form. The 360 version is marginally better (both in terms of graphics and overall feel), but both console versions absolutely pale in comparison to the original PC release. Poor network code, an absolutely miserable Xbox-level look to things (with half the framerate), and an overwhelmingly brown color palette just make the game feel like the quick and dirty port that it so obviously is.
Quake Wars could have been one of the defining multiplayer experiences on the PS3. Aside from the fact that the guys on defense rarely have anything to do but out last enemy waves for a while, the gameplay itself is unquestionably riveting, and it's really unlike anything else on the system. Instead, piss-poor visuals, wonky controls, a miserable online experience and a complete lack of detailed introduction to why the game saw the kind of positive reception it had on the PC completely kill the game before it even has a chance to make an impression.
Actually, scratch that. It made an impression all right, but it left such a sour taste in my mouth that I never want to slip the disc into my PS3 again.
